Progressive Governors Forum calls for facts in assessing Nigeria’s corruption index

Nigerians, Civil Societies and International organisations must access the government’s fight against corruption based on verifiable facts and not opinions.

The Director General of the Progressives Governors Forum, PGF Mr. Salihu Lukman stated this in a press release as a reaction to Transparency International 2020 report of Corruption Perception Index (CPI), which claimed that Nigeria scored 25 out of 100 points in the 2020 CPI.

Mr. Lukman said the Transparency International’s report was not based on facts.

Prosecution of cases
“Who are these Nigerian businesses and experts? Certainly, the CPI 2020 report would have clarified that. Part of this create the difficulty in establishing the objectivity of their conclusions. Not only in the case of Nigeria, but also with reference to all other countries, the criticism of the CPI report is that it doesn’t take into account the important issue of efforts to fight corruption through prosecution of cases.

“This raises the point about whether initiative of government in the fight against corruption is taken into account. For instance, if bribes are collected by government officials, irrespective of whether it was as a result of demand by public officials or proactively done to secure contracts, to what extent are they being arrested? Are there prosecutions? How many arrests and prosecutions were there in 2020 for instance? What is the impact of arrests and prosecutions on the campaign against corruption in the country? Were there cases that should have been arrested but were not? Were there cases of poor prosecution?”He said.

Profile corruption
Mr. Lukman noted that the Buhari government is trying more high profile corruption cases than in any other government since 1999.

“Largely because the CPI report is not about evidential cases of the fight against corruption, sadly, the only issue in the Nigerian media is largely opinion. As a nation, we need to go beyond opinions of individuals. Why should any serious assessment of the fight against corruption in Nigeria not be informed by the reality that there are more 16 high profile cases of corruption trial on-going? All the 16 cases are started within the last 5 years under the current administration. Why should it be difficult for any serious local organisation to provide assessment of progress being made in prosecuting all these cases in 2020? There were of course corruption cases under the previous administrations under PDP,” he said.

He called on the government and Nigerians to focus more on strengthening laws to pass swift judgment in corruption cases and strengthening the capacity of anti-corruption agencies.

“The issue, which is a source of frustration to both the government and every patriotic Nigeria should be the question of what needs to be done to accelerate the process of securing judgement in corruption trials. This is a matter that would require some reform of our criminal justice system. Without securing judgement leading to conviction of corrupt public officials, the fight against corruption will be weak in the country.

“The issue of legal framework in the case of Nigeria should be about reviewing our existing laws so as to strengthen the capacity of the country’s anti-corruption agencies to fight corruption. Related to this, is the need to streamline these agencies to make them more efficient, he stated.

He adds that there is also the challenge of reorganisation such that the anti-corruption agencies are not insulated from the negative influences of the law enforcement agencies.

Lateefah Ibrahim