The Independent and Financial Crimes Commission (ICPC) has come out to say that The Independent and Financial Crimes Commission (ICPC) report on Nigeria was not fair and very untenable.
Spokesperson of the Commission, Mrs Rasheedat Okoduwa revealed this in a recent statement.
According to her, TI has persistently failed to recognize the efforts of the current administration to tackle corruption in Nigeria and it is quite sad.
She added that it is very unfair because what Buhari and co are doing is very obvious, as there have been a rising number of cases filed in court and jail terms secured in various convictions against corrupt persons across all levels of society.
Her words, “ICPC finds it necessary to issue a statement on the 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index released recently by the Transparency International (TI), the global anti-corruption watchdog.
“The report ranked Nigeria 146 out of 180 countries with a score of 26 out 0f 100 and painted a dismal picture of the country’s anti-corruption efforts by placing Nigeria as the second most corrupt country in the West African region,”
“Perception is one thing, the reality is another. To lend credence to perception, it may be helpful to match it against reality especially when information on perception is coming from a source such as TI.
“In recognition of the seminal role of prevention in anti-corruption work, ICPC recently released its report of the system study and review exercise on the use of the Personnel Cost and Capital Development Fund in 201 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
“Allied to this report is also the highly publicised work of the commission in tracking the use of the funds released for Constituency Projects and the report on the deployment of Ethics and Integrity Compliance Scorecard in 280 MDAs.
“The reports on these initiatives provide very important policy recommendations to government on corruption prevention which is being acted on, including the restraining of several billions of Naira from release to MDAs.
“This which had stood the risk of misappropriation and embezzlement as well government’s recent directive that all MDAs including tertiary education and health institutions get captured on the IPPIS.”
“No doubt we're not yet where we ought to be, however, we've not been stationary either.
“The country has moved well away from where it was a number of years back in terms of enforcement, prevention and citizen engagement against corruption.
“ICPC is firmly persuaded that the silent majority of Nigerians appreciate the anti-corruption efforts of the government led by President Muhammadu Buhari even if TI doesn't.”