Combating corruption in Nigeria and the constitutional issues arising. Are they facilitators or inhibitors?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JFC-07-2015-0034 |
| Date | 03 October 2016 |
| Published date | 03 October 2016 |
| Pages | 700-724 |
| Author | Akume T. Albert |
| Subject Matter | Accounting & Finance,Financial risk/company failure,Financial crime |
Combating corruption in Nigeria
and the constitutional
issues arising
Are they facilitators or inhibitors?
Akume T. Albert
Department of Public Administration, Kaduna Polytechnic,
Kaduna, Nigeria
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper therefore is to identify and examine major issue-areas in law,
prominent among which are the Plea-Bargain and S308 Immunity Clause, and how they impact the
process of effectively combating corruption in Nigeria.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses documentary sources and analytical method to
examine the issues involved.
Findings – The identied issue-areas are inhibitors rather than facilitators.
Research limitations/implications – The implication is that the government needs to change the
existing laws to strengthen the ght against corruption.
Practical implications – This is to ensure that the war against corruption is strengthened and
effective.
Social implications – To ensure that offenders face the full weight of the law for their action.
Originality/value – This paper is the author’s original work and all references are appropriately
acknowledged.
Keywords Law, Corruption, Immunity Clause S308, Plea-Bargain
Paper type Research paper
Although endowed, Nigeria is a low-income developing country (Todaro and Smith,
2005, p. 106) that needs to carefully mobilize and utilize her resources by tapping
benecially from her positive development indicators, which includes favourable
climate, abundant natural resources and human resource endowment (Bello-Imam and
Obadan, 2004, p. 1; Agba, 2004, pp. 171-191; Adubi, 2004, pp. 192-209), among others, to
change the present poor status of the country. This process has to go side-by-side with
ensuring scal safeguards, which has far-reaching implication on production,
employment and distribution of resources in the polity, which in turn affect the
revenue-generation capacity of the people and the government. This action dictates that
government expenditure should be guided by the cannons of sanction, economy, surplus
and benets (Jhingan, 2008, p. 71). Managing state resources in tandem with the dictate
of these cannons enables the government to maximize the benets of her resource use
while also minimizing its waste.
This is essential for fast-tracking the provision of basic infrastructures to create the
right enabling environment for national development, which is the essence of the whole
exercise. This drive for national demand has over the years been undermined by
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JFC
23,4
700
Journalof Financial Crime
Vol.23 No. 4, 2016
pp.700-724
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1359-0790
DOI 10.1108/JFC-07-2015-0034
corruption, which past governments have failed to curb. The “expectation-minimal
capability paradox” (Schreader, 2004, p. 177) resulting in the failure has kept the country
backward. It is on record that Nigeria’s post-independence leaders have corruptly
misappropriated available state resources for private benet rather than use those funds
for nation-building. The pursuit of short-term gains by Nigerian leaders in the
management of public resources allowed corruption to become endemic. The towering
posture of corruption was strengthened by a situation where a person’s standing in the
society is reckoned by his bank balance or how many houses and cars he owns
(Osunbor, 2008), irrespective of how they are acquired. This attitudinal weakness has
contributed in watering-down the right ethical standard required of public ofcials.
Corruption undermines government’s ability to function properly. It also sties
growth of the private sector, and it is a regressive tax on the absolute poor (Todaro and
Smith, 2005). Identifying the specic impact of corruption on welfare, Rose-Ackerman
(1991), cited in Gyakari (2014, p. 247), notes that it creates an environment where the
poor receive low level of social services, and infrastructural investment is biased against
projects that aid the poor. She argued further that high corruption and low growth rates
are associated, but the process can run from corruption to low growth or from low
growth to corruption or the causal arrow may run both ways simultaneously, thereby
creating a vicious spiral (Ackerman, 2006, p. 16). Corruption arising from this spiral
becomes pervasive and it is reective of a society’s moral decline. This process in turn
hampers a nation’s development agenda by introducing various forms of irrationality to
its plan fullment. When irrationality characterizes the national planning process, it
will, by and large, inuence the process of decision-making negatively. The impact on
governance is that it impedes the process of plan fullment due to plan inertia and greed;
this will also distort the actual course of development in a way that is contrary to plan
(Myrdal, 1968). The general implication of state ofcials’ involvement in corruption in
Nigeria is that the money that ought to be used to build schools and hospitals, for water
schemes, to provide adequate transportation system, to propel industrialization and to
ensure good life for the people has been systematically stolen (Iyare, 2008) by those who
have access to the public purse. The general consequence of corruption in Nigeria is the
deprivation and impoverishment of many to the advantage of a few (Heinecke, 1986,
p. 96).
It is the bid to curb the inhibiting effect of corruption in Nigeria that eliminating it
became a crucial governance issue for Obasanjo’s democratic administration in 1999
(Uwa et al., 2013, p. 88). Effectively combat corruption in Nigeria requires changing also
the hitherto ineffective legal tools that were grossly inadequate to combat the
sophisticated nature of corruption. The inability of previous governments to effectively
mitigate corruption using these instruments had allowed it to become an institutional
problem in Nigeria (Idris, 2008). Acknowledging the difculty that had undermined
previous efforts, the Obasanjo’s administration in 2003 established and empowered the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to curb corruption, reduce waste
and inefciency, instil in Nigerians the right sets of values, discourage rent-seeking and
other unproductive values (National Planning Commission, 2005, p. 101). The ability of
the EFCC to effectively ght corruption has, however, been hampered by some
constitutional issues. The objective of this paper therefore is to identify and examine
those major issue-areas in law. Before we proceed it is pertinent to look at corruption and
how it is intricately linked to the Nigerian state.
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Combating
corruption in
Nigeria
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