What Nigerians need to fight corruption – Civic Groups

To eradicate corruption in the society, Nigerians must be united and join movements holding individual, groups and government accountable, a civic group has said.

The program manager of the civil society organisation, YIAGA, Cynthia Mbamalum, said this at a competition organised on Saturday in Abuja to celebrate the International anti-corruption day with the theme ‘United against corruption for development, peace and security.’

According to her, the aim of the Bounce Corruption #Hack4Good project is to bring young minds together and develop technology solutions that will help promote the anti-corruption fight.

“How do we get citizens involved? Most times, you hear a case trending; and suddenly, you stop hearing about the case.”

She said the competition is aimed at creating online platforms that target corruption and that people can learn from and keep track of happenings.

In a press statement made available to PREMIUM, Samson Itodo, the executive director YIAGA, urged citizens in Nigeria to get involved more strategically in the role in demanding good governance and nationhood.

According to him, the Bounce Corruption project is aimed at exposing, amplifying, empowering and creating awareness on the fight against corruption as adopted by government agencies and citizens

“The Hackathon, also known as Hack4Good which is one of the project of bounce corruption will connect anti-corruption agencies and civil society organisations working on corruption with young application developers and programmers in the fight against corruption. Hack4Good will evolve with technology-based solutions for addressing the challenges associated with tackling corruption,” Mr Itodo said.

He said winners in the Hack4Good contest of Bounce Corruption will be in three(3) categories, 1st, 2nd and 3rd positions with cash prize of N600,000, N350,000 and N250,000 respectively.

“This is also in addition to a free co-working space for a month at the Civic Innovation Lab, CLAB; and a three weeks acceleration program with CLAB provides product development, business advisory support, mentorship and access to funding opportunities,” Mr Itodo said.

In an interaction with PREMIUM TIMES, the participants said Nigerians are ignorant of existing laws and need to be sensitised through the platforms created to inform the public.

Job Oyebisi, the team lead of the citizen watch platform, said Nigerians need to sustain awareness about the fight against corruption.

“Most of our populace know about celebrated cases when they start but there is no follow up till justice is served therefore citizens can subscribe by sms or visiting the site to receive alerts about cases,” Mr. Oyebisi said.

“Corruption is so deep in our society that it has become a system, individuals need to be accountable and not just public officials or civic groups,” Chimdinma Odunze, a member of active citizen said.

She said the active citizen’s platform is aimed at creating groups, sharing ideas and organising online campaigns.

“We are using online and offline method to converge communities together to sensitised them on corruption, those who do not have internet can leverage on those who have,” she said.

Azuka Ogugua from the education department of the anti-graft agency, ICPC, urged young minds to unite and fight corruption with technological solutions.

“Corruption is not just about leaders as it is taking different technological dimension, since we use E-governance in the system, we need to develop E-compliant ways to fight corruption,” she said.

The international anti-corruption day is observed annually on December 9 since the passage of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption on October 31, 2003.