The suggestion of employing the death penalty for corrupt public officers, which has been raised in certain quarters, was challenged by the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies in Kuru, Jos, Plateau State, during their Thursday announcement, as they argued it might not be an efficacious solution to tackle corruption in Nigeria.
The institution recommended that Nigeria pivot towards a focus on changing behaviour as the preferred approach to tackling graft in the country.
Prof. Ayo Omotayo, NIPSS’s Director-General, expressed this viewpoint while being interviewed by journalists in Abuja as part of the curriculum validation process aimed at institutionalising behaviour-change approaches to combat corruption in Nigeria’s public and private sectors.
He noted that the nation has enforced stringent anti-corruption regulations and conducted extensive campaigns, and he acknowledged that these efforts have produced some positive outcomes in the fight against corruption.
However, Omotayo proposed that a key approach to reducing and halting corrupt practices in Nigeria involves fostering a transformation in the behavioural orientation of individuals in both the public and private sectors, as well as across the entire citizenry.
In his view, this approach exceeds the traditional emphasis on law and order, prioritising the transformation of behaviour and cultural norms.
He said, ‘Corruption has levels, if a policeman takes a bribe of ordinary N100 from you, that is a corrupt practice. But will they execute someone for taking a N100 bribe? So corruption has levels. And of course, I still do believe that this state is not supposed to be a punitive state to the extent of shooting people or tying them to the stick and executing them for being corrupt and it might just be a whiff of action at some points.’
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‘So killing people for corruption practices is not something that we at NIPSS want to encourage. If we can reduce corruption to 50 per cent levels, our society will be okay. So corruption in Nigeria has not gotten to a level that we will be executing people.’
Omotayo also spoke on the current strategy used in combating corruption in the country.
He said, ‘You see, if you continue to do certain things in a certain way and you continue to get the same result, then you have to review your approach.’
‘We have come to the conclusion that we have all the laws or the legislations to ensure that we do not have corruption in Nigeria. But all of these have not been effective enough.’
‘So, we thought of some other ways by which we can fight corruption. We felt that we needed to have a whole paradigm shift to behavioural change. We ask ourselves: can we get people to change their attitude? Forget about the law, forget about the order, let us start by changing our attitudes to behavioural changes.’
‘I believe that when people personally decide not to encourage corruption, we will be able to fight corruption without even having to resort to all the legislations.’
Ambassador Emmanuel Okafor, the President of the Alumni Association of the institute, voiced his concerns about the limited success of Nigeria’s prior efforts to bring about behaviour change and values reorientation in addressing the highlighted challenges, such as Civic Education, Ethical Reorientation, and the War Against Indiscipline.
He attributed this to the fact that the approaches lacked elements of participation, comprehensiveness, scientific rigor, and sustainability.