The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), is to partner with the Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC, to engage school children across the country in its fight against corruption.

The chairman of the EFCC, Mr Ibrahim Lamorde, said the initiative involved supporting selected schools with N1 million each to execute self-help projects to impact on their environment.

“The youth are a veritable ally in the anti-corruption crusade and must be taken along right from their early stages. Thus we have taken steps to involve them in the fight through various programmes that have been initiated by the Commission one of which is the establishment of integrity groups across schools”, he said.

While congratulating the benefitting schools, Lamorde added that the primary role of these clubs was to build future leaders with integrity, honesty, patriotism, and high moral values as a basis for social change in Nigeria.

On his part, the representative of UBEC and Director, Social Mobilisation in the Commission, Ibrahim Sulaiman informed the EFCC that the self- help project is a World Bank- funded initiative that began in 2002 and which has so far intervened in over 20,000 schools across the Federation.

The Director further said that the N1million given to the schools was to encourage the communities where these schools are cited to own the projects, because only schools with broad -based management committees that involve the community benefit from the scheme.
The eleven schools that have benefitted so far from the N1 Million scheme are: Model Highway School,Calabar; Edo College, Benin City; Oyemekun Grammar School, Akure; Community Secondary School, Wadata, Benue State; Government Secondary School Akwanga, Nassarawa State; Government Junior Secondary School Kurmin Mashi , Kaduna State; Government Girls Secondary School, Wammako, Sokoto; Model Secondary School, Donga, Taraba State; Government Technical College, Abakaliki; Queen’s School 1, Enugu and Mashafa Community School, Abuja