Amechi Ogbonna
Executive Director of the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Mr Auwal Ibrahim Musa, (aka Rafsanjani), has decried the nation’s rising poverty level a situation he said was widely contributed to the ravaging plague of corruption across all strata of the country.
In his welcome remarks at the Advisory Committee on SLAAM Meeting held in Lagos recently, Musa regretted that despite being the most populous country in Africa, blessed with natural and human resources, Nigeria has consistently battled with almost every indicator of underdevelopment which continues to portray it in very bad light among the comity of nations.
He noted “There is virtually no single sector of our socio-economic existence that is spared from the menace of corruption in Nigeria today. From education, to agriculture, from health to environment, oil and gas, public finance sector, corruption continues to hamper our collective desire for a prosperous and developed Nigeria”.
He also cited the 2018, annual Corruption Perception Index (CPI) of Transparency International which tagged Nigeria as a country with a high level of corruption. The 2018 index places the country at 144 out of 175 least corrupt countries in the world, noting that this ranking comes even in the wake of the Federal government’s posturing of fighting the menace.
According to the CPI ranking is a clear indication that government must move beyond talking about corruption to actually operationalising extant laws as well as strengthen institutions to fight the scourge, adding that the country’s laws, policies and institutions must be the guiding instruments upon which the fight against corruption must be based.
The CISLAC boss said that as part of civil society’s contribution to curbing corruption in Nigeria, CISLAC within the week launched a publication on Analysis of Media Reports on Corruption Cases in Nigeria. The Analysis Report which was published in two (2) volumes show extensive reportage on corruption cases, most of which have gone unpunished.