By Obas Esiedesa, Abuja

Civil Society Organisations have demanded tangible and measurable benefits for Nigeria’s funds spent by agencies involved in the fight against corruption in the country, saying it’s difficult to say if any progress has been made or not over the years.

The CSOs said it was not enough that the country continues to spend resources on anti-corruption agencies and activities, but such expenditures must lead to a verifiable reduction in corruption.

Speaking at a meeting between CSOs and government anti-corruption agencies in Abuja yesterday, the Executive Director, Centre for Fiscal Transparency and Integrity Watch, CeFTW, Mr. Umar Yakubu said agencies must justify resources allocated to them with tangible results.

Yakubu in his presentation on Civil Society’s Monitoring Mechanism for Nigeria’s Implementation of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, said several anti-corruption agencies were failing to take actions required of them by the law.

He pointed at the failure by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to publish a report on the financial audit of the political parties as one of the enablers of corruption in the country.

He noted that Nigeria should be able measure its progress or lack of it in the fight against corruption adding that “we are trying to dispel narratives to say we are doing well or we are doing not so well. Especially with the way the media work, if you claim that you have reduced corruption, you should be able to say by what percentage, 10 percent, or 20 percent or 30 percent? That is the mechanism we are bringing to put numbers on progress or lack of it.

“It is difficult to say if Nigeria is doing well in the fight against corruption but at least we have a mechanism now driven by civil societies that allows us to monitor the principles and articles of the UN convention. It is a step forward that we can monitor independently and not rely on data given to us by government agencies”.

He lamented that the Federal Government has failed to meet the obligation it entered into since 2017 to set up an inter-ministerial committee to implement the UNCAC through the national anti-corruption strategy.

Speaking earlier, the Ag-Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, Dr Musa Aliyu said the agencies were doing their best to curb corrupt activities in the country.

He said ICPC has the mandate of tackling corruption in the public sector with a major focus on corruption prevention.

“One of the areas that we have discharged our mandate is in prevention whereby we do systems review and corruption risk assessments which we have been doing since 2017. This assessment allows us to look at ministries, departments and agencies to identify where gaps are and how to block them. Where we have found issues, we investigate and when necessary do recoveries and prosecute”, he added.