The Progressives Governors Forum, have accused Transparency International of politicising anti-corruption campaign describing the moves as an attempt to influence the outcome of Nigeria’s 2023 general elections.
Transparency International (TI) had in its 2020 report of Corruption Perception Index released on Friday said Nigeria scored 25 out of 100 points, ranking 149 out of 183 countries surveyed.
This was the country’s worst rating in years.
TI cited an absence of transparency, nepotism, lack of adequate anti-corruption legal frameworks, the prevalence of bribery and extortion in the Nigerian Police, corruption in the security sector, among others, as reasons for the low rating.
However, the governors of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in a statement issued on Tuesday by its Director-General in Abuja, Salihu Lukman, said the rating was a poor attempt at politicising the fight against corruption.
“For a government that prioritises the fight against corruption to have been condemning in the way the CPI report did, it is not only indicting but troubling,” the statement partly read.
“Given that it is a report of “perception by Nigerian businesses and country experts on the level of corruption in the public sector”, it is important to engage the issue beyond the media campaign going on, which may only be gaining prominence because of the widespread sentiments of Nigerians that every government initiative promotes corrupt practices and every public official is corrupt.
“With or without the 2020 CPI report, this is the belief of most Nigerians. Therefore, the 2020 CPI report only help to advance the gullibility of most Nigerians with a report of the survey of ‘perception by Nigerian businesses and country experts.’”
While citing Andersson and Heywood in the journal of political studies as saying that ‘in politics, the power of perceptions ought not to be allowed to serve as a proxy for reality,’ the PGF boss asked the global anti-corruption watchdog to go beyond perception and expose actual corruption.
Lukman said that while it is important to stress that no government can be perfect or successfully eliminate corruption, the CPI 2020 report on Nigeria presented a very bad approach to engaging the Nigerian government in the fight against corruption.
“For us to be able to fight against corruption, based on the ‘perception by Nigerian businesses and country experts’, there must be a change of government. This is the underlying narrative in the CPI report. It is basically more of a political campaign if you like for 2023.
“Nigerians, including local leaders of civil society groups and their international partners are free to make their political choices and decisions. But they should be transparent about it. It mustn’t be a case of shadowboxing Nigerian citizens and forcing them to kowtow political choices fraudulently contrived because Nigerian citizens are committed to the fight against corruption!” the statement continued.
