30th Anniversary Of The Integrity Organisation & The Convention On Business Integrity

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SPEECH DELIVERED BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, THE IMMEDIATE PAST VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA AT THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE INTEGRITY ORGANISATION AND THE CONVENTION ON BUSINESS INTEGRITY ON THE 25TH OF NOVEMBER, 2025

Protocols

Let me say that it really is a pleasure to join you all today in celebrating 30 remarkable years of the Integrity Organisation and the Convention on Business Integrity, CBI.

Soji Apampa and I co-founded Integrity in 1995. We were both concerned at the time about the way corruption in both the private and public sectors continually damaged our economy and eroded the government’s ability to render even the most basic services to people. Soji was particularly concerned about how private sector corruption damaged the reputation of Nigerian businesses and the very chilling effect that it had on investor confidence.

We initially considered joining Transparency International at the time. Transparency International had been formed about two years before, but we found that it was better for us to work together rather than to join them because they were focused on coalition building against corruption, but we wanted to address individual cases of corruption in both the public and private sectors. We started at the time by publishing a single sheet, a pamphlet titled “Scrutiny”, where we detailed acts of official corruption, and we had a cartoon series titled “Integrity Pays.”

The cartoon series was simply to highlight the economic and social benefits of ethical conduct and integrity, both in private and public life. Nduka Obaigbena, the founder of This Day, then a relatively new newspaper, helped us to circulate scrutiny every week by inserting it in the Thursday edition of the newspaper. So we were able to circulate our pamphlet through This Day’s newspaper.

Later on, we drew up the Convention on Business Integrity, a document which we hoped and which we proposed would be signed by companies that were ready to pledge to observe the highest ethical standards in their businesses. We then hoped that this would create a body of businesses recognised for their commitment to integrity and high ethical standards.

At some point, we approached Dr Christopher Kolade to chair Integrity. He didn’t know either of us. He had never really met either of us. But he liked the idea and then said to us that, because he really didn’t know us, he said, “Well, you need to persuade two other people with whom he shared the same values and ideals”.

And those two people are Mr Akintola Williams, now a pleasant memory, the doyen of the accounting profession in Nigeria, and Mr Michael Omolayole, the respected businessman. He was very well respected in business management and in governance, corporate governance, and generally in corporate Nigeria. We spoke to them both, and it appears that we made a reasonably good impression.

Dr Kolade then agreed to chair the organisation, and both Mr Akintola Williams and Mr Omolayole continued in their roles as mentors. We’re grateful, extremely grateful, for Dr Kolade’s exceptional and courageous leadership of the organisation for 15 years, as our chairperson has pointed out.

But let me particularly speak of Dr Kolade’s courage, because, as you know, integrity always requires some courage. The organisation was founded in the darkest days of the Abacha regime, when any form of dissent or criticism of the government was treated as an existential threat to the government. At the public launch of the Convention on Business Integrity here at this Muson Centre, the venue was surrounded by operatives of State Security, and they informed us that the event could not proceed because it could give rise to a breakdown of law and order. What we said to them, Soji and I said to them, that you have to speak to our chairman about that.

You know, the head of the state security team said to Dr Kolade that we will not be allowed to go ahead with the launch. And Dr Kolade  said to him, “No way, we are going ahead, and we are doing nothing illegal, and you’ll have to arrest me to prevent us from going ahead.” We proceeded, and Dr Kolade gave one of the most courageous speeches that I’ve ever heard, scolding the government for lack of transparency and accountability.

Incidentally, that day, many of the companies that had committed to signing the pledge, when they saw the way things were, they just declined to sign the pledge, many of them. Of course, they later on signed after the event, we still had to get everyone to come to terms with the idea that, well, I mean, it may be slightly risky, but many signed eventually. But that day, we had, I think it was only one company, and that was Cadbury, I believe it was, because that was the company that Dr Kolade chaired at the time. Nobody else was prepared to sign.

The role of the Ford Foundation and the growth of integrity is also very important. The Ford Foundation heard about our work and wanted to support the work that we were doing, especially our work on the citizens’ report card on local government.

We had a citizens’ report card on local governments, where we got citizens to tell us what they thought about the work of their local governments and all of that, and there were a whole series of reports that were published at the time.

Ford Foundation wanted to help us, but there was a hitch. Integrity at the time was not incorporated. The government had refused our registration, so we were essentially an organisation in name only. We had no legal status. And of course, the reason why we were not registered was that the government felt that this was a dissident group. Dr Akwasi Aido, then the head of Ford West Africa, decided that they would issue the grant anyway, and they issued the grant in my name. They took the risk of giving us the grant check in my name, so we could very easily have run away with the money and Soji and I would have built homes, I think, probably in Ikoyi or somewhere.

But anyway, I think that we eventually justified their trust. We had yet another scrape, again with security operatives, when they raided our office at 34 McCarthy, looking for Soji and me. But they found our head of publications, Gbile Oshadipe, who was immediately taken into custody at 15 Awolowo Road. The only way to get him out was to submit either Soji or me, or to go to the headquarters of the SSS.

And eventually, I had to go. As a matter of fact, they had specifically asked for the Professor, and I was the only Professor at the place. But this Gbile Oshadipe looked like a Professor. He wore glasses. I didn’t even wear any glasses. So I’m sure they thought he was the Professor, and they took him.

So I was there for the entire day, I think, until close to midnight or something. I was warned to go back to the university to teach what I was employed to do, rather than stir up people against the government. Anyway, Gbile and I were freed that day.

Thirty years have gone by, and the story of Integrity continues. Commendable work has been done by the Convention on Business Integrity, and I’m sure we’ll hear even more about that. But the fight against corruption seems to be still a huge struggle.

We still live in a paradox; corruption perceptions persist. Yet, Nigerian excellence is rewriting our global story. The paradox of a country with incredible talent, our doctors who are pioneering medical breakthroughs, our artists are defining culture across the world, our entrepreneurs are building billion-dollar companies, our athletes are breaking records, innovators are shaping technology, side by side, all of this is going side by side, with a stubborn perception of systemic corruption.

How do we resolve this paradox in favour of a country of global excellence, where integrity is a cornerstone? Sometimes it seems that little has been achieved, and that corruption in Nigeria is an intractable problem. But I’m convinced that it is not. Many countries have dealt with systemic corruption and won, many worse than Nigeria.

We are no different. In any event, our survival as a nation may well depend on how we deal with corruption. It was Lee Kuan Yew, the celebrated Prime Minister of Singapore, who so aptly said that corruption is like HIV; once you contract it, it weakens the immune system. Every part of the body is compromised; even a simple cold can kill.

And this is what corruption means. The HIV or corruption weakens everything, from law enforcement to justice to procurement of any kind, and even the maintenance of the territorial integrity of Nigeria by the armed forces.

Over the years, I’ve learned a few things about the fight against corruption. The first is that you need the full, unwavering commitment of the political leadership, beginning from the very top, at every level, President, Governor, Local Government, and, of course, Ministers. But you must have the total commitment of the Executive and, of course, all the other leaders, Senate President, et cetera. I must say that it’s not enough for the political leadership to just hate corruption, assuming they do, or know its legal consequences. There must be a single-minded commitment to eradicate it.

The second point is that leadership must be prepared to exemplify the transparency and honesty that they want to see in public and private life. In other words, the leaders themselves must be persons who want to display integrity in their private and public lives.

The third is that the Executive must have a clear vision for what success in its anti-corruption programme looks like, and must sit with the Judiciary and Legislature to share that vision and get their buy-in.

The fourth is that an objective must be to ensure that everyone knows that there will be consequences, severe consequences for corruption.

The fifth is that the courts are consistent, and must be equipped to deal with corruption quickly, and practice directions issued by our courts, by judges, and the Chief Justice of Nigeria. The Chief Justice must define how quickly and in what way the courts must deal with cases of corruption.

The sixth is that reducing the discretion of bureaucrats, especially with technology, is one of the most effective ways of preventing corruption.

The seventh is that corruption is an economic crime. It is for this reason that people are corrupt; usually, it’s because they want to make money. And so, the process of ensuring that people, the process of reducing corruption, means that you must also ensure that whatever the person is taking back, there must be restitution. There must be restitution  because you cannot simply say someone who has stolen money and say, “We dismiss you, go away.”

I’ll very quickly share an experience in Lagos State, where, when I was Attorney General between 1997 and 2007, appointed by Governor Bola Tinubu, now President Tinubu. We undertook a legal reform of the justice system, tackling the high level of corruption in the judiciary.

Before we were sworn into office, I had constituted a Justice Sector Policy Committee to prepare a blueprint for the sector. The committee was headed by Chief Mrs Priscilla Kuye, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, who was the former President of the Bar. There was also Mr Kola Awodeye, Senior Advocate of Nigeria.

We conducted a survey of almost 200 lawyers who are practising in the Lagos High Court, and one of the questions that we asked, amongst other questions, was, “What is your perception of the integrity of judges in Lagos state?”  89% of the 200 lawyers that we interviewed said that they believe that judges were notoriously corrupt.

Yet, from 1967, when the state was founded, up until 1999, when we conducted the survey, no judge or magistrate had been reprimanded. Not one for a corrupt act. None.

So all the records were clean, while the perception of those who worked at the courts was that they were notoriously corrupt. We then decided that we had to have an approach.

As I said, we started with the judiciary and the legislature, both men and women. My meeting with the judiciary, the seven most senior judges of the judiciary at the time, was to even find out what exactly the problem was. At the time, they were earning N67,000 a month,  and for a judge, that was poor. I asked the question, as we sat around the table, Justice X, “You have this son in America, how much do you pay in school fees?” And he would say, “$12,000,” and I would write it down. I asked about the one at the University of Lagos, and he would tell me.

Then one of the judges tapped me and said, “Learned Attorney, you know this is rubbish. You are pretending to pay us, and we, too, are pretending to work. You know for sure there’s no way N67,000 can send a child to university in the U.S.”

So we decided that there was a remuneration problem, and we were very sure we had to deal with that.

I’m not going to give an example. Another judge said to me, “My daughter fell sick one morning, and my wife called me at home to say, I have taken the baby to the hospital and in order to admit her, we had to pay them N17,000. I went to the hospital and pleaded with the manager at the hospital to allow me to pay a part of the amount of money and then go back to raise the rest of the money.”

He said the hospital refused and told him they had stabilised her, but if they were going to admit her, he must pay N17,000.

He said while he was still there, a gentleman behind him came up and said, “Look, don’t worry yourself, I know how you feel. I’ll pay the N17,000.”

He said it was as if an angel came from heaven and the N17,000 was paid. The judge said, “As I walked back to the car, my assistant said the man who paid the money was in my court the previous week and was a plaintiff. I didn’t know if I should go back and refund the money, but I had to choose my daughter’s survival.” It was obvious to us that we needed to deal with corruption or the things that push judges to corruption.

So, to cut a long story short, we decided on three major areas:

The appointment of judges, the process was made merit-based. We then started conducting competency tests to make sure that if you’re going to be a judge, then you must be competent.

We also required the Nigerian Bar Association at the time to provide character references for each judge.  In 2001, we appointed 26 new judges from diverse backgrounds and fresh perspectives into the judiciary.  The majority of them were very young people. Two-thirds of them were female because we were under the impression that if you appoint women, they were less likely to be corrupt than men. We also did extensive background checks.

Remuneration, as I said, was important, and to address judges’ compensation, we brought in human resources experts to address what would be a living wage for judges. So their salaries were quadrupled. We raised their salaries four times and then established a policy that every judge in Lagos State must be given a comfortable home, not official quarters. When you are appointed a judge, you will be given a home that is yours for life. You choose where you want, whether it’s in Lekki, Ikoyi or Ikeja. They were also entitled to cars, which were replaced every four years.

Then, for the discipline, we established an independent process for investigating corruption with the National Judicial Council taking charge, avoiding local interference.

In the first year of the reform, we had sacked 22 magistrates, and 3 judges were also sacked on the recommendation of the NJC.

By the year 2000, a follow-up survey was done on 200 lawyers following up from the survey that was conducted in 1999.  0 percent of lawyers at the time believed that the judiciary was corrupt, compared to 89% in 1999.

That was the report of the judicial sector reform in Lagos State, and it was published by the World Bank titled Repairing a Car While the Engine Is Running.

Without political will, even the judiciary cannot reform itself.  When I say political will, I refer to the Executive arm of government. The Lagos State Judicial reform is a small segment; there’s no way of saying that necessarily answers the question of how to make a bigger reform. But it’s important just in terms of how the reform was carried out and why it was successful.

So Soji and I started Integrity in our thirties, and I was 38 at the time, so he was younger. And of course, much more daring because he was a younger man. He didn’t have his grey beard then!

We believe that we could be that generation that would be the end of corruption in our nation. We really strongly held that hope, but evidently, that is not the case.

But the dream is still alive and perhaps even burns brighter today than the day when the organisation was founded. And that paradox of this great country with a stubborn perception of corruption is not merely a contradiction; it is a crossroads for us as a country. The reality of what is possible, and I believe that it is entirely possible, but much remains to be done.

There’s a lot that we must do. But the past 30 years have proved something, something important, that the work of Integrity is not futile, it is foundational and catalytic. There must be innovation and creativity around building anti-corruption systems for the private and public sectors. And there must be constant reminders that integrity or lack of integrity will defeat the greatest dreams.

As we mark this 30-year milestone, I believe it’s time to reaffirm a simple but powerful truth that our country’s destiny, and the destinies of many of us and the businesses that we run, cannot be divorced from integrity.

Our prosperity, our global standing, our security, our national cohesion, all hinge on integrity. Thirty years ago, Integrity began as a bold idea by two young, idealistic guys; today, it stands as a testament to what perseverance, conviction, and courage can achieve.

But the next 30 years will depend on all of us; our choices, our leadership, and our willingness to insist on a Nigeria where integrity is not the exception, but the norm. That work continues, and I believe the dream endures, and together we can build that Nigeria that our talent, our promise and our future deserve.

Thank you very much.