Fantastic Corruption and the Underdevelopment of Nigeria: The Spectators Paradigm

Abstract

A lot of hypotheses and theories have been adduced to analyse and explain the fact of endemic corruption and its deleterious effects on the development imperatives of Nigeria, where some of these explicating assumptions have tended toward overuse and monotony, hence the need for new ideas regarding both descriptive endeavors and prescribed remedies. In all these, Nigeria, despite its supposedly flourishing potential has found it difficult to achieve the level of development that is proportional to its human and capital endowments, not as much as by other reasons than by the fact of the recycling of an insincere class of leaders who, either as former military or civilian administrators, promised to fight corruption before taking office, but do exactly the opposite, and or are enmeshed in worse corruption controversies than the previous regimes. This paper innovates on both the conceptual exposition of corruption as was captured by the former Prime Minister of the UK, David Cameron and the utilization of an evolving theory-bound paradigm – the Spectators Approach to explain Nigeria’s leadership behavioral schemes in cajoling the masses to vote for them, but not doing much in line with their earlier sold promises/manifestoes, after gaining office. The paper recommends, among others, that all former presidents should be investigated and called to account regarding all direct and indirect corruption allegations levelled against them and that they should be tried where found guilty, otherwise, there would be no persuasive deterrent for future Nigerian leaders.