The Chief Executive Officer, The Convention on Business Integrity, Mr. Soji Apampa, says the Federal Government needs to tackle economic and insecurity challenges along with its fight against corruption, in this interview with IFEANYI ONUBA

How would you rate the current fight against corruption?

I think the fight against corruption is on track. But have they gone as far as they could have gone? Have they made the kind of impact they could have made? I think that is where there is a difference in opinion. But, perhaps, there is one area that the government is missing; and that area is in saying that it is championing a three-point agenda. In my view, it is actually a one-point agenda. They talk about corruption, the economy and then security; but I believe that you cannot fix the issue of corruption if you don’t fix the economy and insecurity. If you don’t tackle these challenges, you will not succeed in fighting corruption.

How can the government deal with the three issues?

As a starting point, the government should realise that having control over the national treasury is probably the biggest power that it has. The government has the power to say that no one who is a corruption risk should participate in public procurement anymore. Should this happen, it will mean that all the powerful people who want a slice of government procurement will then be thrown into confusion.

Corrupt practices are perpetrated through public procurement, what can government do to check this trend?

In procurement in ministries, departments and agencies of government, for instance, the Federal Government can decide to say that none of the MDAs will get the release of its full budget if it is a corruption risk. This means that some MDAs that are not corruption risk, by implementing certain reforms, will get 80 per cent release, while those that have refused to implement these reforms will get only 20 per cent. No chief executive officer of any MDA will like to operate under that. So, the government will immediately be elevating the problem from anti-corruption and the transparency unit, which has low level officers manning them, to a problem of the CEOs, which they will be worried about. So, dealing with corruption is not an issue of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission or the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission. It is the issue of all Nigerians, because if we don’t deal with it, we cannot move forward in anything we are doing.

What would you say are the reasons why corrupt practices are so rampant in Nigeria?

The reason is because people feel they can do it and get away with it and that is the belief of most Nigerians. They assume that it won’t be noticed once they are into corrupt practices as everyone is doing it and that even when corruption is noticed, it will be noticed because I didn’t share. So, people tend to carry others along by sharing proceeds of corruption with others. So, this has been the case and the feeling is that it is those who do not share from proceeds of corruption that are likely to come after you.

Do you think the EFCC and the ICPC have the required capacity to effectively fight corruption the way they should?

I do not think that any institution of any government of any country on earth has the power to fight corruption. Only the society has the power to fight corruption. If the society already has good sanctions for those who are corrupt in the society, then it is the criminal element that the institutions of government will have to go after.  But so long that everybody is doing it, where will it ever be cost- effective for one government department to go after everybody in a country? It doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t make sense to invest in it.