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Stakeholders seek application of behaviour change approach to fight corruption

Published

3 months ago

November 15, 2022

Stakeholders have resolved to adopt and inculcate a behavior change approach among citizens to promote transparency and accountability in the country’s public and private sectors.

Harnessing Behavioral Insights

They made the commitment during a special session on “Harnessing Behavioral Insights to Counter Corruption” organized by the Innovation Center (PIC), an initiative of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG).

Olubukola Balogun

Ms. Olubukola Balogun, board member of the Independent Commission on Corrupt Practices and Other Related Crimes (ICPC) highlighted the need to move from a criminal justice approach to leveraging behavior change to address corruption .

“Government policies will focus the fight against corruption in other areas beyond law and order.

“There are sanctions, system studies, but everything has to be promoted because even if you have your sanctions, you have your system, it is society that is going to make the tools work.

“That is why we want to work in society with the help of our development partners. The Government has approved the national ethics and integrity policy,” she said.

According to her, the ethics and integrity policy has seven main core values, which drive advocacy for behavior change in the fight against corruption.

“We are going through these valleys throughout the country through meetings with traditional and religious leaders, youth groups and women around the six geopolitical zones and we have gone to 21 states.

“We are advocating that we should all go back to the drawing boards and get our value rights in society.

“All behaviors that are illegal let them out. It is for our common good so that we can have a shared prosperity and we can all get it right and get it right,” he said.

Waziri Adio

L-R: Waziri Adio, Founder/CEO, Agora Policy; Olubukola Balogun, Honorary Board Member, Independent Commission on Corrupt Practices (ICPC); Philip Mshelbila, Managing Director/CEO, Nigeria LNG Limited; Kole Shettima, country director, MacArthur Foundation; Osasuyi Dirisu, Deputy Director, Policy Innovation Center (PIC); Akinwumi Akinola, Senior Analyst, PIC; Friday Odeh, Country Director, Accountability Lab at an interactive panel on ‘Harnessing Behavioral Insights to Counter Corruption’ held on the sidelines of the Nigerian Economic Summit 28 (NES 28) in Abuja

Also speaking, Dr. Osasiyi Dirisu, Deputy Director of the Policy Innovation Center (PIC) said that the meeting was organized to enlighten public and private stakeholders on the different dimensions of using behavioral science to address behavioral practices. corrupt.

Dirisu said the three-year PIC program was funded by the foundation to take lessons from behavioral science and use them to work on improving accountability and transparency within different sectors in Nigeria.

“We meet with government CSOs, NGOs and MDAs and support them to start thinking differently about interventions that will work for accountability and transparency.

“We came together to co-create what the solutions would look like and then developed a four-sided cause training program on using behavioral insights to support accountability and transparency programs.

“We train organizations to think differently and help them improve the effectiveness of the work they do.

“The next phase is to work with organizations to design solutions that they will re-implement in society using lessons from behavioral science that reflect some of those solutions.

“We will test them and see which ones work and start supporting best practices for accountability and transparency programs in Nigeria,” he said.