Journalists, Anti-corruption Agencies Agree on Fight against Corruption
journalists and officials of some anti-corruption agencies rose from a 3-day annual Media Workshop organised by the United Nation’s Office on Drug and Crimes, supported by the European Union (EU), with a single resolve to collaborate and tackle corruption.
The annual Media Meeting on Anti-Corruption in Nigeria is under the “Support to Anti-Corruption in Nigeria”Project. For three days, 11 officials of Anti-Corruption Agencies (ACAs), 22 Journalists and four resource persons from across the country were lockeddown in Ikoyi, Lagos to deliberate on how to collaborate in the fight against corruption in the country.
At the end of the brainstorming sessions, the participants resolved that it was necessary for the journalists and the ACAs to have a common platform from which authentic anti-corruption information would be passed to the public.
The ACAs were urged to ensure uninhibited information flow to the media and that to make this work faster, the media should establish special desks that would report anti-corruption news that would be devoid of sensationalism, and fakeness.
Also, they appealed to the UNODC and ACAs to support such desks, saying it would encourage them to achieve the objective of effectively playing its role in follow-up to the initial one held in Calabar last year which brought together Editors/ Journalists from media houses and senior officers from the legal and communication departments of anti-corruption agencies. I am happy to see a platform that brings ACAs and the media together to discuss ways of effectivelyreporting and curbing corruption in Nigeria.
“As most of you are very well aware, Corruption has disastrous impacts on development and if left unchecked, is a serious impediment to sustainable development and the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development throughout the world. It also breaches the essential trust between citizens and governments, as well as businesses and consumers. Therefore, it is critical that everyone in the community including media officers take up a responsibility to prevent and fight corruption.
“UNODC is the United Nations agency entrusted to assist Member States in their efforts against transnational organized crime, corruption, drug trafficking and terrorism, a mandate that is enshrined in several UN Conventions, which all have been ratified by the Government of Nigeria. UNODC has spearheaded the development and adoption of UNCAC, the United Nations Convention against Corruption to assist member States to fight corruption on a global scale. UNCAC is the only legally binding universal anticorruption instrument with 140 signatories and 181 state parties till date.”