Secretary to the government of the federation, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, has said that the nation has suffered greatly from the damaging effects of corruption.
The SGF, who made this comment? yesterday in Abuja at the launch of the scoping survey and gap analysis of anti-corruption initiatives in Nigeria by the Technical Unit on Governance and Anti-corruption Reforms (TUGAR), said,?? that the byproducts of corruption – dishonesty and inefficiency -???? constituted? the biggest obstacle to national development.
Speaking through the permanent secretary, economic matters, Dr. Benjamin Ibe, Anyim, however, restated the administration’s commitment to fighting corruption, and noted that bold steps were already been taken to create several specilaised institutions to confront the evil.
TUGAR, he said, was established to respond to the need to provide synergy and coordinated data to serve as inputs for policy making due to the myriad of institutions with anti-corruption mandates.
While commending TUGAR for the report, Anyim noted that the findings showed that effective prosecution of corruption related offences was being hampered by issues within the administration of justice system. Financial autonomy for anti-corruption agencies and full implementation of Freedom of Information Law were also recommended in the report.
The SGF stated that in addition to the freedom of information law, “government is committed to the enactment into law of the draft Witness and Whistle-Blower Protection Bill as this will also facilitate robust public engagement with the implementation of the national strategy.”
“TUGAR, ICPC and the Bureau for Public Procurement will, in the next one month, embark on a corruption risk assessment of some Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) responsible for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with the aim of identifying vulnerabilities to corruption which impede service delivery,” he added.
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