The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offence Commission (ICPC) says there has been a high level of corruption in all sectors, especially in the three arms of government and the private sector, in the last two years.

The provost of the Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria, Tunde Babawale, said this at the Nigeria Corruption Index (NCI) Survey validation meeting in Abuja.

Mr Babawale said findings put corruption levels within the legislature, judiciary and executive arms of government and private sector at 42 per cent between 2022 and 2023.

”All the sectors have been found culpable and found to be highly corrupt; the legislature, the judiciary, the executive, all of them have been found to be corrupt.

”Although at the level of the state, the score differs from one state to the other, but the bottom line is that there is an overall score that we found is that over 42 per cent in our own scale is highly corrupt for the entire country,” said Mr Babawale.

He said corruption has become so pervasive that Nigerians must embark on a change of attitude, mindset, and behaviour, “Meaning that people must begin to develop a high intolerance level for corruption as we are now, there is a high level of tolerance for corruption in the country.”

Mr Babawale explained that the validation meeting was for a national survey carried out in 2022 called the Nigerian Corruption Index (NCI).

He said the NCI focused on corruption in high places, especially the three arms of government and the private sector.

Mr Babawale noted that there had been other surveys on corruption by the National Bureau of Statistics and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, largely based on perception devoted to identifying the problem of petty corruption.

“The difference in what we are doing is that we are surveying the impact of the effect of grand corruption, and we are also looking at it from the perspective of different sectors of society, the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, as well as the sub-national government.

“So, the thinking that it is better for us to talk about grand corruption because of the greatest impact on living conditions of Nigerians when policemen collect bribes on the roadside that has effects but not as much as somebody stealing the N109 billion,” Mr Babawale said.

He expressed concerns about the findings of the NCI, which discovered that people had trivialised corruption and that the private sector had fuelled corrupt practices in the public sector.

“One of the things we found out is that people have built the concept of corporate social responsibility fraudulently; they have used it to disguise corruption and the perpetration of corruption between the private and public sectors.

“What I mean by that is that private companies sometimes bring out the concept of corporate social responsibility as real corporate social responsibility, when what it is is actually perpetuating corruption by giving officials bribes and even equipment.

“ Some get cars bought for them, and we found out all of it in the course of our survey. So, the government has to take a look at that. And purge it of all those impunity,” he said.

Elijah Okebukola, the lead researcher on the project Nigeria Corruption Index (NCI), noted that what the index did was that it measured corruption at different levels.

(NAN)