A better way to prevent it

Okay, so you started reading this article a little curious about what “it” is? Nigerians are today preoccupied with and have their minds continually filled to a troubling extent with mindboggling tales of government, business and individual acts of corruption. Is this not a grand enough “It” to obsess on and write about?

The results of a 2016 piece of research by PwC Nigeria shows that “…corruption in Nigeria could cost up to 37% of GDP by 2030 if it’s not dealt with immediately. This cost is equated to around $1,000 per person in 2014 and nearly $2,000 per person by 2030. The boost in average income that we estimate, given the current per capita income, can significantly improve the lives of many in Nigeria.” The same piece of research goes on to suggest that if Nigeria were to reduce her levels of corruption to that found in Malaysia, she could add another $504bn to her $402bn GDP by 2030. Is this not worth obsessing about given the sheer cost of corruption to Nigerians at the moment?
Rather than thinking of “it” though, let’s turn our attention instead to the word “prevent.” Why prevent anything? Most reasonable people would want to prevent for example, anything that would cause them loss, damage, and any form of impairment or decrease in value of an asset they have. In the extreme, lack of prevention could bring about financial, social, human, or other costs (decrease in value) or impairments too heavy for the individual, group, organisation, society or even human race to bear! If the spread of nuclear weapons is not prevented for example, and they fall into wrong hands, we could potentially allow the obliteration of a major portion of the world as we currently know it!
If prevention is that important, then how is it done? Let’s use a simple example: Nigerians (at least those who do) tend to love their fish when it is fresh. At one level, loss could be prevented by stationing someone by the basket of fish to ward off cats, dogs or other creatures like humans from stealing from it. So, placing an effective guard on something is a good way to prevent its loss. But loss through theft is not the only risk it faces; there is also the possibility of a loss through contamination and spoilage. For that, you could have someone with a cover to the basket and a fly swat to kill the flies as they come but a better way might be to rub it down with salt and wrap hygienically or wrap up and refrigerate or otherwise condition it. These preventive methods might work for a while but the risk that the eventual taste might be impaired remains, so others prefer to cook, roast, fry, or otherwise transform the state of the fish to something that keeps better and preserves the taste from impairment as well. The ultimate way to preserve it from theft, contamination, spoilage and taste impairment is to simply consume it in your preferred way, while fresh.
Our long lesson on prevention shows that there are indeed better ways to prevent loss of something than by merely setting a guard over it. You may guard and condition it; you may guard, condition and transform it; you may guard, condition, transform and utilize (while still fit) for the purpose it was intended. If you like, we have the good, better and best ways to “prevent” loss, damage or other forms of impairment to a valuable asset in response to the specific risks faced. In other words, prevention is a function of understanding risks and putting in place effective strategies to minimise those risks.
So, back to corruption, how do you “reduce” it to levels found in Malaysia if not by making it much smaller in all its attributes? If public funds were flowing through a pipeline the priority would be to start closing valves (guard) in ways that ensure they are not easily reopened but this halt, halts everything. At the start of the new administration, many feared this was the approach being adopted with the resultant panic within the productive sectors. We could ensure the pipeline is intact, keep the contents flowing but guard against risk of puncture. We can have an intact system, no punctures but risk of contents being emptied into wrong containers remains. We can also have an intact system, no punctures, contents being emptied into right containers, but funds not applied to the purpose for which they were intended. Reducing corruption this way then requires a risk-based, preventive approach rather than the reactive, recovery-based approach we currently employ.

Comprehensive, risk-based prevention is guaranteed to lead to a reduction in corruption levels, but the same cannot be said of the reactionary, recovery-based approaches successive Nigerian governments keep recycling. True, there is something to be said for ensuring those who make away with contents of the pipeline don’t get to enjoy or keep it but this seems a long route to corruption reduction and certainly not a strategy to be applied in isolation of prevention.
Every system can be described by a set of parameters or indicators and benchmarks or acceptable levels can be set for each to describe acceptable functioning of the system. So, it levels drop below what is acceptable it should produce alarms and those alarms should send us implementing rehearsed strategies to contain the issue and cause us to reflect on how and why the limits were breached so we can improve the system even further.
At the most basic level, against certain types of risky behaviour, codes of conduct, corporate governance codes, codes of ethics and so on try to describe these parameters for behaviour and many set benchmarks as well, against international best practice. What tends to be absent is the capacity to monitor and measure compliance. The next step would be to ensure a full understanding of all risks by geography, industry sector, transaction type, size of entity and calibrate anti-corruption efforts against these. We would ultimately like to be where our corruption prevention efforts then result in improved reputation for our people, groups, organisations and society in Nigeria through more effective and efficient resource allocation and usage for the good of all Nigerians.
Preventing corruption is serious business, certainly more serious than chasing politicians around with a whip and releasing lists with names on, it requires deeper reflection and more deliberate strategy. This is my take, what do you think?

- Advertisement -

Soji Apampa

Olusoji Apampa is the CEO of The Convention on Business Integrity. Twitter: @sojapa E-mail: aviga@cbinigeria.com