In the cesspool of corruption: The challenges of national development and the dilemma of anti-graft agencies in Nigeria

Most theoretical and analytical discourse on national development identified the virulent nature of corruption as development curse. In Nigeria, as in many other soft states, the epidemic nature of corruption and its destructive impacts on the national development has received wider attention in both national and international mass media. Similarly, scholarly literature on the culture of sleaze in many of these countries revealed the depth of the disease. Nigeria, undoubtedly remain at the front page of countries under the siege of sleaze. Its profile as one of the most corrupt nations feeds largely into the crisis of its national development. Conceptually and theoretically, corruption encompassed very distinct social problems of mismanagement of public resources, weak and dysfunctional government institutions, complex relationships between political actors and public moral and economic assets. Indeed, the curse of corruption has assumed more than tantalizingly simple act of sleaze but a clear, complex and contested reality of national underdevelopment. It explains to a large extent the abuse of public power and misuse of entrusted power for private gain in the context of attaining national development. In this paper therefore, a continuation of the literature on corruption that espouses the interplay between the culture of greedy sleaze and national development is given bolder attention. The paper analyses a broad understandings of corruption from the analytical usefulness of an effective national development imperative. It further explains the interventionist roles of the ambitious anti-graft agencies and their contemporary challenges

Seized by Sleaze: The Siege of Corruption and a Search for Workable Options in Nigeria

The Nigerian state presents a contradictory scenario. It is a country of immense human and material resources, yet it remains poor and grossly underdeveloped. Studies have identified two major obstacles to Nigerian’s development: widespread corruption, and the lingering money laundering scheme. Since gaining independence in 1960, Nigeria has been enduring corruption with little or no serious efforts at combating it. Corruption has become a popular language in Nigerian governance to the extent that an average government political official in Nigeria is generally believed to be corrupt in one way or the other, thereby making Nigeria one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Given the foregoing, this paper examines the phenomenon of corruption in Nigeria. It argues that the prevalence of corruption at every level impedes the prospect of development and growth in the country. It concludes that for Nigeria to make any meaningful growth as a country, corruption must be vehemently opposed and genuinely fought. It then offers workable options on how to combat what has turned out to be a national scourge