Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) on Wednesday pleaded with President Mu_hamadu Buhari to protect all the anti-corruption agencies by ensuring life insurance for all personnel.
Executive Director, CISLAC, Mr Auwal Rafsanjani, made the call at the launch of ”Analysis of Media Reports on Corruption cases in Nigeria” in Abuja supported by MacArthur Foundation.
Rafsanjani said that there was need for the president to put more interest in strengthening anti-corruption agencies to win the fight against corruption in Nigeria.
“ We want the president to protect all the anti-corruption agencies by ensuring that each of the staff gets life insurance which they don’t have now because they are putting their lives on the line
“We are also calling on the president to as a matter of urgency to work with the National Assembly to ensure that we have whistle blower protection regime that will protect and guarantee the whistle blowers,” he said.
Rafsanjani said that the media analyses on corruption cases would promote increased legislative actions on corruption.
Also, Mr Botti Isaac , an analyst, said that media reportage of corruption was part of the ongoing effort to curb corruption.
Isaac said that newspapers and online sources were recently selected and a total of 700 corruption cases were tracked from 18 media houses.
“All media reports on corruption indicated that corruption is visible in a plethora of sectors across the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) including oil and gas, security, judiciary, education, health, aviation and other sectors,” he said.
Isaac recommended that the various arms of government needed to collaborate more against corruption and the Federal Government needed ensure that corruption cases involving officers were pursued in the interest of the nation.
He said that the National Assembly should speed up passage of key-anti-corruption legislation, including the proceeds of crime bill and other legislative proposals and improve its oversight function functions to MDAs.
Isaac urged the judiciary to also speed up the processing of cases because the perennial adjournment of case had been counter-productive to anti-corruption fight.
He urged the media to do follow-up stories to sustain its reporting’s and continue to train its personal on investigative anti-corruption reporting while sticking to journalism ethics.
He also urged civil society organisations to strengthen their interaction with the media in the fight against corruption.
He called on the the National Assembly to leverage on media reports to pass bills to fight corruption.(NAN)
