Former Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has said the World Economic Forum estimates bribery to be about ten per cent to the cost of doing business, adding that in fighting corruption, incentives and institutions are paramount.
Okonjo-Iweala pointed out that corruption is not peculiar to any culture, stating that institutions and incentives could help shape the behaviour of people.
She said this at the IMF Headquarters, in Washington DC, United States, while discussing with other experts, on the theme “Fighting Corruption”, on Sunday.
The former Finance Minister mentioned that a financial management system that is still cash-based opens the door for people to manipulate the system.
She emphasized that it took 10 years to build the ‘Government Integrated Financial Management System’ in Nigeria, in order to get away from cash-based transactions.
“If you can introduce more technology, if you can have systems and processes that guide government, I think the more you will be able to fight corruption. We really need a systematic plan about fighting corruption”.
She noted that there are responsible private sector people and organisations that want to be part of the solution to corruption and impact change.
The Managing Director of International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde said nobody should give up on the people, no matter how corrupt a place is, adding that they must take stand against it.
“At the IMF, we have had to take steps when we identified corruption. Unfortunately, we had to suspend programmes because documents indicated that we were not receiving the truth on the accounts and statistics”.
Nigerian Corruption Survey 2017, published in August, by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), revealed that roughly N400bn is spent on bribes each year in Nigeria.
According to the NBS, 94.2 percent of those who made direct request for bribe asked for cash, 4.2 per cent asked for food and drinks, 1.7 per cent requested for exchange of other favours, while 0.9 per cent asked for valuables.
