Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has urged civil servants to shun corruption in order to enjoy a peaceful and stress free retirement devoid of incessant invitation from anti corruption agencies.
Fashola gave this advise at the Management and Staff Sensitisation Seminar organised by the Anti-Corruption and Transparency Unit (ACTU) of the ministry on Wednesday in Abuja.
The seminar tagged “Corruption Trends in Public Service, Causes and Impact on National Development,” was organised to promote a corruption free service delivery by officials.
Fashola, represented by the Director of Press and Public Relations, Mrs Blessings Lere-Adams advised participants to be transparent and obey the rules and regulations guiding the operations of their schedules as they carry out their assignments.
“Corruption is crime and urged participants to shun it in a bid to live a peaceful retirement life devoid of incessant invitations from anti corruption agencies after retirement.
“Adopting a corrupt free attitude in the course of duty would enhance Nigeria’s overall development as a nation,” the minister said.
Mrs Adebimpe Abodunrin, a facilitator from the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Matters Commission (ICPC) in a paper tagged, “Corruption and It’s Impact,” said every office in the civil service was to be held in trust.
“Every civil servant has been trusted with the assignment given to him and should not be seen betraying it by being corrupt.
‘Public Service is a position of trust , dont betray it,” she said.
She urged participants to exhibit good characters while carrying out their duties as the public service was vital when any country was being adjudged corrupt or not by the ranking of Transparency International.
Adding that the public service contributes to the perception of how a country was viewed.
She listed corruption acts to include abuse of office, dishonesty, breaking of rules and regulations, evil and immoral acts among others were major hindrances to any nation’s development.
“These should be shunned completely by Nigerians in all sectors if Nigeria must develop in all areas, individual actions in workplace could either have a negative or positive impact on the entire system,” she said.
Abodunrin gave the effects of corruption on national development to include;
lack of development, high rate of unemployment, lack of qualified personnel, high cost of living and lack of basic amenities.
The ICPC official said all of these tend to dent Nigeria’s reputation and enhance stigimitisation of its citizens and loss of welfare system.
She added that the monetisation policy was introduced because of the high rate of corruption in the public service.
Another Facilitator from ICPC, Mrs Joy Ebbah, while taking the participants through ethical behaviour in workplace, said that the ethics of an organisation were the statues and policies of that organisation.
She said that maintaining an ethical workplace simply meant maintaining professional workplace as well as ability to obey rules and regulations guiding their offices.
Ebbah, while calling on ACTU to constantly review and update the code of ethics of the ministry affirmed that nations had failed due to the workers’ failure to abide by ethical rules by developing good and professional characters such as transparency and obedience.
Ebbah urged participants to develop a mindset of commitment and obedience if Nigeria must attain its developmental goals.
Newsmen reports that the ICPC is an agency set up by the government to check corrupt practices by establishing Anti-Corruption and Transparency Units (ACTUs) in government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as one of its strategies to tackle corruption in the public service.
The ACTU was created to serve as an extension of ICPC in the MDAs.