The war to rid the international airports in Nigeria of corrupt practices got a boost on Tuesday when members of the Project Advisory Committee on the Corruption Risk Assessment in the aviation sector were inaugurated at the office of the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Aviation in Abuja.
The inauguration was a follow up to an MoU signed by the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission and the Federal Ministry of Aviation in December in Lagos.
Alhaji Ozi Salami, a member of the ICPC and Chairman of the joint committee, noted in his opening address that the collaboration had yielded several gains and achievements.
Salami listed some of the gains to include public enlightenment campaigns against corruption at the airports, surveillance and intelligence gathering activities as well as a sting operation to arrest perpetrators of corruption.
Salami observed that recent reports since the last sting operation, showed there was palpable awareness of the presence of the commission at the airports and this had reduced the impunity with which people engage in corrupt practices.
According to him: “There is the need to continue the tempo of the intervention so that the anti-corruption message will be consolidated.”
Salami explained that the CRA “is a corruption prevention tool, which works with organisations’ management to identify vulnerable areas that are prone to corruption, proffer recommendations and develop integrity plans that would strengthen accountability and transparency towards checking corruption and enhancing service delivery”.
Continuing, he added: “It (CRA) is focused on studying organisational systems and operational environments with a view to addressing identified corruption risks therein.
“It is pertinent to emphasize that CRA is not criminal investigation, but rather a study of systems with a view to recommend a review so as to reduce corruption, the review document is known as an integrity plan.”
The CRA would be conducted at Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos and the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja by a team of certified corruption risk assessors trained by the United Nations Development Programme, together with officers of the airport agencies .
While appreciating the UNDP, which has undertaken to fund the CRA project, Salami said it was also worthy of note that UNDP had supported several of the commission’s projects, including the training of Corruption Risk Assessors in the UNDP Virtual School in 2012; a pilot CRA in the seaports of the nation in 2013; and an ongoing assessment in MDG-related MDAs of Education, Health and Water Resources.
In a presentation, Azuka Ogugua of the ICPC revealed that the capacity of the aviation sector to play its role in the economic growth and development of the nation had been hampered by endemic corruption, which led to the collaboration between ICPC and the FMA.
The Duties of the Project Advisory Committee, Ogugua said, include “approval of timelines for the conduct of the CRA, ensuring full and timely participation of aviation sector agencies, arrange meetings, stakeholder events and provide logistics support to all project activities, facilitating physical access and access to required documents, vetting the preliminary and final reports as well as general supervision of the consultant through the project coordinator”.
The CRA/systems study and review is derived from the ICPC mandate in Section 6 (b) of the ICPC Act 2000, which is “to examine the practices, systems and procedures of public bodies and where, in the opinion of the commission, such practices, systems or procedures aid or facilitate fraud or corruption, to direct a review of them”.
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