By CALEB AYANSINA
ABUJA—Acting  Chairman of  Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, Mr. Ekpo Nta, has advocated capacity-building for local government officials on budgeting for the purpose of budget monitoring.

Welcoming  representatives of the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, who were on a courtesy visit to ICPC headquarters in Abuja, Nta said local government officials should not be left out of the training programme for the various civil society organisations, CSOs, in the fight against corruption.

He said: “I am particularly interested in the capacity-building aspect of CSOs, but I have also noted the limitations that will arise if we dwell on the training of CSOs alone to the exclusion of the operators at the local government level.

He said no matter how well intentioned training for CSOs might be “the people who will be operating and networking with them should understand the philosophy of what they are doing and why they are asking certain questions and why they must provide answers”.

Nta said he saw corruption as a development issue and not just enforcement, saying “if we tie corruption to development to mean corruption is anti-development, anti-health, anti-education, anti-water supply which are UNDP’s main mandate, the message will be driven better and people will be more responsive”.

In his remarks, the UNDP Deputy Country Director, Janthomas Hiemstra, said UNDP was more interested in the preventive aspect in fighting corruption.

He said: “Our particular pride when it comes to working with ICPC is that we in UNDP as an organisation, we tend to be more interested in the preventive part of anti-corruption work.”