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Niger Delta Fund Initiative: Obasanjo Tasks Transparency International On Corruption Ranking
http://allafrica.com/stories/200311090030.html
November 9, 2003
Oke Epia, LagosPresident Olusegun Obasanjo has challenged Transparency International (TI) to go beyond the mere annual ranking of most corrupt countries in the world and publish a list of countries that encourage corruption. He also called on the governments of developed nations to evolve "enforceable sanctions" to be imposed on corporations and individuals by countries of origin for their involvement in corrupt practices abroad.
According to a press release from the office of the senior special assistant to the president on media and publicity, Obasanjo spoke Friday in Berlin at a lecture delivered at Freie University to mark the 10th anniversary of TI.
In a recently released ranking of most corrupt countries of the world by TI, Nigeria ranked second just after Bangladesh. The country's position in the latest ranking has been a reference point for government critics who say that it confirms their belief that the Obasanjo administration has not gone beyond mere rhetorics in its avowed fight against the monster of corruption in the country. But in an apparent bid to strengthen the fight against corruption, the president not long ago, sent an ammendment bill on the ICPC to the National Assembly.
At the Berlin lecture, however, the president charged the global anti-corruption body to "extend and strengthen its famous classification of countries with high corruption perception index," as well as evolve other classification indexes like a corruption encouraging index, corruption perception index and a corruption reduction index. "These three indexes," he noted, "would give the total picture of the campaign against corruption and corrupt practices, nationally and globally," adding that "only such a holistic approach will give us a realistic picture of the task that we have set for ourselves." According to him, "TI must publish a list of countries that are encouraging in various ways, corruption and corrupt practices in other nations, receiving stolen funds and keeping stolen funds."
The President who is a co-founder of TI, challenged international institutions and members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) not to merely stop at criticizing reform measures of developing nations considered as "costly" but also "respond through well-structured economic support interventions." He said that such "less rhetoric and more actual support" approach from developed nations would give fillip and encouragement to anti-corruption reforms in Nigeria and other developing nations.
On the incidence of complicity against corporations from developed countries, Obasanjo said: "I note with sadness, the involvement of some corporations from the developed world that have, even in recent times, been heavily involved in criminalizing our business cultures, compromising our policy makers, contaminating our institutions and subverting due process."
The President went further to note "the celebrated case of our aluminium project in which a company from this country (Germany) is heavily involved in corrupt practices." He also mentioned the railway rehabilitation in which a Chinese company allegedly got involved in corrupt practices, and "our national identity card programme in which a French company was involved, was found to be a veritable agent of corruption."
Obasanjo however, assured his audience which included the chairman of TI, Mr. Peter Eigen and the German government minister for economic cooperation and development, Ms. Wieczorek-Zeul, that his administration would not relent in the fight against corruption in Nigeria. Rather, he said, the war would be stepped up through additional measures like the adoption of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initia-tive, strengthening of the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) as well as the establishment of a Public Procurements Commission. He also disclosed that come December, Nigeria would welcome the signing of the United Nations' Anti-Corruption Convention.
http://www.earthrights.net/nigeria/news/obosanjo.html