June 20, (THEWILL) – The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has said that Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) out of Africa, far outweigh grants from international development partners to the continent.
The Chairman of the commission, Bolaji Owasanoye, stated this during a meeting with the leadership of the Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa (DTCA) at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja.
This was stated by Owansanoye during a recent meeting with the Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa (DTCA) leadership at the Commission’s headquarters in Abuja.
A statement issued by Azuka Ogugua, Spokesperson for the ICPC, said Owasanoye lamented the African continent’s IFF challenge and expressed hope that A collaboration with DTCA in terms of peer learning, information, intelligence, and experiences could go a long way towards addressing the threat.
“ICPC is the secretariat for the inter-agency committee on IFFs in Africa, and one of the biggest problems that Africa is facing is the issue of capital flight.
“The amount of capital that leaves Africa is far more than the development grants that it gets, and this has been a recurrent issue over the years.
“We are not averse to having collaboration with DTCA, because we have our foot on the ground. We will designate officers to look at the broad landscape and areas of collaboration”, he said.
Earlier in his address, the Director-General of DTCA, Ambassador Rabiu Dagari, said they have the capacity to integrate all Africans on issues of corruption in the overall interest of the development of the continent.
“I want to see how we can work together. We can develop content papers and then reach out to other African countries for their participation with you to share ideas and to see the problems being encountered and ventilate and see what really needs to be done to reduce the level of corruption in the African continent that is holding us back”, said Dagari.
While encouraging ICPC and other anti-corruption agencies to expand widespread advocacy in their fight against corruption, Ambassador Dagari also appealed to the Federal Government to grant DTCA access to funds domiciled with the Nigeria’s Technical Cooperation Fund (NTCF), saying that would help in some of the areas of collaborations being looked at.
Also speaking at the meeting, the Provost of the Anti-Corruption Academy (ACAN), Professor Olatunde Babawale, who responded to an earlier appeal made by the DTCA delegation for capacity trainings offered by the academy, noted that the ICPC academy had developed cost effective and hybrid programmes that DTCA can take advantage of.
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