The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has rejected the assessment of the Buhari administration by the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC).
Reacting to the current rating by CISLAC on Wednesday, March 24, Mohammed described it as unfair and unacceptable.
CISLAC, a non-governmental organisation, had on March 23, held a press briefing in Abuja where it allegedly accused the Buhari-led administration of lack of transparency in the recovery of stolen assets.
However, fielding questions from State House correspondents in Abuja on Wednesday, the minister dismissed CISLAC’s accusation, saying the assessment is not truly a reflection of the realities on ground.
He said: “I think that I’m aware of that particular rating which was not quite flattering to Nigeria, but our position, which I’ve declared before is that that rating does not truly reflect the great strides that the administration has made in the area of fighting corruption.
“The government has put in place various reforms in fighting corruption, but some of these reforms will take time to yield the desired results because the matrix used by TI is not just about grafts alone.
“It includes how transparent or how opaque the services are and you’ll find out that when we scored in the 2018, 2019 transparency reports, we realised that we scored very low in the area of ease of doing business in particular.’’
The minister stated that the Federal Government had embarked on various reforms aimed at tackling cases of corrupt practices in both private and public sectors of the economy to improve the country’s rating by the Transparency International (TI).
“That is why the federal government embarked on reforms, especially at the seaports, because that is one area where we scored very low”.
