Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ) has concluded an inaugural mentorship and training of eleven young anti-corruption activists and champions in the Niger Delta, at the ANEEJ Centre for Corruption Studies to stem the spectre of youth involvement in cyber crime.
In a statement made available to journalists over the weekend, ANEEJ acting executive director, Mr Leo Atakpu said that the trained anti-corruption activists now have broad knowledge about corruption and ways to combat it.”The young trainees have demonstrated the zeal to be more involved in the fight against corruption and are happy to implement their new roles and expectations at individual and organisational levels.
“Targeting young anti-corruption champions is a new approach of imbibing acceptable norms and shared values in young people in the society, who are mostly affected by the impact of corruption,” Mr Atakpu said.The young participants were from Edo, Delta, Rivers and Bayelsa states. After their training, they demonstrated understanding of a wide-range of anti-corruption concepts and precepts.
Atakpu, emphasized that the recent shock of about 77 Nigerian youths listed in a fraudulent network in the US is a justification of the aim of the program seeking to ‘catch them young’ – a call for young anti-corruption champions to rise and say no to crime and corruption.
“For ANEEJ, the training is coming at a time when the Niger Delta is yet to harness the massive economic and human potentials endowed in the region to ameliorate the plight of victims whose sources of livelihood have been cut off, due to years of oil exploration and corruption.
“A component of the training is the importance of the OGP as a tool for transparency, accountability and openness in government. The young anti-corruption champions were taught to use their capacity to call on the various states in the Niger Delta who are yet to sign on to the OGP to do so to promote good governance in the region,” the acting executive director said.
He added that ANEEJ will scale up the training to include young people from other parts of the country in a subsequent program adding that ANEEJ will use the platform to raise young activists who in turn will liberate society from the scourge of corruption in the public, private sector and our immediate environment.
The week-long training was with the support of Bread for the World Germany and UKAID. Topics covered by the young anti-corruption champions include: ideological concepts of governance and how it affects corruption; understanding the political, economic and environmental context of corruption; institutional definitions of corruption and how they apply to the Nigerian context; asset declaration and anti-corruption; what constitutes corruption in Nigeria; ways of measuring corruption; the anti-corruption indexes, conventions and protocols – institutional arrangements for corruption prevention.
