The Programme Manager of the Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption (RoLAC) programme of the British Council in Nigeria, Mr. Uche Emmanuel has said the country’s fight against corruption has been hampered by the lack of co-operation among the relevant agencies.

Mr Emmanuel stated this in Abuja on Tuesday during a workshop organized for anti-corruption agencies and law enforcement officers by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), European Union (EU) and the British Council.

According to Emmanuel, anti-corruption agencies in Nigeria such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) which recently got independence from the EFCC have continued to work without synergy, thus frustrating the fight against corruption.

Emmanuel noted that most often, the anti-corruption agencies take up isolated and high profile corruption cases without recourse to each other for needed information and cooperation.

His words: “The challenge is that most of us continue to work in silos. Most of the agencies that have been instituted to fight corruption, do not just work in silos but many of them are working at what I call the micro level.

“They are so fixated on their primary mandate and I said this to them at the EFCC in-house retreat they had last week, that they are so fixated on their primary mandate and forget the big picture.

“Several times we could get so fixated pursuing one very high level corruption case, pursuing one highly exposed person forever and get all the media attention but you are set up to impact a country of 200 million people.

“And so, one isolated mega case will not take us to where we are going and you cannot do it in a silo. Nobody is an island; you definitely need to work with people.”