Corruption, Accountability, Good Governance

What you need to know

• Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power or public office for private gain. It is not limited to stealing money: it includes any decision taken for a personal benefit rather than on merit.
• Forms of corruption to be able to name: bribery and kickbacks, embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds, inflation and padding of contracts and budgets, over-invoicing, ghost workers on the payroll, nepotism and favouritism in appointments, extortion by officials and at checkpoints, electoral fraud, examination malpractice, certificate forgery, money laundering and conflict of interest.
• Causes: greed and the hunger for quick wealth; the social status given to wealthy people without anyone asking the source; weak institutions and slow courts that make conviction unlikely; poor and irregular remuneration; poverty and unemployment; godfatherism, which requires an office holder to repay a sponsor; the high cost of elections, which must be recovered; secrecy in government business; and weak sanctions.
• Effects: roads, schools and hospitals that are paid for but never built or built badly; collapse of public services and the flight of those who can afford private alternatives; insecurity, because funds voted for security are diverted and because corrupt justice frees criminals; unemployment as investors avoid an unpredictable environment; brain drain; inequality; and damage to Nigeria's name abroad, which shows in the country's steady position near the bottom of the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index.
• The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission was created by the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act of 2000. It receives and investigates complaints of corruption against public officers, prosecutes offenders, and has the distinctive duty of examining the systems and procedures of public bodies to remove the loopholes that make corruption easy.
• The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, operating under its Act of 2004, investigates and prosecutes economic and financial crimes, traces and recovers proceeds of crime, and enforces Nigeria's money laundering and advance fee fraud laws. It is also the agency through which Nigeria cooperates with foreign countries on asset recovery.
• The Code of Conduct Bureau receives and keeps the asset declarations that the Constitution requires of every public officer on assumption of office, at the end of every four years and on leaving office. Where a declaration is false or the Code is breached, the Code of Conduct Tribunal tries the officer and can order removal from office and disqualification.
• Other institutions in the framework: the Public Complaints Commission, which acts as ombudsman for citizens wronged by administrative action; the Bureau of Public Procurement, which enforces due process in the award of federal contracts under the Public Procurement Act of 2007; the Fiscal Responsibility Commission; the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which publishes what the oil and mining sector pays and what government receives; and the Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation, whose reports feed the Public Accounts Committees of the National Assembly.
• The Freedom of Information Act of 2011 gives any person, without having to show any special interest, the right to request records held by a public institution. The institution must respond within seven days, extendable once by a further seven, and a refusal can be challenged in court. It is the single most useful legal tool a citizen has for holding government to account.
• The whistleblowing policy introduced by the Federal Ministry of Finance in December 2016 allows a person to report the concealment of public funds and to receive a percentage of any sum recovered. It is an administrative policy rather than an Act, and the absence of a comprehensive whistleblower protection law remains the standard criticism of it.
• Systems reforms matter as much as prosecutions. The Treasury Single Account consolidated government revenues into a single account at the Central Bank and ended the practice of agencies keeping float in commercial banks. The Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System removed large numbers of ghost workers. The Bank Verification Number tied bank accounts to biometrics. Open treasury portals publish daily payments.
• Accountability has two directions. Vertical accountability runs from government to the citizens, through elections, a free press, civil society and freedom of information. Horizontal accountability runs between institutions, through legislative oversight, the Auditor-General, the courts and the anti-corruption agencies. A strong system needs both.
• Good governance is usually described by eight attributes: participation, rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus orientation, equity and inclusiveness, effectiveness and efficiency, and accountability. Learn them as a list; they are frequently asked outright.
• What the ordinary citizen can do is examinable and should be answered concretely: refuse to give or take bribes, insist on and keep receipts, report corrupt demands to the ICPC or EFCC, use the Freedom of Information Act to request records of a project in your community, attend budget town halls, vote on record rather than on money or ethnicity, and stop celebrating wealth whose source nobody can explain.