The Independent Corrupt Practices and Others Related Offences Commission (ICPC) on Tuesday inaugurated the National Anti-Corruption Volunteer Corps (NAVC) in Lagos to tackle corruption in Nigeria.

At the inauguration of the corps, Chairman of ICPC, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, said that NAVC was structured in a way for checks and balances at the Local Government, State and National levels.

Owasanoye, represented by the National Coordinator of NAVC, Mike Sowe, said the corps was established in 2008 to create an opportunity for partnership with individuals and groups toward the eradication of corruption.

“The NAVC underlines the important role volunteer citizens can play to entrench, monitor and maintain the values of fairness, honesty and integrity so that our country can achieve its full potential in all facets of human development.

“This is in the area of provision of better healthcare services, quality education at all levels, improved power supply, better roads and accelerated infrastructure advancement.

“Everybody agrees that Nigeria is rich, both in human and material resources.

“Everybody also agrees that corruption is the main reason Nigeria is poor and backward, while other countries have left us far behind,” he said.

The chairman congratulated the volunteer corps, adding that they had taken patriotic decision any Nigerian could make.

“By volunteering to join the NAVC and therefore, wage war against corruption, you have taken the most patriotic decision any Nigerian can make.

“ICPC is proud of you. You are now trend setters who will reassure our citizens that doing the right thing and abandoning negative behaviours is crucial for process and development.

“You are expected, among other things to mobilise, educate and create public awareness on corruption and its ills and on the laws governing the behaviour of public officials and their responsibilities toward citizens.

“Above all, you will assist ICPC in the acquisition and dissemination of information and report acts of corrupt practices to the commission,” he said.

Lagos State Coordinator, NAVC, Prof. Bola Akinterinwa, in his lecture entitled: “Fighting Corruption in the Alleys and Valleys of Nigeria: The Challenge of a New Prolegomena” said corruption was an act of dishonesty.

Akinterinwa said corruption had been recognised as the bane of Nigeria’s development, adding that it was a major impediment to economic growth and development.

According to him, the mind of the ordinary Nigerian in contemporary times is characterised by poverty of ideas, belief in generation of quick and easy money, and perhaps, more disturbingly, attitudinal dishonesty.

The NAVC Lagos coordinator said that the truth as at today, was that corruption had been moving and going in vicious circles without an end.

“We strongly believe that corruption must end. It must not only go, it must die, it must end and must be buried. Corruption is not abstract but the human beings that we all are.

“God is angry and against it, but human beings that we all are have not taken up the wishes of God with the priority it deserves.

“It is the human beings that engage in it and allow it to be part of their blood veins and capillaries,” he said.

In her remarks, Dr Joe Okei-Odumakin, the President, Women Arise Initiative, urged the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency on corruption in Nigeria.

Okei-Odumakin decried the rate at which a lot of money was leaving the country through illicit financial flow to overseas.

She said many people in Nigeria today employed staff without paying them salary, adding that they were still living in a big way.

The activist said that she aligned with the volunteer corps to fight corruption.

 

NAN