Crusade Against Corruption Could Alleviate Poverty 

All Africa News Agency 

March 22, 2000 


Nairobi - Fighting corruption "will gain significant success if citizens of African countries are effectively mobilised to regain their 'voices' and recapture their role as the real decision-makers in the governance of their nations," the Chairman of Cadbury, Nigeria, Christopher Kolade told the conference here.

He stressed that combating corruption required credible efforts to be made to empower individual citizens while corporations must acknowledge and actualise their proper role, and governments must become truly responsible and accountable.

Empowering people to fight corruption, Kolade went on, constituted the main focus of activity if the present situations in Africa was to be effectively corrected. The Church, he said, has a major role.

"The Church is one forum where both leaders and followers in society can still meet without feeling threatened with the loss of their authority or psychological integrity," he noted.

" The Church, therefore, should be able to provide opportunities for open and meaningful dialogue at which leaders can receive from followers in a mutual exchange of information and support".

He called on African governments to consider a six-point plan if they wanted to give serious attention to combating corruption and alleviating poverty. These were:

?Establishing (or restoring) professionalism in the public service ?Strengthening the discipline of financial management ?Strengthening the capacity for policy-making ?Creating oversight agencies to ensure effective enforcement of statutes ?Ensuring the independence of the judiciary ?Engaging civil society in participative governance.

Defining corruption as the abuse of an influential position for private gain and the exploitation of a system for securing unmerited advantage, Kolade underlined that corruption usually reflected the way in which authority was exercised in any society.

A culture of corruption, he noted, had developed in Africa which tended to "accept the notion that bureaucracy requires some oiling of its wheels before results can be produced". 

As a result, officials "delight in creating multiple layers of 'red tape' and setting up 'toll gates' that create delays and increase frustration for stakeholders" thus encouraging corruption.

Kolade noted that highly centralised system of exercising executive power tended to erode systems for promoting accountability. 

He explained that "elected legislators tend to represent vested interests rather than voter interest, and many of them see their presence in parliament as an opportunity to siphon public resources into private pockets". 

"They, therefore, do nothing to correct the institutional weaknesses that exist, and they perpetuate public policies that generate economic rents. Where the government is not an elected one, the situation is far worse, as members of government suspend the constitution and put themselves outside the controls by which society normally manages itself".

He added: "The people 'in power' are able to carry on in this way because civil society itself is weak and underdeveloped. Levels of education are low, and this leads to inadequacies in the recognition and expression of individual rights and obligations". 

Per capita income is similarly low, and this poverty syndrome promotes the tendency for individuals to see themselves as dependants upon the goodwill and favour of those who allocate the community's resources. 

Thus, even the individual's capacity to be productive is weakened because government controls the terms and conditions under which personal initiative may be productively exercised, says the Cadbury official.

Kolade dismissed the school of thought that contended that bribe- taking in Africa was similar to giving gifts in return to favours and therefore was integral to the culture of African societies.

He stressed that in the African culture gifts are modest in proportion and are not given for favours expected. 

"Gifts may be expected but are never demanded and each party to the exchange would consider it a matter of honour to ensure that their own part of the exchange was faithfully performed". 

Reported by Mitch Odero in Nairobi 
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Copyright (c) 2000 All Africa News Agency. Distributed via Africa News Online

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