Monrovia – The student group, Students Against Corruption (SAC), in collaboration with the Liberia Anti Corruption Commission (LACC) with support from the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) has climaxed its National Anti-corruption debate for 10 public schools from Bong, Margibi and Montserrado Counties.
Report by Gerald C. Koinyeneh – [email protected]
SAC is a local non-governmental organization working with several public schools to create awareness against corruption in high schools and the communities.
Speaking to reporters at the grand finale of the competition held at the United States Embassy accredited near Monrovia on Friday, January 12, the LACC Commissioner for Education and Prevention, Aba Hamilton Dolo said the LACC was delighted to work with the group of young people in creating robust awareness in the fight against corruption.
She said for too long the fight against corruption has been focused on the investigation and persecution aspects, and it was now time to shift more attention to the education and preventive activities.
“If you look at the fight against corruption, I think we focus mostly on investigation and persecution.
Whereas those two elements are critical in the fight against corruption, I think if we begin to lift our preventive activities, we will be able to curtail the risk, abuse and theft in the system.
We all know that there is a common saying that prevention is better than cure,” Madam Dolo intoned.
She explained that since she came across SAC on social media, they have forged a robust partnership and she pledged the commission’s support to the group’s anti-corruption campaign.
Working with the young people is one of the many tools in the fight against the national menace, she said.
“You have the younger generation who will come and be future leaders.”
“We want to tackle them and change their minds at the early stage.”
“We want to do the intervention at the younger level with our young people so that when they come into public office, they will already have a renewed mindset that corruption will not be as pervasive as see in our society today.”
Daniel Dennis, Executive Director of SAC, thanked LACC, UNMIL and the participating schools for the success of the tournament.
He hailed the establishment of the integrity clubs at the 10 public schools including the Charles Henry Dewey High School, Gertrude Yancy High School and the Sime Darby High School in Bomi County and in Montserrado County, the D. Twe Memorial School, William V. S Tubman High School, G. W. Gibson High School and the Paynesville Community High School and also in Margibi County the Liggo Lappy High School, Harbel Multilateral High School and the Dolo Town Public School.
“The purpose is to have these clubs established on the various schools campus and to help reduce the incidence of corruption in school and in the society.
This is because if each of these students are from a home and they take the message back to their communities and their peers and tell them that corruption is actually a societal problem, we will have a situation where corruption will be minimize if not eradicated,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Dolo Town Public School emerged as the winner of the debate completion, followed by the Paynesville Community School as runner up.