The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has charged staff of the Lagos state office of the Nigeria Export Promotion Zones Authority (NEPZA) to exhibit and imbibe integrity when handling their official duties.
The Commission gave this charge recently through Mrs. Mary Omonoyan of the ICPC Lagos state office at a sensitisation programme organised by the Anti-Corruption and Transparency Unit (ACTU) of NEPZA, while encouraging staff of the Authority to do their jobs diligently as they serve as the interface between government and the public.
The ICPC officer stressed the need to communicate organisational policies and procedures effectively to enable staff recognize potential risks and consequences that could damage the reputation of government, adding that the manner in which NEPZA functions were executed translated to how governance was accessed by citizens.
She thereafter discussed the Commission’s effort at curbing corruption including enforcement, prevention and public enlightenment and education, emphasising that one way to fight corruption was to domesticate the National Ethics and Integrity Policy (NEIP).
“NEPZA should actively support the Commission when it deploys its Ethics and Integrity Compliance Scorecard (EICS) and enforce the code of conduct and ethics in the organisation. The fight against graft requires our collective effort to end corruption”, she noted.
In her remarks, the ACTU chairperson, Mrs. Kehinde Adenekan, stated that the ACTU organised the sensitisation to create awareness so that staff could perform their duties optimally; adding that stakeholders’ confidence had also increased based on the NEPZA’s high rating in the EICS.