Celebrating Five Years Empowering Youth, Igniting Change and Inspiring Integrity
Executive Summary
1. Background:
Despite extensive anti-corruption efforts in Nigeria, bribery and corruption persist due to societal norms towards preferential treatment. Traditional enforcement strategies, though resulting in convictions and arrests, have not significantly influenced citizens’ behaviour. Therefore, a shift towards a more comprehensive approach, combining preventive and punitive measures, is required.
Step Up Nigeria’s anti-corruption education program, incorporating the “SEE” approach (Show, Educate, and Empower), presents a cost-effective alternative that significantly impacts the younger generation’s understanding of corruption, as evidenced by our evaluations.
2. The “SEE” Approach:
The “SEE” approach forms the core of our anti-corruption program. Through engaging stories, we aim to show children corruption’s costs and integrity’s benefits. We educate them about crucial anti-corruption values like transparency, accountability, integrity, fairness, and honesty. Finally, we empower them to become change agents promoting integrity and combating corruption.
3. Evaluation Findings:
Using diverse evaluation tools, we’ve found a noticeable improvement in children’s understanding of corruption and their attitudes toward it. Specifically, children showing a robust knowledge of corruption increased from 47.39% to 60.32%, and those pledging to counteract cheating behaviours rose from 21.5% to 24.68%. Randomised impact evaluations underscored the effectiveness of our “SEE” approach – an integral component of our anti-corruption program – emphasising the power of storytelling in moulding children’s attitudes towards corruption.
4. Enforcement vs Education
Comparatively, while enforcement strategies led to tangible outcomes, they have not fostered a societal behavioural change. In the last eight years, available data shows that the EFCC has one conviction for every 20,115,838 million naira budgeted by the Commission. On the other hand, our integrity approach, focused on anti-corruption education, has proven cost-effective at an estimated 8,075 Naira per student. Although the changes may sometimes take longer to see, however, we have seen some immediate positive changes in short periods.
4. Impact of anti-corruption education on behavioural change
Over five years, Step Up Nigeria’s transformative anti-corruption education has impacted over 51,000 children across 300+ schools, catalysing significant behavioural shifts. This initiative has empowered students to challenge corruption, ascend as leaders in this battle, and nurture an integrity culture. Through teacher training, student empowerment, and the provision of resources, anti-corruption education is becoming mainstream in schools.
6. Lessons Learnt:
Over the past five years, our efforts in anti-corruption education have yielded key insights:
- Storytelling and engaging narratives are compelling teaching tools to instill anti-corruption values, particularly in young people.
- Innovative tools like virtual reality enhance youth engagement in anti-corruption.
- We can integrate anti-corruption education into existing curricula. As part of this integration, we can include the “SEE” approach.
- Mentorship programs and school clubs sustain anti-corruption messaging.
- Local facilitators in marginalised communities strengthen anti-corruption efforts.
- Empowering young girls and persons with disabilities has significant potential to create diverse anti-corruption champions in communities who can advocate for change.
6. Recommendations:
To combat corruption, we suggest a combined strategy: educating citizens about the significance of integrity while enforcing necessary sanctions for corrupt offenders. We propose the following.
- Implement a comprehensive anti-corruption strategy combining both integrity and enforcement approaches. Educate citizens about the importance of integrity and ethical behaviour while ensuring enforcement and sanctions where necessary.
- Foster collaboration between enforcement agencies and educational institutions.
- Encourage citizens to actively combat corruption and question the accumulation of unexplained wealth by citizens.
- Promote research into anti-corruption initiatives to assess their effectiveness and guide policy decision-making.
- Ensure gender-inclusive and accessible anti-corruption education programs, empowering young girls and persons with disabilities.
- Establish a systematic approach for collecting evidence and evaluating the effectiveness of anti-corruption programming.
Conclusion:
While enforcement offers immediate deterrence, it does not root out corruption nor foster behavioural change. Anti-corruption education is a cost-effective approach that promotes integrity and deters corrupt behaviour. By combining both approaches, we can achieve a more effective anti-corruption strategy, equipping future generations to fight corruption and actively contribute to a more transparent society.
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