Nigeria is endangered with many unresolved problems, but the underlining nature of corruption is troubling. The physical presences of the damming effects of this monster can be seen and felt by even the lunatic on the street, inmates in the prison all whose welfare funds has been stolen, it has led to slow movement of files in offices, police extortion at check points, and slow traffics on the highways, port congestion,electoral fraud, poor public services like electricity, medical, ghost workers, amongst others. The issue keeps reoccurring in both informal and formal discussion in Nigeria and it will hardly go away!
Though corruption is a universal problem, and it’s as old as man, because ancient civilization had traces of widespread corruption from Roman Empire the Greek dominance to the British reign. However it is not equal in every society, especially those that allows the rule of law to operate.
Since it’s a global phenomenon, it is then not peculiar to Nigeria, however its apandemic in Nigeria (and in many other African and Asian nations); and this is worrisome because the leaders as well as the followers are corrupt, but most at times hands are pointed only at the leadership.With this blame game on for many decades;the question should be can Nigeria overcome the challenges of endemic and unabated corruption facing us?
An unresponsive public service and a public procurement system (public financial management system) that seems to largely work in favour of “politically connected” individuals, have also contributed to the high incidence of corruption in Nigeria.
The answer is Yes even with the extensive legal, policy and institutional framework for the fight against corruption in Nigeria, though this framework faces a number of challenges including misinterpretation and misunderstanding of the legal, policy and institutional framework, capacity and resource gaps and a lack of political goodwill against corruption.
Before the return to Democracy in 1999, the military were seen as the perpetrator of corruption; though many agencies have been identified as corrupt in Nigeria, like PHCN, NNPC, Police, Government Public service rendering organization, and the educational institutions. And the Police were leading the chat, however with the events of oil subsidy bringing many dirty acts in the oil sector to the fore-front; it shows that the corruption in the Police is a child’s play.
However this discus is not about which organization is the highest, or how we got here but to show that the Nation can overcome challenges of corruption facing public financial management. The pattern of the fight against corruption so far is taking scapegoating and character assassination, however experience suggests that there are risks to addressing corruption through scapegoating and character assassination. For the fight against corruption to make impact, Nigerians general population must be re-orientated to a better value system.Most especially the re-orientation of the young people to a good value system should be a top priority in this anti-graft war.Because Nigerians have for long been living on the survival instinct (winners takes it all).
Next having armed the citizens with ethics and virtue, the nation should then set out to reduce personal gains to corrupt behavior with introduction of sanctions (tough penalties on the culprits). Enacting tough rules with strong enforcement can deter corrupt behavior. The grantingof too much discretionary powers to public officers in position to grant favor to others (businessmen in particular), such as officer who issue out licenses and passports. There is the temptation to be corrupt when the officials who have a lot of power are themselves poor, so their renumeration package should be healthy enough.
With the availability of many laws/legislations to fight corruption in Nigeria (including those crafted by the international organizations), already, what just remains is full implementation. But the most importance is the political will, to fight corruption in home countries as noted by Peter Eigen, chairman of the watchdog group, Transparency International.Robert McNamara remarks at the end of the Second Global Forum on Fighting Corruption and Safeguarding Integrity at The Hague May 31, 2001, is the crux of the matter; that every country has to determine its own priorities on the war against corruption. But each society should focus on concrete actions that can yield measurable results, and publiclyreport whether results are being achieved.
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