The Genealogy of Corruption
Where does corruption come from? How did we Nigerians acquire this incredible notoriety as one of the most corrupt countries in the world?
Let me dispel one popular misconception. When, at their moment of despair, our people speak of “the Nigerian factor”, they are invariably referring to the inherent tendency for corrupt behaviour that is said to be in our DNA. This presumes that this tendency to corruption is in-built in our genotype. I believe this to be both untrue and unfair. Corruption is not inbuilt in the Nigerian character. The eminent American economist, Wolfgang Friedrich Stolper, was one of the architects of Nigeria’s first National Development Plan.
He was a regular visitor to our country during the years 1959-1962. From his autobiographical accounts, Inside an Independent Nigeria (Ashgate 2003), Stolper describes the Nigerian civil service that he met as the best in the developing Commonwealth, well ahead of India, Malaysia, Singapore and Ghana. He interacted with eminent Nigerians such as Pius Okigbo, Simeon Adebo, Jerome Udoji, Abdulazeez Atta, Ali Akilu and Ojetunji Aboyade, all of them men of sterling qualities. An émigré from Vienna, Austria, Stolper was known to be loose with words. He described the Head of the Western civil service of the time, Simeon Adebo, as “one of the greatest human beings I have ever met”.
The jurists of that generation were also exceptional men of distinction. They could have served in the supreme court of any advanced industrial nation. I remember men like Adetokunbo Ademola, Louis Nwachukwu Mbanefo, Taslim Olawale Elias, Daddy Onyeama, Atanda Fatai Williams, Kayode Eso, Chukwudifu Oputa, Akinola Aguda, Mohammed Bello, George Sowemimo, Ayo Gabriel Irikefe and Idris Legbo Kutigi, to name but a few. No, corruption is not a Nigerian.
Several factors, in my opinion, explain the prevalence of the phenomenon of corruption in a society.
First, globalisation and internationalisation have made corruption to thrive more than before. In a time of rapid internationalisation of culture, communications finance and technology, money has become the god of the age. An American journalist once accorded a member of the Taliban in Afghanistan as to why they were all obsessed with owning glistening Toyota Landcruisers when they claim to hate everything Western. His reply was simple: “Allah prefers Landcruisers for Jihad”. Niger Delta warlords who claim to be fighting for “justice” for their people are all obsessed with owning the most expensive toys that money can buy. Some of them have private jets.
In democracies old and new — as well as in tyrannies — what the Canadian political philosopher Crawford Macpherson describes as the ethic of ‘possessive individualism’ has become the defining ethos of our era. Money has become everything. It defines the so-called “American Dream”. The love of money is not only the root of evil; it is the root of all corruption.
Second and linked to the preceding, is the collapse of our tradition value systems.
My grandparents were far from being the so-called ‘primitive peoples’ depicted in Western anthropological monographs. They were pious and highly enlightened people. Their sense of virtue ethics was strong. At their feet I drank deep from the wisdom of the venerable ancestors. I still look upon those childhood years as the happiest of my life. Both grandfathers lived to a grand old age. I still look upon those childhood years as the happiest of my life. I do not subscribe to the doctrine of ancestor worship in any way, but I there is no decision of importance that I have ever made in my adult years without unconsciously asking myself if God and my grandparents would have approved of it.
Contrast that disappearing world with what we have today; a world where our youths do not even know who they are, not to talk of where they are coming from. Societal values have broken down. Add to this the crisis in the family as an institution – a world of broken homes, single mothers and absent and sometimes unknown, fathers. Many of our young people have no one to turn to and no one to learn from. Consequently, they derive their moral compass from Google and Facebook, from Nollywood and from the dregs of Western culture.
Some people have dated the moral collapse of our society to the time the Gowon administration handed over missionary schools to the government in the seventies. The mission schools in which some of us were trained, were second to none in the inculcation of excellence, character and learning. Nigeria has never recovered from it. The prevalence indiscipline, drugs, violence, sexual deviance, cultism and criminality among the youths has been a major factor in the making of the corrupt society that ours has become today.
Thirdly, and linked to the above, is the clash of values. The eminent sociologist Peter Ekeh wrote a famous essay on what he termed “the two publics”. He propounded the theory that Africans live in two worlds; one deriving from colonially inspired modernity and the other from African traditional kinship values. These two worlds, according Ekeh, are in perpetual tension with each other, often resulting in all sorts of societal maladies. For example, the emergence of the post-colonial state in independent Africa never totally won the allegiance of ordinary people.
They continue to view the state with a high level of scepticism. For many of our people, it is not considered immoral if you defraud the state to help your people. Anyone who steals from government and uses the spoils to help his people is considered a hero and not a villain. And given our convoluted values, if you held a high position and never used it to amass wealth, your people are likely to believe that you committed robbery against them worthy of treason.
Fourthly, in divided societies such as ours, corruption thrives because there is no shared sense of community and no commonly shared moral purpose. The American social scientist Robert Putnam has done work of original importance on the role of social capital in economic development. He understands social capital as the residual trust and shared interests and values that glue diverse peoples together.
In our leadership traditions, nation building has hardly ever featured. Ever leader that comes to the saddle of power brings with him a private agenda. As a consequence, there has been an erosion of trust among our people. And it goes without saying that a divided house cannot long endure the storms and vicissitudes of time. And because we lack common ideals and a shared sense of nationhood, we are not able to marshal the moral capital to defeat the cankerworm of corruption.
Fifth, public choice theory provides yet another explanation for corruption. When a government official decides to engage in corrupt behaviour, we can safely presume that he does soon the basis of rational calculations. He would have calculated that the returns from corrupt behaviour outweigh both the chances of being caught and costs of punishment if they were every caught. The only credible solution that will dissuade such rent-seeking behaviour is to maximise the possibilities and costs of being caught while inflicting higher levels of punishment, including, some would say, capital punishment for grand corruption.
Sixth, there is what is known as ‘the broken glass window’ theory. It is associated with the work of the eminent American political scientist James Q. Wilson. Wilson noted a phenomenon that many social scientists had not taken note. He noticed that even in the wealthiest residential neighbourhoods, if one broken window is neglected, chances are that a second one will be broken, and then a third and ad infinitum. Lawless people are always looking for broken windows.
It gives them a clue that there is no law in the area and that nobody cares. From broken windows, criminals, drug addicts and prostitutes begin to crowd the area. Before you know it, it has become a den of iniquity and lawlessness. James Wilson believes that normative breakdown occurs when authorities ignore the smallest cracks in normative behaviour. When authorities ignore little acts of corruption those acts will sooner or later mushroom into bigger ones and before you know it, chaos is unleashed upon the whole community.
Seventh, I believe that poor wages in the public sector have played their part in making corruption attractive. If we are transparently honest with ourselves, we would reach the sobering conclusion that the current official minimum wage of N18, 000 is not really a living wage in today’s Nigeria. In many of our states, some of the Governors are still complaining that they cannot afford to pay even that abysmal the minimum wage. What we are practising amounts to wage slavery. It is definitely sustainable. As a result, public sector workers feel no sense of obligation or commitment to their duties. Many civil servants ply other trades during office hours to make ends meet. There is enough evidence in economics to show that an adequate minimum wage is actually good for the economy. This is true of the United States as it is true of Britain, Germany and New Zealand.
Eighth, in countries where corruption is endemic, the absence of institutional controls and failure to prosecute and sentence means that corrupt behaviour is treated with not so much as a rap on the knuckles. In Nigeria, no member of the elite has ever spent 10 years behind bar for corruption or abuse of power. Nobody has ever truly suffered disgrace for defrauding the state. And no one has ever been banned from holding public office because of bribery, fraud, corruption or other high crimes of state. The lawyers and the judges will quickly rally around to get the criminals off the hook, so long as they get their cut. President was right when he said that the judiciary has become an obstacle in the war against corruption. The simple truth is that failure to punish has been the highest incentive for the perpetuation of impunity in our country today.
Ninth, the political economy of the rentier state has an inherent propensity to generate a market for corruption. Our oil dependent political economy has been based on collecting rent from multinational oil companies which is then shared out on a monthly basis between the three tiers of government according to an agreed formula. Much of the wealth from oil gave us the illusion of wealth which was not based on productivity or disciplined application. In addition, the Dutch disease syndrome was rampant. Oil exporting economies tend to have an in-built tendency to keep exchange rates artificially high. This discourages exports while stifling agriculture and manufacturing. The whole economy is geared towards importation and consumption rather than innovation and production. Government often imposes ineffectual controls and distortions which only serve to provide additional avenues for rent-seeking behaviour on the part of public officials. Ruling elites feel no obligation to be accountable to anyone. Whatever remains of the semblance of a Lockean social contract disappears. Systemic corruption becomes the norm since there is a widespread feeling that no one owes anything to anyone.
The economist Daron Acemoglu and political scientist James Robinson have co-authored a fascinating book, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (Crown Business 2012). They seek to explain why some nations are wealthy while others wallow in poverty reminiscent of the Middle Ages. They believe that the secret lies in the quality of leadership, institutions and the rule of law. They make a distinction between ‘extractive societies’ and ‘inclusive societies’.
Extractive societies are anchored on raw materials exploitation. The elites tend to be highly authoritarian in the exercise of power. While extractive societies may get lucky in experience a surge in wealth, much of it is fortuitous and unsustainable over time. Corruption and tyranny would tend to sap the energy of the people. Inclusive societies, on the other hand, are anchored on the creation of democratic institutions based on trust, accountability and the rule of law. Such societies discourage corruption incentivising hard work, discipline and a long-term view. Such an environment fosters growth and innovation, unlike the former.
Lastly, there is the problem that public-choice theorists term ‘path dependence’. Once a society is set on a given course, the collective mindset, culture, institutions and the orientation of dominant elites would tend to follow that trajectory, gathering a momentum of its own. This would seem to conform to Sir Isaac Newton’s first law of motion in physics which states: “In an initial reference frame, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a net force.”
Obadiah Mailafia