The Centre for Fiscal Transparency and Public Integrity (CeFTPI) says the major challenge in the fight against corruption in Nigeria is the non-implementation of anti-corruption laws.
Umar Yakubu, the executive director, of CeFTPI, expressed this view at a Criminal Justice Cohort Post-IACC Engagement workshop organised by MacArthur Foundation in Abuja on Wednesday.
He said that the workshop became necessary to review decisions reached at the international anti-corruption conference held in Lithuania in June concerning the fight against corruption.
“We agreed to develop a mechanism for monitoring the implementation of all the anti-corruption instruments and coordinates in various countries including Nigeria.’’
According to him, the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and the media are the major partners in achieving the task of monitoring the government and its institutions responsible for fighting corruption.
“So, that is where CSOs and the media can come in and monitor to ensure that the government is implementing all the commitments it has made.
Yakubu noted that the country had made all the laws necessary to fight corruption but found it difficult to implement them.
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He, therefore, urged the government to step up the fight against corruption to save the country from economic collapse.
“When things are new, there is resistance to change and some of them are legal-based which means that laws must be changed but the most challenging is implementation.
“We don’t have a problem with our laws but the problem of implementation.
“So, what we did in Lithuania was to develop a mechanism for monitoring the implementation of all the anti-corruption instruments and all the anti-corruption coordinates we have in Nigeria.
“That is why we are having this post-conference meeting to discuss the implementation; we as CSO and the media should start to implement the recommendations of the conference.’’
He also alleged that procurement in various offices had become a conduit pipe for syphoning funds.
Yakubu, however, said that transparency had become the greatest tool for curbing procurement fraud.
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