NAN-H-159
Anti-corruption
By Dianabasi Effiong
Calabar, Oct. 14, 2016 (NAN) A workshop to support anti-corruption campaign in Nigeria opened on Friday in Calabar with a call on the media to support current efforts by security agencies in the fight against corruption.
In his paper, the lead speaker, Prof. Lai Oso, stressed the need for a common understanding of what corruption is all about and ways to control it
Oso, former Dean, School of Communication at Lagos State University, also identified different forms of corrupt practices which included political, bureaucratic, and of recent, judicial corruption.
He also said that effects of corruption on the economy was enormous especially in investment climate.
Oso said the role of the media had gone beyond providing information from anti-corruption agencies in the campaign against corruption in Nigeria.
According to him, the media should be much more involved in finding a common meaning, framing issues in setting agenda and reassessing its position in the campaign.
Oso said that agencies of government should synergise with the media through consensus-building and sharing of information.
He also identified the need to re-design core national values, adding that journalists should maintain “social distance and independence’’ in the campaign because corruption is also fighting back through the media.
Speaking on the role of the media in curbing corruption, the Editor-In-Chief of Tell Magazine, Mr Ayodele Akinkuotu, said that society had abandoned its traditional values of integrity and protecting family name.
He described some Nigerians’ corrupt tendencies as that of a “mental asylum ” which needed to be cured.
He said that although corruption did not start today, but that governments’ efforts to curb its spread had not been consistent.
He stressed the need to enforce good governance to strengthen the fight against corruption in Nigeria.
According to Akinkuotu, there is a co-relation between poverty and corruption.
He said that these were evidenced by what he called collapsed socio-economic infrastructure visible in our early education sector, moribund healthcare sector and the power sector among others.
In his presentation, the Provost of the Nigeria institute of Journalism, Mr Gbemiga Ogunleye, said the role of the media in the fight against corruption need not be over-emphasised.
He said that the media remained the only organ with roles in the Nigerian Constitution to be socially responsible and make governments accountable to the people.
Ogunleye, a former Editor of Punch newspaper, said there was need for the media to re-chart its direction towards achieving good governance.
“When corrupt leaders are uncovered by the anti-craft agencies they usually fight back. Their weapons are ethnicity, politics, religion and filthy lucre,’’ he said.
Earlier, Christina Albertin, the Country Representative of the United Nations office on drugs and crime, the implementers of the project for the Nigerian Government, said the project is funded by the European Union.
Participants, drawn from the media, no fewer than 14 anti-graft agencies including the EFCC and the judiciary in Nigeria, called for the establishment of Special courts to try corruption matters.
The forum called on the media to monitor good governance through bringing the Freedom of Information law to test in the fight against corruption.
The media was also charged to set up Anti-corruption Desks to support relevant agencies in the fight against corruption. (NAN)
(Edited by Julius Enehikhuere)