Youth Initiative for Advocacy Growth and Advancement ,YIAGA ‘s #BounceCorruption project,  has kicked off Public Integrity Debates in Tertiary Institutions across Nigeria.

#BounceCorruption project is a platform for harnessing youth views into the anti-corruption crusade as well as for propagating the values of integrity, transparency and accountability.

The national debate competition which involved selected tertiary institutions across the six geo-political zones of the country has commenced in the South South Zone in University of Calabar and South East Zone of Nnamdi Azikiwe University .

According to Samson Itodo , YIAGA Executive Director  the knockout stage and the final stage would  both take place in Abuja .

“Schools will constitute debate teams of 2 student each (one male and one female) to participate in the competition. Incentives will be provided to winners of debate sessions. At the end of the competition the debate teams will be encouraged to establish public integrity clubs in their schools.”

A Corruption survey report by National Bureau for Statistics (NBS) in 2017 shows that majority of Nigerians will accept a bribe when offered or pay a bribe when demanded.

According to the report, only 5.3 per cent of Nigerians will either refuse to pay a bribe when asked to or refuse to accept when a bribe is offered to them.

The report revealed that young people constitute the largest percentage (95 percent) who are likely to pay or receive bribe as the case may be.

Interestingly, one of the most likely kind of bribe is the payment of bribe for jobs in the civil service.

The report does not only release data to support the growing rate of corruption but reveals a reality that is beyond worrisome.

Hence  YIAGA boss said , if we consider that youth unemployment in Nigeria was at December 2017 , 52.65% or 22.64 million according to NBS report, then we may begin to understand the dire condition we find ourselves.

In the center of this is the challenge of corruption , he explained , that has robbed us of good governance that meets the needs of the people with our national wealth being plundered over the years and presently.

“We are impoverished in a supposedly wealthy nation and have no better option than to join the movement of citizens united in the fight against corruption.”

YIAGA Africa is a non-profit, non-governmental, civil society organization that promotes democratic governance, human rights, accountability and active youth participation in democratic processes through research policy .