Corruption - Implications to Sustainable Economic Growth and Consequences to Poverty Alleviation ... Nigeria

Abstract

Nigeria: Corruption has been identified as one of the most aggrieving concepts hampering human and economic progress in developing countries; a finding particularly relevant to the Nigerian case. Corruption exacerbates economic growth, reduces economic efficiency and development despite the availability of enormous human and natural resources in the country of investigation. The cardinal thrust of the present paper is to inquire about corruption in the Nigerian context under appreciation of the country’s recent, present and anticipated political, demographical and economic development. Particular tribute was paid to the assessment of phenomenon specific causes and effects arising and resulting from corruption. The present dissertation seeks to examine the causal relationships between corruption, income inequality and poverty. To this avail the researcher combined findings deduced from the standard corruption theory (Klitgaard’s basic corruption formula) with results obtained from quantitative research under inclusion of critical psychological factors facilitating occurrence of corruption as observed at and affecting virtually all levels and sectors of the Nigerian society. Particular attention was paid to contemporary factors, affecting occurrence and explaining different levels of corruption, such as colonial heritage and religious conditioning, with the latter identified as major contemporary element; a variable providing for incriminating evidence about corruption, academically and context specifically, however, infrequently evaluated.

Popular corruption perception indices served as basing point for the in-depth inquiry of frequencies, perceptions and corruption experiences on the part of the Nigerian populous. Corruption experiences were identified as context specific drivers, with the latter accounting for and reflecting the true levels of corruption within a society; as ‑corruption experience- stands for the sum of frequencies plus corruption perceptions.

Hence, corruption experiences reflect the total amount of corruption within a given society, which is expressed and measurable via experiences by the affected citizenry, rather than based on corruption perceptions, which conceptually suffer from lack in explanatory power due to the fact, that indices based on corruption perception solely measure the aspect of perceived levels of public sector corruption. Thus, the present paper focuses on capturing on experienced levels of corruption and their implications towards successful decrease or the reasons for persistence of corruption, income inequalities and poverty.

Key words:

Nigeria; corruption; inequality; development; colonialism; ethics; religion; selective moral disengagement; self-Actualization