Food Aid and Corruption

More than 85% of people belief that adopted when appropriate methods methods are taken corruption can be curbed. 12% had no opinions on the matter and the remaining 3% disagree with that assessment.

Also, when the households were asked to state two things, they want to change in order to reduce corruption, most sighted or recommended:
i. The employment of competent officials,
ii. Convict the culprits with the full force of the law,
iii. Ensure transparency in the distribution process,
iv. Advocate attitudinal change,
v. Empower the citizens (especially youths) to revolt against such practices and
vi. Requested the government to intervene in order to reduce these corruption practices.

Another perception indicator on corruption collected in the survey is perception on the level of corruption with the food aid. The chart above shows that about 23% of the households rate the level of corruption with the food aid as very high while about 16% and 21% of these households rate it moderately and low, respectively. In addition, 55% reported that their rating is based on personal experience, about 22% of respondents said their assessment was based on discussion with colleagues or others and about 3% said it was based on information received from the media, as seen in Figure 8D. Taking together these results highlight that the COVID-19 Food aid was not free of corrupt practices.

Another information collected, was whether respondents are aware of instance where staff are warned to desist from corrupt practices. As seen in the chart above, about 65% of the households interviewed were not aware of any staff been caution on corruption practices during the distribution of the COVID-19 food items. Only 5% attested that staffs were warned on corruption practices.

About 38% of the households interviewed did not believed that there were no corruption practices during the distribution process of the COVID-19 food aid by the government. About 4% believed that there were corruption practices during the procurement of the COVID-19 food aid items, 8% sighted such practices ware present during the transportation to distribution of these items, while about 32% of them said it was more common during the distribution of the items in the community. In fact, almost 29% of the households were aware of such practices in their respective collection points. However, almost half (46%) don’t know about the presence of corruption practices during the distribution processes.

Another perception indicator on corruption collected in the survey is perception on the level of corruption with the food aid. The chart above shows that about 23% of the households rate the level of corruption with the food aid as very high while about 16% and 21% of these households rate it moderately and low, respectively. In addition, 55% reported that their rating is based on personal experience, about 22% of respondents said their assessment was based on discussion with colleagues or others and about 3% said it was based on information received from the media. Taking together these results highlight that the COVID-19 Food aid was not free of corrupt practices.

More than 55% of those surveyed said they don’t know if the Covid-19 taskforce is corrupt. 22% believe there was some varying degrees of involvement.

The survey also looked at the knowledge of what strategies were adopted by their community to curb the COVID-19 Menace. As seen in the chart above, about 7% of the of the respondents indicated that their communities expose perpetrators, about 6% of the respondents said their community puts in place internal as part of the routine system and 5% of respondents think that communities liaising with the law enforcement agencies to curb the menace with COVID-19 food aids can curb the menace with the COVID-19 aid. However, 41% of the households interviewed revealed that their respective communities did none of the strategies to curb the menace with COVID-19 food aids, which shows that overall, not much is being done at the community level to tackle corruption with government assistance at the community level.

The chart above shows that 45% of those who recommended the government and law enforcement agencies to adopt these strategies in curbing the mismanagement of COVID-19 food aid distribution strongly agreed that their respective measures identified above can be addressed. Specifically, about 38% of the respondents only agreed while about 4% never agreed at all. In addition, about 85% agreed or strongly agreed that the performance will be improved if these measures are address, as seen in chart 'Belief on the Extent to Which the Adoption of Appropriate Measures to Curb Corruption Can Improve Performance'. However, about 3% are pessimistic that these measures will improve performance.

Another information collected, was whether respondents are aware of instance where staff are warned to desist from corrupt practices. As seen in the above chart, about 65% of the households interviewed were not aware of any staff been caution on corruption practices during the distribution of the COVID-19 food items. Only 5% attested that staffs were warned on corruption practices. In addition, 11% of the households interviewed exposed that almost all (or most) of the officials were involved in corruption practices, about 18% of the households said only few officials were involved while 16% of them revealed that hardly any officials were involved in such practices, as shown in Figure 5D.