By Dwelleth Morountodun
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Ibrahim Pantami, during the weekend, said digitizing government process and process,
procedure and operations is a sure way to eliminate corrupt practices from the system.
The Minister made the disclosure at a seminar jointly organized by the Code of Conduct Bureau, (CCB) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Fighting Corruption For Socio-Economic Development in Nigeria in Abuja.
The Minister who was represented by the Director-General (DG) of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mallam Kashifu Abdullahi, called for the digitisation of government processes a ross the three tiers of government to reduce the scourge of corrupt practices in the country.
According to the Minister, when government operations and processes are digitalized, nobody will have the monopoly of power to compromise because of automation, adding: there would be no need to meet physically to get services, everything will be opened and transparent.
This, he said will democratize government service delivery thereby ensuring accountability, simply because records are been kept and can be checked at any time needed.
Pantami said the government has been doing a lot towards curbing sharp practices which are stunting the growth and development of the country.
He said: “There is a need to put down strategies and policies that will mitigate such act. This will pave ways for speedy development of the country.”
He assured that the ministry is in full support of the activities of CCB that aimed at tackling and eliminating corruption practices across the country with the motive of creating an enabling environment for transparency and accountability of the activities of the government.
In his remark, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Barrister Abubakar Malami (SAN), commended CCB and CBN for the workshop, adding that it will deepen the anti-corruption war of the government.
The war against corruption, according to Malami, is one of the cardinal points of the Buhari Administration, restated the critical role of CCB in building a corrupt-free Nigerian.
He emphasised the need to make government operations and processes open and transparent.
Also speaking, Chairman, CCB, Prof. Isah Mohammed said the seminar was the first of its kind in the history of the organisation adding that its objective is to reduce corrupt tendencies at the recovering stage of COVID 19.
“This Bureau was established in response to the allegations of corruption against government operations in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s which resulted in coup and counter-coups with trillions of money stolen from both domestic and foreign bodies as a result of corrupt practices by public office holders and till date we are still striving to eliminate the scourge.” He said.
According to him. there is need to join hands and work together to eliminate corrupt activities which are affecting the operations and processes in the country.