The Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed has stated that Nigeria’s focus on removing ease of doing business bottlenecks including port reforms would help Nigeria’s rating in the Global Corruption indices.
The Minister disclosed this in an interview with Arise TV on Friday morning.
Lai Mohammed revealed that the FG decided to focus on ease of doing business metrics after a study confirmed 40% of Nigeria’s rating is tied to the business climate.
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“We studied what was responsible for the low ratings. We realized that up to 40%, of the survey indices that led to the low rating, was from the ease of doing business
“The FG through PEBEC (Presidency Ease of Doing Business Council), focused its attention on removing bottlenecks in the ease of doing business, particularly in the areas of port reforms
” It might take a few months, a year or 2 for the FG’s efforts to show results, but clearly we have embarked on a 2 prong approached,” Mohammed said.
The Minister said that in the FG’s fight against corruption, it focused on 3 major areas including, “How to prevent corruption, how to build integrity systems and identifying that 40% of Nigeria’s problems are in the areas of ease of doing business, especially bureaucratic bottlenecks.”
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“We are making a lot of headway. We have published the national port programme manual, to ease the ease of doing business.
“We realized that part of the problem is that we need to update the data and retrieval systems so that we would not be under-reported in areas of progress.
“Even in the middle of the pandemic, the FG is not resting on its oars, in a strive to institute anti-corruption measures,” he added.
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On the government’s anti-Corruption fight
Lai Mohammed disclosed that in 2020 the ICPC launched a national ethic policy aimed at a moral reorientation for Nigerians. Also, the code of conduct bureau emerged with newer code of conduct measures for public officers all these in an attempt to create a moral reorientation for Nigeria.
He added that a lot of corruption comes when the system is opaque, not transparent.
“That is why we were able to identify that 40% of the scoring methodology is around the ease of doing business. Unless you address it, you will always be scoring low. And that is why we embarked on Port reforms because they are very important. Port reforms would be slow but when achieved, it will help in our ratings,” he said.
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What you should know
- Recall Nairametrics reported that the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2020 report published by Transparency International indicates that Nigeria occupies the 149th position out of the 180 countries surveyed as well scored 25 out of 100 points, in the 2019 report, Nigeria was ranked 146th out of the 180 countries surveyed, scoring 26 points out of 100 points.
- The Federal Government described Nigeria’s low rating in the 2020 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (TI-CPI) as a parameter that does not truly reflect the nation’s anti-corruption agenda.
- On port Reforms, the Vice President of Nigeria, Yemi Osinbajo launched the Process Manual on Port Operations in December 2020 to boost efficiency and accountability in Nigeria’s port industry, and also ensure predictability.
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