Supreme Court, education ministry, 50 others are ‘High Corruption Risk’ – ICPC

Tamarauemi Ebimini

The Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) has adjudged the Supreme Court and 51 other government institutions as being “high corruption risk”.

This is contained in the commission’s latest ethics and transparency index report listing 52 Ministries and Departments Agencies (MDAs) as non-responsive to its Ethics and Compliance Score Card assessment for 2022.

The commission says it deploys the Ethics and Integrity Compliance Scorecard (EICS) in federal government’s MDAs to assess their compliance to extant ethical, integrity, statutory, policy and regulatory standards and practices.

It said the 52 unresponsive MDAs are flagged for further investigation and action. The commission disclosed this in a tweet on Friday.

52 MDAs declined to respond to the Ethics and Integrity Compliance Scorecard (EICS) deployed in 2022 by ICPC. They were classified as “High Corruption Risk” (HCR) and are flagged for the attention of the public and for further inquiries and actions.

The index said 260 MDAs were responsive to its Ethics and Integrity Compliance Scorecard (EICS). It added that the agencies were graded according to the degree of their compliance.

According to the report, the Ministry of Justice was rated among the responsive MDAs with a score of 18.95 per cent whereas other justice sector agencies were recorded to have disregarded the anti-graft authority’s ethical scorecard survey.

The Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals, and the National Judicial Institute are among the institutions in the judicial sector that were identified in the report as having “High Corruption Risk” (HCR) in the country.

The anti-graft agency said the EICS is vital to building good ethical structure in the MDAs.

It also urged the MDAs to adopt ethics and integrity compliance practices into their systems to reduce corruption in public offices and service delivery.