Nigeria: HURIWA Offers Corruption Fight Advice

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has urged the President Muhammadu Buhari administration to intensify the fight against corruption to grow the nation’s economy.

Development Diaries understands that a recent National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report on Nigeria’s unemployment rate indicated that unemployment rose to 27.1 percent in the second quarter of 2020 from the 23.1 percent recorded in Q3 2018.

Furthermore, available statistics shows that about 87 million Nigerians, or half the population, live on less than US$1.90 per day.

Although the global spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent collapse of international oil prices are destabilising Nigeria’s macroeconomic balances, economic analysts say that corruption has given room for diversion of the limited public funds, undermined economic progress and impeded policy changes required for development.

Expressing concerns over the slow pace of the nation’s economic growth since Buhari assumed the office of president in May 2015, the National Coordinator of HURIWA, Emmanuel Onwubiko, said, ‘The economy cannot grow fast without zero tolerance to corruption’.

On the allegation of corruption made against the suspended acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, Onwobiko recommended in a statement that anti-graft agencies should be strengthened by ‘appointing competent professionals outside of the Nigerian police to lead that law-based fight against economic crimes’.

The coordinator of HURIWA, a group that promotes good governance through dialogue and media communications, also called for the implementation of growth-enabling policies to stir Nigeria’s economic growth.

‘The current economic policies marred by the scale of corruption are not delivering desirable outcomes and this is why the administration of president Buhari has to fashion out more robust and effective fiscal and monetary strategies to save the day’, Onwobiko said.

He further urged the president to charge his ministers, especially those heading the government’s revenue-generating agencies, to adhere to accountability and transparency measures to ensure the nation’s resources are put to proper use.

Source: HURIWA

Photo source: Femi Adesina

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