* Nigeria rates low on the corruption perception index
*Describes Dariye’s release, Nyame as ‘major setback to fight corruption’
*Said corrupt government officials give Nigeria a bad name
The coalition of anti-corruption Civil Society Organizations, (CSO), under Transparency International, (TI), blamed the insecurity and infiltration of weapons into Nigeria through the border with corruption and connivance of public officials in the country.
Presenting the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index, (CPI), from TI yesterday in Abuja, the group said that corruption in Nigeria remains despite the government’s anti-corruption war claims which have fueled insecurity due to border compromises among others.
The Executive Director, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Center, (CISLAC), Auwal Musa-Rafsanjani, noted that although the executive arm of government through President Muhammadu Buhari has announced that he wants to fight corruption, other arms of government do not seem to be equal to the executive arm.
According to him, security has long been compromised in Nigeria’s borders because of the nexus between corruption and security, which is why the country is witnessing a lot of infiltration of weapons.
“Corruption continues to destroy all the efforts of even the government. We have seen how as a result of corruption in the security sector lives become useless in this country. Because some people have compromised, people come with weapons and ammunition to the country. So what, where are the customs , where officials are responsible until dangerous
“Even in the executive arm of government, you will see that some ministers, directors general and other top government officials do not have the same passion to fight corruption and that is why CSO Nigeria has been fighting to ensure that we have a national strategy in the fight against corruption so that we are all involved people in the role to praise their efforts in the fight against corruption,” he said.
Musa-Rafsanjani said, “We are very concerned and worried that despite the claims of our government that we are fighting corruption, unfortunately corruption remains a major problem in Nigeria and we are not surprised that the issue of corruption remains a problem at the federal level.
“We have local governments, we have state and federal governments and when you look at corruption in the country, you see all levels of government. And in the structure of government, we have the executive, the legislature and the judiciary so ideally; they should all compliment one another and to fight corruption.”
Presenting the TI corruption index, the Senior Legal Officer, CISLAC, Samuel Asimi, said that Nigeria moved four places in the CPI country ranking from 154 in 2021 to 150 out of 180 countries in 2022, remaining 24 points out of a hundred, the same as the previous year, 2021. him, this shows that corruption remains the same in Nigeria, neither increasing nor decreasing.
While calling for better decisions on the part of the anti-corruption agency, the Director of the State Accountability Lab, Jum’at Odeh, said the federal government’s fight against corruption has suffered a setback due to the release of former governors Jolly Nyame and Joshua Dariye from Taraba and Plateau states. respectively.
He said that “the pardoning of certain people like Jolly Nyame and Joshua Dariye by the current administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, who rode to power on the back of a promise to fight corruption and continued with anti-corruption rhetoric, is a major setback. efforts to tackle corruption in Nigeria.
“The single act of pardoning these people is damaging because it fails the test of equality and justice because those who are pardoned are those who are in politics and poor citizens who have been imprisoned for the same crime or lesser offenses are left out of the pardon. This not only reduces citizens’ trust, but it also undermines the morale of anti-corruption agencies and sends a negative message to the international community.