Dr Musa Aliyu, SAN, Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offence (ICPC) has called for attitudinal change and anti-corruption mindset to win the battle against corruption.
Aliyu, represented by the ICPC Secretary, Clifford Oparaodu, made the call on Tuesday in Abuja, at a stakeholders’ review roundtable on the implementation of the National Ethics and Integrity Policy (NEIP) and the Ethics and Integrity Compliance Scorecard (EICS) organised by the ICPC.
The ICPC boss described corruption as a cankerworm that had eaten deep into the fabric of the nation and halted its development, which needed collaborated efforts to tackle.
According to him, attitude has to be changed and anti-corruption mindset must be inculcated to overcome national and institutional challenges of corruption.
He said that ICPC was working round the clock to enhance moral re-birth and address the challenge of corruption in the country.
He said that the roundtable was necessitated to enable stakeholders jointly undertake the crucial task of reviewing the implementation of the National Ethics and Integrity Policy (NEIP) and the Ethics and Integrity Compliance Scorecard (EICS).
“This Roundtable Review has become necessary looking at the fact both the NEIP targeted at generating moral re-birth and the EICS as an anti-corruption-driven evaluation tool urgently requires checks to determine “how far’ and “how well.
“It becomes imperative, therefore to convene this roundtable so that we can altogether review, evaluate, re-strategise and retool (where necessary) for increased positive impact.
“Recall that the NEIP was developed by the ICPC in collaboration with the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF) and the National Orientation Agency (NOA),” he said.
He said it was approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Aug. 19, 2020. Since then, the Commission had been engaging with stakeholders including deploying various strategies to attract buy-in of all and sundry.
“As you are also aware, the EISC is an anti-corruption evaluation tool developed by the Commission in 2015 with support from the Justice for All (J4A), the European Union and some other donor agencies.
“EISC helps in assessing organisational and corporate culture of ethics and compliance programmes.
“This important tool, which contains 112 questions covering three main indicators, 12 sub-indicators and highlighting the ethics and compliance activities of MDAs, assesses the integrity and fidelity of systems to mitigate their frailties.
“The objective of the evaluation of MDAs through the ethics and integrity compliance standards are particularly to monitor and evaluate them on the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs),” he said.
He said that this was meant to ascertain their level of compliance with institutional ethics and integrity requirements and avail the ICPC with a tracking and diagnostic tool and intelligence to monitor system risks and vulnerabilities.
He said this would also help to direct management and leadership of the Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) to take appropriate measures to mitigate them.
“I sincerely hope that this programme will afford us the needed opportunity to critically evaluate the effects of our numerous efforts in respect to these initiatives in the society, and create in us the motivation to do more.
“Attitude has to be changed and anti-corruption mindset might be inculcated so as to overcome national and institutional challenges,” he said.
Alhaji Fuad Adeyemi, National Chief Imam, Al-habibiyyah, said the greatest problem of the country was corruption and must be addressed holistically.
“The problem of the country is corruption and must be tackled through prevention, because if you allow them to indulge in it you will spend much to recover stolen items.
“The best way to prevent is through promotion of ethic and integrity with moral re-rebirth and anti-corruption mindset.
“The ICPC is trying but needs to do more by moving to where people are, go to the grassroots. The commission should also name and shame the culprit either corporate or individual.
“The tools they introduced are good one that the country needs now but it has to be scaled up,” he said.
Apostle Samson Fatokun, General Secretary, Christian Association (CAN), lauded the effort of the ICPC in fighting against corruption in Nigeria and urged the commission to begin its fight from the top.
Fatokun commended the tools introduced by the ICPC in fighting corruption but stressed that the implementation must be effective.
He said CAN had also put in place different measures to ensure moral enhanced and behavioral change among church leaders and member.
Dr Emmanuel Uche, Programme Manager, European Union (EU) Rule of Law and Anticorruption Programme, urged the MDAs to key into the ICPC behavoural changes policy.
Uche said that this would make them to begin to have attitudinal change to corrupt practices.
He said that the introduction of the tools had helped in achieving a lot in the fight against corruption in the country.
“There has been a critical movement from grand zero to where there has been substantial movement, part of that was the revival of anticorruption and transparency unit in the MDAs, there has been some major shift,” he said