A survey conducted across the 255 political wards of Kaduna State has rated the Nigeria Police Force as the most corrupt institution, followed closely by political parties in the state.
Also in this category are the executive, legislative and judicial arms of government, which ranked 3rd, 4th and 5th most corrupt institutions, respectively.
This public perception about the aforementioned institutions was made open during a presentation of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Baseline Report and Corruption Perception Survey for validation, as part of activities to mark the 2019 International Anti-Corruption Day.
The survey, which was conducted by Aid Foundation and Kaduna State Bureau of Statistics (KDBS), with support from Action Aid, was an annual event to assess citizens’ perceptions and opinions around public sector corruption.
Executive Director, Aid Foundation, Emmanuel Bonet, explaining that the survey began in 1995 by Transparency International, said that this was the first time the survey was conducted in Kaduna State.
He explained that a total of 2,300 households across the 255 wards in the state were sampled, and 2,249 participated, representing a 97.9 percent response rate.
“Interestingly, the survey showed that many people perceived the police to be the most corrupt institution in Kaduna State, followed by political parties, then executive, the legislature and judiciary,” Bonet said.
“The survey shows that nine out of every individual in Kaduna State perceived corruption as a major issue in Kaduna State.
“Also, 46.2 percent of the people believed that ‘greed’ is the major cause of corruption in the state. Some 27.3 percent identified poverty as the cause of corruption in the state, while 25.8 percent attribute corruption to unemployment,” he said.
He said that the findings would be communicated to the public in different languages for the people to understand as part of efforts to mobilize residents towards eliminating corruption in communities.
“So, part of what we will be doing in 2020 is to look at the suggestions by the citizens and different stakeholders and see how together we will eliminate corruption in our dear state,” he added.
Explaining the survey process, Mr. Iyegbu Innocent of KDBS, explained that Electronic Data Collection was used in the survey, while questionnaires were prepared electronically and sent to the KDBS server using ODKCollect APP.
