NAN-HE-15
Survey
By Cecilia Ologunagba
Abuja, Aug. 17, 2017 (NAN) Some Nigerians have expressed concern over high rate of bribery and corruption allegedly happening in law enforcement agencies and the judiciary, according to a National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Survey.
They expressed concern in a survey on “Corruption in Nigeria, Bribery: Public Experience and Response 2017 ’’, posted on the bureau’s website on Thursday in Abuja.
The survey was based on data collected in a large-scale household survey (33,067 households) on corruption conducted in April/May 2016 in all 36 states and the FCT.
According to the report, police officers are the type of public officials to whom bribes are most commonly paid in Nigeria.
The report stated that of all adult Nigerians who had direct contact with a police officer in the 12 months prior to the survey, almost half (46.4 per cent), paid that officer at least one bribe.
It stated that they allegedly paid one bribe and in many cases, more than one since police officers were also among the three types of public officials to whom bribes were paid most frequently (5.3 bribes per bribe-payer over the course of 12 months).
At the same time, the report stated that the average bribe paid to police officers was somewhat below the average bribe size.
The report stated that fewer people came in contact with judiciary officials than with police officers over the course of the year.
It stated that when they did, the risk of bribery was considerable at 33 per cent; the prevalence of bribery in relation to prosecutors was the second highest, closely followed by judges and magistrates, at 31.5 per cent.
The bureau, however, stated that the experience of corruption in encounters with public officials whose duty it was to uphold the rule of law could lead to the erosion of trust in public authority.
It stated that certain types of public official had a disproportionate impact on the lives of Nigerians.
The NBS said that other public officials with a high risk of bribery included car registration/driver’s licence officers (28.5 per cent), tax and custom officers (27.3 per cent).
It stated that road traffic management officials (25.5 per cent), public utilities officers (22.4 per cent) and land registry officers (20.9 per cent) were also noted as officials with high risk of bribery.
This, it stated, showed that corruption was taking place across a number of different sectors of the public administration and that certain public officials had a disproportionate impact on the daily lives of Nigerians.
According to the survey, recruitment of public officials in Nigeria is itself subject to abuse of the system.
In addition to the propensity of public officials to request/take bribes from citizens, the survey pointed to the influence of bribery in the process that enabled public officials to secure their jobs in the first place.
The survey indicated that among those households with a member who applied for a post and was actually recruited into the public administration, more than 15 per cent admitted to the payment of a bribe to facilitate their recruitment.
It stated that this type of behaviour was likely to have implications on the exercise of their duties throughout their civil service career.
It, however, stated that the vast majority of bribery episodes in Nigeria were initiated either directly or indirectly by public officials (85.3 per cent) and almost 70 per cent of bribes are paid before a service is rendered.
It stated that with such a large portion of public officials initiating bribes, which were paid up front, it seemed that many public officials showed little hesitation in asking for a kickback to carry out their duty.
Meanwhile, the report showed that money was by far the most important form of bribe payment in Nigeria.
It also showed that other forms of bribe payment, such as the provision of food and drink, the handing over of valuables or the exchange of another service or favour, also existed.
It further showed that such exchanges might sometimes include sexual services, although the actual extent of that particular form of bribe payment was unknown.
In addition, the bureau stated that Nigerians seemed to have little faith in the capacity of authorities to deal with corruption.
The bureau observed that very few bribe-payers in Nigeria reported their experience of bribery to anyone.
It stated that of all those who paid bribes in the 12 months prior to the survey, just 3.7 per cent reported the incident to official authorities.
It also stated that limited trust in a number of state institutions in Nigeria, not least in the law enforcement and criminal justice system, might explain why Nigerians had little faith in the capacity of authorities to deal with corruption.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the survey was conducted as part of a technical assistance project on corruption funded by the European Union (Support to Anti-Corruption in Nigeria) and was implemented by the NBS in partnership with UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
However, the Nigeria Police Force had set up a Public Complaints Rapid Response Unit (PCRRU) to receive and resolve cases of professional misconduct brought against its officers, as part of deliberate efforts to sanitise the system.
For instance, following complaints received against police officers by the Force, two traffic wardens in Abuja and four police officers in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun, were recently dismissed from service, having been found guilty of the complaints brought against them.
The Head of the PCRRU, ACP Abayomi Shogunle, disclosed this in a report in Abuja.
Abayomi said the complaints were part of 657 cases of professional misconduct against police personnel received from across the country from April to June.
He said the dismissal was in keeping to the promise of the Inspector-General of Police, Mr Ibrahim Idris, to flush out corrupt officers from the force.(NAN)
CIA/IA
(Edited by Idris Abdulrahman)