The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), said on Wednesday that it had commenced collaboration with Nigerian universities to adopt mandatory anti-corruption programme for first year students.
Mr Ekpo Nta, the Chairman of the Commission, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
“Two years ago, I had insisted that the tertiary institutions, particularly the universities, must be the leading light in the fight against corruption.
“When you want to fight any issue out successfully, including corruption, there are always best brains in the various tertiary institutions that are lying fallow.
“We then decided that we have to do a thorough partnership with them and fortunately, this issue is an idea of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes,” he said.
He said the initiative was aimed at bringing universities to the forefront of designing anti-corruption cradles and to encourage research in anti-corruption within the university community.
Nta said the commission had over the years, engaged academics from various universities in local and international conferences to enhance speedy adoption of an anti-corruption programme for students.
“I am very delighted that this initiative by the ICPC is seeing a lot of successes.
“ Today, the Senate of the University of Calabar has approved the teaching of anti-corruption studies at the General Studies level.
“This means that every student going to the University of Calabar must do a programme on anti-corruption in their first year.”
He said the adoption of the programme would impact on the students positively, adding that it would encourage students to begin to specialise in the anti-corruption field.
Nta expressed satisfaction with the number of students in the various universities doing their researches on corruption-related issues.
According to him, the outcome of the research will be important to us because we believe it will help us address certain issues on corruption.
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