Robert AwokuseNigeria’s Country Report on the Implementation of the African Union Convention for Preventing and Combating Corruption (AUCPCC) has taken step on ways to tackle corruption in Nigeria.
The Executive Director of the Civil Society Legislative Advocate Centre, Auwal Musa, made this known recently at the preliminary launch of the findings of the country report on the implementation of the AUCPCC.
The event was held at the Lagos Travel Inn, Lagos, themed; “Winning the Fight against Corruption: A Sustainable Path to Africa’s Transformation.
According to Musa, “identifying the critical nature of the theme of the year and undermining the issue of corruption has in derailing all developmental efforts of nations, a number of initiatives that seek to stem the menace was collaboratively put in place to scale up advocacy around anti-corruption initiatives.”
He added that “the AUCPCC, serves as the shared roadmap of states to implement governance and anti-corruption policies and systems domestically and jointly at continental level.
“Currently, the Convention has yielded poor results due to insufficient commitment and implementation not just in Nigeria, but across the entire continent. It contains strong provisions that can go a long way in resolving the corruption challenges on the continent.” Musa said.
He further explained that “the CISLAC as the National chapter of Transparency International in Nigeria joined other 9 chapters on the continent to initiate this laudable intervention known as “Towards Enforcement of Africa’s Commitment against Corruption (TEA-CAC).
“TEA-CAC in the main, seeks to contribute to scaling up advocacy on the implementation of AUCPCC at respective country levels and in Nigeria. Seeing the country had since gone head to ratify the issue identified was largely associated with the domestication and level of implementation of the convention.”
Musa however concluded that “this initiative further serves as a call to action in doing whatever it takes towards ensuring that the issue of corruption in whatever sense is adequately addressed in the country and the action adopted a number of strategies which includes a study on the level of implementation of the convention in Nigeria.”
In his presentation, a consultant of Good Governance Team, Tunde Salmon said there was an African framework on anti-corruption that is not well known.
While noting that the AUCPCC was adopted in July 2003, Salmon stressed that “nothing much has been done in terms of implementation of the framework and its awareness.”
He added: “Law enforcement agencies and others are supposed to used the framework. And part of the things Transparency International, Civil Societies now consider appropriate is to access the implementation of the convention.
“The study we launched is in response to that need and to know the level of implementation and the problems in that line. And in our assessment we established that a lot of legislative frameworks that are targeted at criminalising corruption as preventive measures.
“In addition, the level of implementation of the legislative framework is not commensurate, meaning there is much to be done in ensuring compliance.
“We have also accessed the capacity of our security agencies. And first of all, government must adequately fund those anti corruption agencies to enhance their capacity to do thorough investigations and also ensure presence of the agencies in all the 774 local governments in the country to ensure efficiency and quick investigations,” he concluded.
Speaking with Global Patriot Newspapers (GPN) on role of the judiciary shortly after the event, Executive Director, Community Human Rights Foundation coordinator of Child Protection Network, Ikorodu, Alh Lateef Akinborode said “some of us have been trying our best to put more pressure on the judiciary in the area of corruption by monitoring them and specifically by sending messages to leaders of the judiciary commission, giving them some reports we gather from the society and by the time we consolidate on that things will definitely improve and even presently cases are not being delayed again.
“People need to know the law, we need to encourage our people and the children to know what the law says. This is a gradual process.”
