ICPC, others partner to curb corruption in Nigerian civil service

The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission on Tuesday teamed up with stakeholders, including a resource management firm, Accountability Lab Nigeria and deliberated on how to inject ethics and integrity to check corruption in the civil service.

The programme drew participants from the Bureau of Public Service Reforms, the Nigerian Customs Service and the Federal Road Safety Commission. It was agreed that public officers who flout the national policy would be sanctioned.

The Director-General of the BPSR, Dasuki Arabi, in his keynote address at the event which held at the Olusegun Obasanjo auditorium, Federal Ministry of Justice in Abuja said it was convened to draw awareness of the national ethics and integrity policy as well as focus emphasis “to inculcate core values in our national policy especially in the Nigeria public service.”

He said, “Nigerian government and governments all over the world have become centres of concern given the fact that governments are saddled with the responsibility of delivering service to the people, protect citizens as well as define the relationship upon which a state exit. Interestingly the tools of realizing government objectives and goals can only thrive when the virtue of integrity is upheld.

“The initiative to organize this workshop which is in tandem with the implementation phase of the national ethics and integrity policy is a welcome development as it will assist us to shape focus on how to redefine our history taking into cognizance the level of patriotism, lack of core values prevalent in the system.”

The decision to come up with a national ethics and integrity policy, according to him, was necessitated by the desire of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) regime to address the damaging challenges of corruption prevalent in the private and public sectors of the nation’s economy.

Arabi said, “There are strong sanctions against public officers who flout the national policy. Citizens are at liberty to seek redress when they feel that these values have been tampered with.”

The Country Director of Accountability Lab, Friday Odeh, said the firm had so far honoured distinguished civil servants for displaying rare courage in the discharge of their responsibilities.

“Last week, we concluded the integrity icon summit and awards where we celebrate five public servants who have done exceedingly well in the public service and we hope to do more and find more people within the public service from across all sectors next year. We hope to look through the security sector, the justice sector and other areas to identify worthy awardees in this regard,” he pledged.