Voice of the people

Hardball

It’s bad news that corruption is still a serious problem in Nigeria, despite the anti-corruption war of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration in the last four years plus.

A new public survey by Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) involving 2,549 respondents across  the  country’s six geo-political zones and  covering eight states – Ondo, Enugu, Rivers, Lagos, Adamawa, Kano, Kaduna and Kwara-showed that public opinion on corruption is a cause for concern.  Abuja was added as a sampling area because of its status as the country’s capital.

According to the survey, “96.2% of the respondents believed corruption remains a serious problem in Nigeria today. There was no significant difference in opinion on this issue across the different geo-political zones surveyed.” Also, the survey found that “84.5% of Nigerians believed corruption affects them.”

The most disturbing aspect of the report is that “Almost half of the respondents (43.5%) surveyed do not believe that corruption can be successfully fought in Nigeria.” This suggests that the public believes the Buhari administration’s anti-corruption effort is going nowhere. Worse still, it also suggests that corruption will always be a big problem in Nigeria.

Interestingly, the findings of the new SERAP survey are in line with the 2018 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) released by Transparency International (TI) in January, which ranked Nigeria among the world’s most corrupt countries.  Nigeria ranked 144, with Kenya, Mauritania, Comoros and Guatemala, out of the 180 countries surveyed and ranked by the Berlin-based anti-corruption group. Nigeria had ranked 148 out of 180 countries in 2017.

The movement from 148th position to 144th out of 180 countries in 2018 is insignificant. Indeed, the Executive Director of the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, an agent of TI in Nigeria, Musa Rafsanjani, had observed: “Nigeria scored 27 out of 100 points in the 2018 CPI, maintaining the same score as in the 2017 CPI.”

The question is: What needs to be done to win the war against corruption? For instance, Rafsanjani had noted that “Despite some indisputable evidence, many corrupt politicians and businessmen and women seem to be above the law.” He added that such a situation “deepens a sense of hopelessness among well-meaning Nigerians.”

The point is that the number of casualties, or the number of convictions, is important in assessing the fight against corruption because a war without casualties can’t be a war properly so called.  Punishing corruption has a deterrent effect. Not punishing corruption encourages corruption.