Show Greater Commitment to Implement Anti-Corruption Laws, TI Urges Nigeria

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The Federal Government has been urged to show greater commitment to the implementation of the laws passed to boost the country’s fight against corruption. This, according to Transparency International, a global anti-corruption watchdog, would enable the country regain her trust, confidence and reputation in the avowed fight against corruption, which is one of the priorities of the current administration. The advice was given by the Chair of Transparency International, Ms. Delia Rubio, in an exclusive interview with THISDAY on the sidelines of a high-level workshop to ‘share international anti-corruption best practices to address emerging issues’. Rubio also appealed to government ensure more transparency and efficiency in service delivery while doing a lot to fight corruption. The workshop, held at the Transcorp Hilton hotel in Abuja recently, was organised by the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (focal point and head of the local TI chapter in Nigeria), headed by Auwal Musa Ibrahim aka Rafsanjani, with support from the Ford Foundation and MacArthur Foundation. In the Corruption Perception Index 2017, which was published by TI, Nigeria scored 27 marks out of a possible 100 and was ranked 148 out of the 180 countries surveyed by the global organisation. The country slid down 12 places from the 2016 CPI where it was ranked 136 out of the countries surveyed and scored 28 marks out of 100; where 100 marks portray a highly transparent country and zero mark showcases a highly-corrupt country. The Federal Government had protested at the latest CPI ranking, with the Presidency asserting that the outcome does not showcase the current administration’s efforts to curb official corruption; a fight which has been identified as one of government’s main priorities to deliver good governance to the nation’s 180 million citizens. Reacting to this reporter’s question on her take on Nigeria’s latest ranking of 148th position on the 2017 CPI, Rubio said, “My personal opinion is that you have to look at the relation of the scores that the country has been getting through the years because that depends on the country’s activities. The ranking may be influenced by the position of the performance of other countries in the neighbourhood of the ranking. So you can go up or down depending on the quantity of countries in each of the CPI each year or the relative performance of that country. But in order to assess how a country is doing, now we can compare the scores one year after one year. “And many people have told me, okay, we have passed the laws, we have created the agencies, in fact we have lots of agencies here in Nigeria and it has not been reflected in the Index. Number one, the index has not an immediate reflection of this kind of things because it is a perception index. So in order to regain trust and regain confidence and reputation, you have to have the rules passed and the agencies approved or created but you have to have the time to show the world that they are implemented, that they are effective and that they have made a difference from before. So probably it takes more than just one year or more in order to have the change in the score of the country. “But nevertheless it is not enough to create rules or pass laws or to create agencies, or to appoint persons in certain responsibilities. What is important is ‘what is the impact of that in the corruption situation in the country?”.