I remember as a kid growing up in the city of Lagos, corruption was always a hot topic each time my parents turned on to watch the traditional 9pm news. Granted, I did not get to witness many coups that happened in those days but I clearly recall one of the failed coups by Gideon Orkar.
Orkar accused the ruling junta and their political allies of being corrupt. This led them to attempt wrestling power. This is the same reason others gave for taking power by force as reported by history books.
Fast forward to almost three decades; now a parent and each time I flip the pages of a newspaper or watch the news, I am completely embarrassed at the never-ending story of corruption in Nigeria. It is indeed shameful and scandalous, especially in this era of advanced technology, blockchain and artificial intelligence.
I have always stated on this column that there is absolutely no way that Nigeria can win the battle against corruption without technology and automation.
There are avenues through which corrupt practices are carried out, in both the public and private sectors of the economy and the only way to prevent these from continuing unabated is to barricade the loopholes, using technology.
Corruption can be nipped in the bud by adopting and deploying a set of robust technological solutions, covering every single operation, in all sectors of the economy, such as comprehensive data capturing, recording of all transactions in the area of allocations, budgeting, contract awards, remittances, collection of taxes, procurement of goods, products and services, etc.
To achieve this, we must be determined to embrace paperless and cashless transactions in our day-to-day operations. This tendency is already evident in the registration process for the National Identity Scheme, which is a good way of embracing digitalisation (but that process still needs to be made more effective).
Automation should be deployed to tackle corruption in Nigeria as it will help in reducing physical contacts between government officials and citizens, thus, eliminating contact with intermediaries which facilitates corruption, as well as reducing red-tapes and bureaucracy.
Citizens can always go online to start and complete a transaction with a government agency without physically paying a visit to such an agency or physically meeting any official. If there is any need to make a payment to the government in the course of transacting the business, the citizen can make such payments online without carrying cash anywhere.
Sadly, the Nigerian public sector records the highest number of corruption cases that are, sometimes, due to difficulties faced when using the — Finish Reading on the Punch
