CORRUPTION AND GOOD GOVERNANCE CHALLENGE IN NIGERIA: WHAT ARE WE NOT DOING RIGHT?

Abstract

Nigeria, like many countries of the world, is bedeviled by the challenge of corruption and good governance and it appears that Nigeria and indeed African countries are the most battered of these two concepts. While corruption tears down a nation, good governance builds and can serve as a check on corruption. Unfortunately, good governance continues to elude Nigeria from the military era to over twenty years of civil rule. This has encouraged the lack of development the country is facing since its independence in 1960, even in the face of its rich natural and human resources. The hazards posed by corruption and poor governance have distorted the balance in all the sectors. This has made successive governments adopt various strategies to fight the menace of corruption in the past decades. However, despite all measures, which include good legal and institutional frameworks, the war against corruption in Nigeria continues to be a mirage and quite unrealistic. This raises the question of what are we not doing right in the fight against corruption in Nigeria? To answer this question, this research is divided into three broad Parts. Part A gives a general idea of the concepts of corruption and good governance; Part B tries to review some of our practices in the fight against corruption from the military era till date. And Part C identifies certain failures in the ways we are fighting corruption in Nigeria. Based on these, certain recommendations are formulated, which include a re-orientation on how Nigerians see corruption.