Why Kano anti-corruption institute by Bashir Kabir

Besides the establishment of an anti-corruption institute in Kano state being a revolutionary achievement in the fight against corruption, which the commercial state become a shining beacon in the country, It is also a very much needed and deserving development in the state.

Many will look at the establishment of the Kano State Anti-corruption Institute (KANCI) as just a score among the activities of the current executive chairman of the Commission, Barr Muhuyi Magaji Rimingado. But to an experienced anti-corruption personnel such as myself, it is a square peg timely put in a square hole.

More importantly, if you are not clear on how the establishment of the institute is in any way going to impact on anti-corruption and ombudsman activities in the state then this article is particularly for you.

Anti-corruption and ombudsman skills and knowledge is one of the most recent areas of studies even in the advanced countries. It is an area that incorporates the use of several other arms of societal dealings including law, policing, science and technology, economy and pretty much all other areas of human endeavour you can think of.

To sight a quick example on how complicated putting all that into an organized process of anti-corruption investigation can be, let’s look at this: investigation activity can happen within the scope of any profession such as accountancy, medicine, business, government and what have you. An investigation officer is expected to unravel a knot tied by experienced professional spending years of practice in his field who knows how to properly manipulate information.

And then come up with factual findings within the shortest possible time. This is in addition to sometimes being in a hostile and life-threatening situation all in addition to lack of willingness to get help from anywhere a times. Even If success was achieved against all odds, he or she is then expected to work with prosecuting personnel in order to legally present his finding in such a manner that it can hold before any court of law. Don’t forget that often times he or she goes to the court to stand witness in defending those findings against the fiery opposition of legal juggernaut also defending the accused.

Now you can see how daunting the work is! Let’s move on to why an anti-corruption institute in Kano is not just desirable but highly needed now in order to incubate competent investigation workers and lots more. Since 2015 when the current executive chairman came into office as the steward of PCACC not less than fifty million naira was spent on various training for staff. This achievement was never preceded before since the establishment of the anti-corruption agency in 2007.

Staff were regularly sent to EFCC, ICPC and a host of other anti-corruption consultancy firms to train in the fields of investigation activities, corruption risk assessment, prosecution, anti-corruption and transparency and ethics. The source that funded these training varied from the government to development partners such as Trust Africa and RoLAc.

The agency is filled up with highly train personnel that can compete at all levels of their professional training. If that is not obvious enough, the commission’s clients will attest that after bringing their cases to the commission they are mostly satisfied with the way they were handled which is due to the professionalism attributed mainly to these high-end training received by the personnel.

In addition to that, the standard of training procedure all over the world now is what is called ‘training the trainer’. This is a situation by few are selected and trained to train multitude. It is easy, efficient and cost-effective. This trained personnel will have more than enough to pass down the training they received to future newly recruited PCACC personnel. They will train other government MDAs on Anti-corruption and Transparency Unit (ACTU) as mandatory units posted there. Also, special training can be given to newly sworn-in executives in ethics, anti-corruption and whistle-blowing techniques.

The Commission’s law enables it to educate and enlighten on corruption prevention. It is one of the key areas of combatting corruption from grassroots which is always far better and cheaper than prosecution of corruption after it has been perpetrated. The move to establish a whole anti-corruption institute under the commission is the best initiative that can ever happen in terms of anti-corruption education and enlightenment.

It is expected that the Kano State Anti-Corruption Institute (KANCI) will work hand-in-hand with the PCACC in the activities of training and education for better synergy in the absolute goal of the fight against corruption in Kano State and Nigeria at large.

Bashir Kabir is a staff of Kano State Public Complaints and Anti Corruption Commission