Integrity compliance scorecard reveals 97 MDAs indicted by ICPC

The report of the Ethics and Integrity Compliance Scorecard of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) 2023 was released on Tuesday by the Independent Corrupt Practises and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).

The ICPC disclosed through its official X account in a tweet that the MDAs’ adherence to ethics, integrity, statutes, policies, and regulations is assessed by the Scorecard, which is based on three key performance indicators: Administrative Systems (AS), Financial Management Systems (FMS), and Management Culture and Structure (MCS).

“Introduction and Background: The Commission developed the “Ethics and Integrity Compliance Scorecard” and deployed it on select MDAs in 2016 (20 MDAs); 2019 (280 MDAs); 2020 (352 MDAs); 2021 (360 MDAs); 2022 (360 MDAs); and 2023 (404 MDAs) in accordance with its prevention mandate as enshrined in Section 6 (b-d) of the Corrupt Practises and Other Related Offences Act 2000.

“The Scorecard uses three key performance indicators (KPIs)—Financial Management Systems (FMS), Administrative Systems (AS), and Management Culture and Structure (MCS)—to assess MDAs’ adherence to ethics, integrity, legislation, rules, and regulations.

In accordance with the Public Procurement Act of 2007, 97 MDAs, or 26.36% of the total, did not perform an annual requirements assessment prior to procurement, according to the ICPC’s findings from the 2023 EICS Deployment.

“59 MDAs, or 16.3%, lacked yearly procurement plans that aligned with their authorised annual budgets, while 85 MDAs, or 23.10%, lacked policies for personnel advancements.

“This is a huge corruption vulnerability as advances remain one of the conduit pipes through which funds are diverted,” according to 67 MDAs (18.21%) that failed to make retirement on advances when they were due and 88 MDAs (23.91%) that failed to guarantee personnel retired advances before giving fresh ones.