Abstract
Available research evidences suggest that corruption has (negative) impact on development and national interest in general. This may explain why ‘corruption control’ has been one of the watch phrases among political office seekers in Nigeria over the years. However, relatively few scholarship have interrogated Nigerian military government’s narratives on corruption vis-a-vis their actual contribution to corruption control within their 29 years of leadership. The thrust of this paper therefore is to interrogate corruption in Nigerian military coup speeches and to evaluate their actual contribution to corruption control from 1966-1999. The study was anchored on correspondence theory of truth and employed content analysis and historical (output) analysis methods. The data were collected from the six coup speeches using coding sheet and the quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic/historical (output) analysis respectively. The study found that Nigerian military leaders set relatively minimal agenda on corruption in their coup speeches and emphasized the depth of corruption in the nation’s national life; explained the negative impact of corruption on the nation’s development and national interest; and promised to eliminate corruption. Rhetoric and performance evaluation analysis result also suggests that Nigerian Military leaders indeed instituted relatively sufficient outputs like policies, programmes, inquiries and decrees among others to curb corruption within the period. However, the study observed that corruption grew all through the military regimes. The paper therefore concludes that even though military government acknowledged the danger of corruption; introduced necessary outputs to curb the menace; there was hardly satisfactory corresponding practical evidence in corruption reduction within the period. To this end, the paper recommends that the military should be kept out of the nation’s politics if the country will ever attain a status of corruption free society.
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call