NEITI, EFCC, 19 others develop anti-graft document

[TGD]

 TMG decries rising corruption rate

A NATIONAL plan to combat corruption in Nigeria has been packaged by 21 security and anti-graft agencies, as well as ministries to get better results.

The stakeholders, who met in Calabar, Cross River capital, at the weekend to tidy up the draft copy of the "National Strategy to Combat Corruption," gathered on the platform of the Technical Unit on Governance and Anti-Corruption Reforms (TUGAR).

The group is made up of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), the Nigeria Police, Federal Ministry of Finance, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency (NEITI), Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) and 15 others.

Head of TUGAR, Lillian Ekeanyanwu, who spoke at the event, asserted that "what the Nigeria lacks is a strategic document" on fighting corruption.

Ekeanyanwu, who presented an overview of the draft copy to the forum, said the lack of the critical document had affected the monitoring and evaluation of the crusade because "we don't know if we are making progress or not under current the arrangement.

"What we have now are sectoral strategies here and there and the need has come for us to have a strategic document to combat corruption in the country."

She noted that one of the critical gaps and peculiarity in the national anti-corruption agenda was the location of the accountability and anti-corruption mandates within multiple and operationally diverse institutions, which despite the overlapping mandates, have very limited interface and cooperation.

Ekeanyanwu stated that the new document had addressed the weaknesses in the legal framework, including "shortcomings in the Evidence Act and the Criminal and Penal Procedure Acts, as well as absence of specific laws on plea-bargaining, whistle-blower and witness protection and Non Conviction Based Asset Forfeiture."

Meanwhile, the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), after a meeting in Abuja at the weekend, has warned that Nigeria was sliding into anarchy and appealed to the Federal Government to hurt the drift.

The group's Chairman, Moshood Erubami, told journalists that the meeting reviewed the nation's political, economic and social lives and turned in a damning verdict.

Erubami said: "Indeed, the degree of rot in the polity is such that unless something decisive is done to arrest the drift, the country was not far from "anarchy and ruin."

He lamented that while the people buckled under the yoke of economic deprivation, joblessness, and all forms of social injustice and malaise, the principal actors of the state had continued to display "obscene opulence and grandeur, a feat made possible by blatant and unabashed looting of the public treasury.



The Guardian