Stakeholders have called for the establishment of special tribunals and courts to try corruption cases using special investigators as stipulated in the Police Act of 2020.
This was one of the resolutions of the one-day town hall meeting organised by Wadata Media and Advocacy Centre (WAMAC) on Lokoja on Saturday.
WAMAC’s town hall meeting, supported by MacArthur Foundation, called on institutions charged with the responsibility of fighting corruption in Nigeria to empower citizens to demand accountability from political office holders.
With a theme: “Community Participation in the Fight Against Corruption in Nigeria Using Local Languages”, the stakeholders charged traditional rulers to be courageous in fighting malfeasance in the society.
The meeting also urged communities to re-orientate their members, reinvigorate local traditional content and instil discipline in homes to reduce moral corruption, adding that they should ask relevant questions in government contracts, projects, budgets and quality of infrastructure.
Speaking at the end of the town hall meeting, Zubair Abdurra’uf Idris, Project Manager and Team Lead of Wadata Media and Advocacy Centre, stated that stakeholders recognised the role of traditional institutions in the fight against corruption through courage and honesty, to uphold the sanctity of honesty and accountability in the society.
Idris said that the meeting called to ensure the removal of obstacles that hinder the exploitation and development of our natural resources, to reduce corruption in the extractive industry.
“Wadata communications, with support from MacArthur Foundation, have been producing and airing weekly programmes as part of this campaign on 12 radio stations across the six geo-political zones of Nigeria. This is basically to encourage citizens to own the fight against graft by demanding for accountability in their communities,” he said.
He called on communities and participants at the town hall meeting to grow beyond the meeting and be advocates of the fight against corruption, by giving the people at the grassroots the right to participate in elections that would bring about change for a better society.
Idris said the town hall meeting aimed to get local communities to participate and contribute to the fight against corruption which remained a major challenge to the nation’s development.
