The Center for Awareness on Justice and Accountability, CAJA, in collaboration with the Penlight Center for New Media Innovation, an NGO arm of the DAILY NIGERIAN newspaper, honored a police officer, Daniel Amah, on Wednesday with the maiden “CAJA Integrity Award” 2022 for rejecting a $200,000 bribe from a suspect in Kano.
The award ceremony, which was held at the Bristol Palace hotel in Kano, also featured a paper presentation on “promoting integrity as a way of fighting corruption” by Professor Habu Mohammed, the director of BUK’s Aminu Kano Center for Democratic Studies, Mambayya House.
Speaking on the significance of the event, CAJA’s executive director, Kabir Dakata, said it aimed at identifying, recognizing, and honoring citizens who distinguished themselves by showing exemplary integrity and leadership in fighting corruption in Nigeria.
He added that the choice of ACP Daniel Amah was arrived at after thorough scrutiny and assessment by the management of CAJA.
According to him, the project also aimed to reawaken the lost hope in Nigeria for a better future and debunk the notion that an average police officer is corrupt.
The guest speaker and a former executive secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS, Yusuf Usman, while reminiscing his battles with corruption at NHIS, encouraged Nigerians not to give up in the fight against corruption.
He commended Mr Amah for being a good ambassador for the Nigerian police force.
In his presentation, the director of the Aminu Kano Center for Democratic Studies, Habu Muhammad-Fagge, stressed that integrity is not only about honesty but the quality of the person’s character.
“Integrity is a safeguarded and personal trait that is built over time through positive socialization and the development of social values.
“People with integrity neither compromise standards nor circumvent conventional means of goal attainment. People with integrity sacrifice today for the tomorrows of others. A person with integrity thrives under certain circumstances because his powers lie in his honesty, wisdom, life, and threat.
“Integrity is self-respect and respect for others. It can be lost completely, and when this happens, it can be hardly recovered.
“Men and women of integrity are impartial, pragmatic, and have their ways when others refuse to hear the truth.
“The actions of men and women of integrity did not constitute hostility or an expression of fear but involved the art of exercising caution for rational choice.
“Integrity is humility in disguise; leadership without integrity therefore represents the highest form of lawlessness and bad governance.
“If you look at these qualities, you will know that Nigeria is not bereft of people of integrity. the only thing I can assure you is that people with Integrity are very scarce.
“Particularly in an environment where money is being worshipped,” he submitted.
The Inspector General of Police, represented by a deputy commissioner of police, Abubakar Zubairu, appreciated the organizers for their efforts to project the force in a positive light.
He however noted that there are a lot of officers who have dedicated integrity and patriotism in the discharge of their work.
“I want to thank the organizers of this occasion for trying to project the police in a positive light. As the ED (CAJA) mentioned, the police are known for all the bad things in the country. We are corrupt, we are inefficient, and we don’t even know what we are accepted to do.
“We thank God CAJA is recognizing one of us, who has distinguished himself and been recognized by the president, and other organizations both within and outside the country.
“It is an eye-opener and an open statement that we have a lot of Daniel Itse Amah in the Nigerian police force.
“It’s just that they haven’t been recognized,” he added.
There were goodwill messages from the other security agencies, anti-corruption agencies, and civil society organizations.
