Abstract
Nigeria appears to be under siege from the cankerworm of corruption that has continued to retard the fabric of its development. While it appears that the worst hit by the problem of corruption are the ordinary people, the under privileged class; the institutional weaknesses induced by corruption have worked to ensure that the privileged class also suffer from its consequences. Fast rewinds into pre 2015, two issues were at the centre as far as the current anti-corruption effort is concerned. Firstly, there was the attempt to redefine the boundaries of corruption as contained in a remark by President Goodluck Jonathan that stealing is not corruption. Secondly, the gang-up by the opposition outside and within the ruling PDP, which coalesced to form the APC to, among others, fight corruption. Now that the 'chips' are 'down', the body language of some of the political elites towards the fight against corruption appears to have changed. This study distillated these various discordant tunes and concluded, amongst others that the fight against corruption has rekindled public perception on the phenomenon of corruption and is likely to further shape political events especially in the build up to the country's 2019 election.
Highlights
A defining decimal in the interrogation of state versus citizen relationship is the social contract theory, which ensconced the responsibility of the respective parties to the contract and the need on both sides to abide by the terms, as a necessary precondition in ensuring the ultimate survival of the state and the citizenry
In interrogating the sources of the politicization of the war against corruption, it needs to be understood that while many of these insinuations could flippantly fit into the narratives of ‘corruption fighting back’, a phrase often credited to President Buhari and Professor Patrick Lumumba, Kenya’s foremost former anti-corruption crusader, the specificity of this problem needs to be further interrogated in the very nature of the Nigerian state and its corollaries
The above analysis provided an overview of corruption and its ascendency in Nigeria’s national life, with the trends in the war against corruption by the administration of President Buhari, forming its kernels
Summary
A defining decimal in the interrogation of state versus citizen relationship is the social contract theory, which ensconced the responsibility of the respective parties to the contract and the need on both sides to abide by the terms, as a necessary precondition in ensuring the ultimate survival of the state and the citizenry. The third issue is in reference to the rampant cases of theft and brazen looting of state’s resources by private individuals in cahoots with government officials in the immediate past administration of President Goodluck Jonathan This development was, no doubt, in the front burner of the myriad of discourses (prominent of which were the alleged non remittance of over $20 billion proceeds of oil sales into the federation account; the alleged diversion of funds meant for the execution of military operation in the North East against Boko Haram), in the lead up to and the eventual defeat of the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2015 Presidential Elections. While the sixth part of the paper overviewed the trends in the politicization of the anti-corruption project, the seventh part of the paper provided concluding remarks and recommendations of the study
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