THE Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has ranked the National Lottery Trust Fund and the Federal Ministry of Environment as the top performing agencies in its latest Ethics and Transparency Index Report released on Monday, January 10.
The National Lottery Trust Fund (86.05), Federal Ministry of Environment (85.78), National Steel Raw Materials Exploration Agency, Kaduna (85.46), National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission (82.6) and the State House, Abuja (82.00) are the top five ranked agencies in the report.
The report is line with the ICPC mandate and the ranking is carried out by deploying the Ethics and Integrity Compliance Scorecard (EICS) in Federal Government’s ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to assess their compliance with extant ethical, integrity, statutory, policy and regulatory standards and practices.
READ ALSO:
N-Power fraud: ICPC frees D’Banj on self-recognition after 72 hours in detention
ICPC arraigns former judge over age falsification
ICPC honours policeman who rejected $200,000 bribe from robbers
Ex-military chief stole N4bn from military budget – ICPC
The assessment is part of the Commission’s preventive mandate as provided in Section 6(b)-(d) of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000.
Meanwhile, the anti-graft body ranked the Ministries of Finance, Power and Education as the lowest agencies in the latest report.
The index showed that 260 MDAs responded and were rated according to the degree of compliance with the scoring criteria.
Fifty-two agencies scored zero in the ranking; prominent among those in this category include the Federal Ministry of Education, Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, National Judicial Institute, Nigerian Christian Pilgrims Commission, National Bureau of Statistics and the National Pension Commission.
The Ministry of Power scored below the integrity and ethics passmark of 50 as the ministry got a total score of 46.15. It is closely followed by the Ministry of Finance with a score of 42.45.
Also, the Ministries of Information, Niger Delta Affairs, and Health got a total score of 42.10.
Other ministries with low ranking are the Federal Ministries of Water Resources (35.50), Labour and Employment (32.48) and Ministry of Justice (18.95).
It was also noted that about 15 MDAs scored below 30.
According to the ICPC, the Ethics and Integrity Compliance Scorecard (EICS) is central to the functions of the Commission as provided for in Section 6 (b-d) of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act 2000.
The scorecard evaluates MDA’s compliance with ethics, integrity, statutes, policies and regulations based on three key performance indicators (KPIs): Management Culture and Structure (MCS), Financial Management Systems (FMS) and Administrative Systems (AS).
The Commission deployed the scorecard in 2016, 2019 and 2020.
A reporter with the ICIR
A Journalist with a niche for quality and a promoter of good governance