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POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0     BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Corruption is unarguably one of the most topical issues in the discourses of the deepening crisis and contradictions of post-independence Nigeria. The level of attention devoted to it ·may not only be due to its rapid and unprecedented expansion to all facet of human Endeavour and its menacing consequences, but also because of the seeming fecklessness of successive attempts at combating it. The problem has become so endemic that, as (Omotola 2006; 2004) has pointed out, one can begin to talk about the political culture of corruption in the country. To be sure, Transparency International, an international non-governmental organization that is reputed for its exploits in its measurement of countries' Corruption Perception Index, ranked Nigeria as the most corrupt among the 52 countries ranked in 1996 and 1997.

This could be regarded as of little significance as the country was then under the firm authoritarian grip of the military. The hope that the advent of democracy in 1999 would mark an appreciable breakaway from the past, including the country's perennial problem of corruption, largely remains in the pipeline. Nigeria, in·what seems senseless squandering of hopes, ranked as the most corrupt in 2002, the second most corrupt in 2003, and the third most corrupt in 2004 (Omotola, 2006). These findings point to the fact that the anti-corruption war has hardly made a positive impact in the country, perhaps due to the depth of the phenomenon.

It ·is important to know that ‘corrupt’ acts are displayed at various sectors in Nigeria, but this work would focus more attention on exposing and proffering solutions to various means of corruption in the governmental/political body in Nigeria, both in the Federal, state and local levels, as decisions made at these levels affects every facet of life.

Nigeria is rich   in natural resources, but the problem lies with the technique at which the political leaders manage and allocate the profits realized from these resources as they are directed to the wrong sources because of the thought of retaining a portion of the budget for their personal uses. The nature reflected by these leaders is therefore that of greed; and it is evident as we see a leader deciding to carry out a particular project at the expense of another because of his/her vision of generating profits from the budget set aside for the initial project for their personal pockets.

Political corruption is the major spectrum orchestrates the descending spiral on Nigeria’s economy. This vicious act is the use of government power to overawe less privilege people for private gain. According to Amundsen (1999) political corruption is the manipulation of political institutions procedure which influences the institutions of government and the political system that frequently leads to institutional decay. There is no gain in saying that political corruption is the exploitation of political authority to clinch and accumulate clandestine gain in order to stick with the power. In essence, this is a form of corruption engendered by assemblage of people that one way or the other gain ground and link to the political godfather. The stance of political godfatherism as the start all, be all and known all the strategies and techniques otherwise known as game of blood is the highest level of corruption in the political theory.

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