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Routing Corruption, Ravaging Scourge of A Nation: A Special Report On Integrity in Nigerian Public Service
Routing Corruption, Ravaging Scourge of A Nation: A Special Report On Integrity in Nigerian Public Service
Scourge of a Nation
A Special Report on Integrity in Nigerian Public Service
(Editor’s Note: This report is a term paper for an MPP course, Public Sector Administration, while
the author was a Commonwealth Broadcasting Association scholar in public policy at the
Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei, South-East Asia between 2007 and 2008)
By
Abdulwarees Solanke, Fellow,
CIPDM, MPP (Brunei Darussalam)
Corruption in a cankerworm in the Nigerian fabric that must never be tolerated if the nation
must rise and thrive. In 2007, the first female speaker in Nigeria’s lower national
office over allegations of financial impropriety. She was accused of using public money in
excess of 650 million naira to furnish her official residence. A caucus in the House, the
INTERGRITY GROUP, doggedly fought to unravel the details of the scam as well as the
Similarly, the first speaker in the nation’s 4th Republic, was removed less than six
months in office in 1999, over a certificate scandal. Between 1999 and 2006, three senate
presidents in the country were shown the way out of office over financial misdemeanour.
Although their removals were attributed to high-wire politics, there is no doubt that a
revolution is underway in Nigeria indicating that any public official who soils his hand
while in public service of the nation will sooner or later be subjected to public ridicule
through legislative, judicial and enforcement instruments that are now in place in the
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Since the 80s Nigeria had consistently been featured by Transparency international (TI) as
one of the most corrupt nations in the world. Many foreigners are also afraid to come to
Nigeria or do business in the country because of the prevalent reports in the international
mass media hyping the inefficiency and corruption of the country’s government and
Yet, Nigeria remains one of the richest countries in the world with huge oil resources,
vibrant manpower, favourable climate and fertile arable land. The question that begs for
answer is why is a country so much endowed humanly and materially unable to log on to
the league of countries described as efficient, or possessing a working system? The answer
But what gives any public service its colour of efficiency and effectiveness is the overall
values and ethics, the written and unwritten rules that guide the conduct of public servants.
The Nigeria Police for instance has as its credo, to serve and protect with INTEGRITY,
Not just the law enforcement arm of the government, but also every public service
institution ought to serve with integrity for it to be considered as relevant, responsible and
UNDERSTANDING INTEGRITY
Integrity cannot, as a value of conduct, stand in isolation, but in the context of the system or
the society, because the best gauge of integrity is how it keeps the system sane and
character that stands public scrutiny demonstrated by a well-ordered private and public
life devoid of moral or material corruptibility The corollary to this is that integrity covers
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virtues of honesty, impartially, humility, responsibility, and transparency, and can be
responsibility of public officers and institutions to the people they purport to serve, but it
also includes a willingness on the part of the office holder to submit to scrutiny
appropriate to the office he is holding. Deinhardt and Deinhardt looked the issue of
integrity beyond knowledge of what constitutes moral action: Knowing the proper and correct
course is not enough. You must indeed act in a way that is consistent with what you consider
to be right.
According to these authors, people are described as having integrity not merely on the
basis of what they believe but on the basis of how they act. Questions of ethics in the public
service, they observed, are not abstract but real, having immediate and sometimes serious
organisations.
They regulate the conduct and behaviour of different category of civil servants
As she explained, civil servants are expected to set up high moral standards not only for
themselves but also for the community at large. According to Goel, S.L. administrative
ethics is the study of those administrative standards on the basis of which a particularly
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administrative ethics covers a diverse range of virtues (5) including, but not restricted to
the following.
Integrity
Loyalty
Honesty
Efficiency
Non-partisan attitude
Non-corruptive ness
Devotion to duty
Secrecy
Neutrality
Anonymity
Impartiality
Fairness
Sincerity
If the above constitute administrative ethics, then all attitudes that negate the proper
functioning of the public service and the attainment of the purpose and essence of its
namely,.
Corrupti9on
Favouritism
Bribery
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Indifferentism
Officiousness
Departmentalism
Nepotism
Lawlessness
Political influence
External pressures
Administrative ethnics can neither he sustained, nor would its hindrances be eliminated if
support and reward them, or restrain and penalize their abridgement. In other words,
quality of the prevailing value system, the penal and law enforcement instruments and
unattractive, that is, they must be reinforcing or rewarding appropriate conduct in public
Salm (2007) lists the following as some of the disposing or determining factors.
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Dynamics of internal relations in the organisation
What the above suggest is that the idyllic public service envisaged must have evolved from a
long tradition of order, discipline, and stability in the socio-economic and political contexts
of the society. But the reality is that this is never the case, because of the economic dialectics
deliberate efforts must be made to create the Infrastructure and instruments that will
stimulate adherence to ethics in the conduct of public affairs, in what is termed new ethics
initiatives.
nature of different elements and that they need to be consistent with one another and
mutually reinforcing. The infrastructure comprises eight elements which can be categorized
by a special ethics body or an existing central management agency, and also through
human resource policies and employment conditions for public servants. Controls however
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scrutiny. Two approaches- compliance or rule based and integrity approaches-representing
a shift are now usually considered when reflecting on how to embark on public
management reforms.
FROM ABROAD
The choice of the three countries was informed by the need to have a mix of countries in
different stages of development. The study of experiences in United States (a stable polity).
Brazil (a semi-developed country) and The Philippines(developing nation) was to see how
effective legal and other instruments put in place under different political and economic
situations can guarantee integrity of their public service. The case reviews were based on
2006 GLOBAL INTEGRITY report which covered 41 countries. The report was published
on January 10 2007.
In its assessment, GLOBAL INTEGRITY measured how each country stood in terms of the
report, more than 290 discrete integrity indicators generated the integrity index and organized
into six key categories and 23 sub-categories. The countries assessed were grouped into
seven, with sub-Saharan Africa group having the largest representation 915).
Five countries were from Europe, Middle East and North Africa (5), Latin America (5).
South East Asia (4) south and Central Asia (8) and North America (10).
For the purpose of this study, one country each was chosen Latin America (Brazil) South East
Asia (The Philippines) and the only country in North America (USA) to compare with
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Nigeria. The assessed countries were rated on the basis of their standing in six performance
categories.
Elections
Government accountability
As indicated above, the first category examined the existence of civil society
organisations, free media and access to public information while the second looked at
voting and citizens participation, the integrity of elections and regulations around political
executive, legislative and judicial branches of government as well as the budget process.
ombudsman, supreme audit institutions, taxes and customs, financial sector regulations and
business licensing while the final category is based on the existence of anti-corruption laws
Global integrity used the following ratings to determine the strength of each country’s
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Above 90 - very strong rating
Globally, the highlights of the report as analysed by Global Integrity include relative
corruption associated with political financing and Continued lack of whistle blower
remarkable to note that none of the countries attained a very strong rating on the
overall global integrity index, although only four were on strong. The rest were
relatively uniformity distributed on moderate (12) weak (11) and very weak (14) ratings.
From the assessment , it is interesting to note that apart from the USA which measured
strong throughout, the remaining countries were in moderate rating, although in varying
categories. But it is also very significant to note that the three areas where Nigeria rated
strong are actual or specific focus of this essay ice administration and civil service,
oversight and regulation and anti-corrupti9on and rule of law. The implication of this is
that the reform process of the public service in Nigeria is yielding fruits, if the country
can measure on the same scale with USA that is considered to have a functioning public
service.
In Nigeria at the moment, reforms are underway in various aspects of the nation” public
domain, one of which is the public service itself. As one of the legacies of British colonial
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rule, the public sector was and is still quite dominant in the development scheme of things. In
47 years of Nigeria’s nationhood, the public service in the country has metamorphosed
personnel, responsive to public needs and demands to that of a bloated work force, with
complement and corrupt elements until the return of democracy in 1999. The past
experiences and realities of the Nigerian state combined to compromise integrity in the
Less than six years after attainment of independence, the military intervened on the political
scene. And one of their reasons for hijacking power was to check corruption which had begun
to take toll even on the civil service. Undue polarization manifested in the public service to
the extent that professional relevance and competence as yardstick of recruiting public
servants took a back a stage while primordial considerations of tribe, ethnicity, religion
As a way of redressing some of these manifestations, quota system and federal character
policies were introduced in the nation’s public service, such that the most qualified person
may not necessarily get a job if the quota of his state or region or even local government
has been filled up, or just to satisfy the federal character requirement. This is also reflected
in promotion and deployment of public servants within the public service just as in the
larger political context of the nation, the cry of marginalization and monopoly of offices
All these predisposed the Nigerian public service and its members to corruption and
inefficiency because the best man for an office may not necessarily be the occupant
because of the crisis of discipline and loyalty that the public service is subjected to. For
many public servants therefore, it was usually not their input or service delivery to meet
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public demand and expectation that drove their interest in public service nor was it that
they were best suited for the office or responsibility, but the opportunities or pecuniary of
being there. Grounds for nepotism, god fathers and other bureaucratic pathologies were thus
laid in the Nigeria public service. Where is integrity when pathos like these feature
Since 1975 particularly, successive governments both military and civilian had been
committing themselves to tackling corruption, the most virulent affliction of the Nigerian
public service which weakened its integrity immunity. These are apart from the criminal
and penal codes in force in different parts of the country or the criminal justice decree of
1996. It is however interesting to note that the cankerworm of corruption on which the
successive military regimes set for themselves the messianic mission for Nigeria actually
opponents of the military regimes were co-opted into government to silence or minimize
criticisms of their conduct. Many academics, civil rights activists, labour leaders and
corporations, special agencies and departments, or as senior special assistants and advisers,
consultants to special programmes and projects, and monitors. At the end of such exercise,
or even during their tenures, such co-opted critics lose their critical voices, and became
But then, damage is also inflicted on the psyches of the bureaucrats and professionals
government on new government men, often not pragmatic or realistic, are imposed. In such
instances, bureaucrats and career civil servants became mere yes-men, serving any
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government in power (AGIP) for short. The more ambitious of such public servants become
aggressive in exploiting any opportunity in the system, while the docile ones are left to rat
or rot away, not giving their best to serve the public interest.
Taken as a whole, the twin evils of corruption and inefficiency (summed as indiscipline)
because of the complex socio-political context of the Nigerian nation which served to
compromise integrity in the public service formed the basis of past efforts aimed at
reforming the public domain. The dimensions of such efforts ranged from ethical re-
reforms.
The following are some of the past anti-corruption policies and strategies enunciated
between 1978 and 1999 to deal with corruption and inefficiency that compromised
The Corrupt Practices Decree 1975, which established the Corrupt Practices
Investigation Bureau.
The Ethical Revolution Introduced in the Second Republic under the civilian
The War Against Indiscipline (WA) launched under the military government of
– 1985 – 1993
The Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act (Cap 56, Law of the Federation
of Nigeria, 1990)
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The Recovery of Public Property (Special Military Tribunal Act Cap 387, Laws of
The War Against Indiscipline and Corruption (WAIC) initiated under the
The Recovery of Public Property (Special Military Tribunal Act Cap 389, Laws of
Abubakar.
Several reasons have been adduced for the failure or ineffectiveness of the measures to
curb institutional corruption in the Nigerian public service, one of which is that the panacea
failed to take into account the magnitude, character, and sophistication of corruption so
defined by its socio-cultural context and time dimensions (……) Also cited as a
significant reason for the failure of the anti-corruption measures was the compromised
The above situation is the picture of Nigeria and it is in this context that the nation
returned to democratic government in May 29, 1999, with enormous challenge confronting
the new leadership. It is interesting to note that in 1979 when former President Obasanjo
was handing over power as a military head of state to a democratic government, the
situation was not as sordid as the regime he superintended between 1978 and 1979 (he
note in 1975 with a strong determination to fight endemic corruption). He was therefore in
full appreciation of the enormity of the situation. For instance, Obasanjo had 1994 made a
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“Once you give free rein unchecked, unbridled, uncontrolled, the bestiality of man comes to
the fore... the average African is not by nature more corrupt than the European or from
anyone else in any part of the world. He is no less democratic than anyone else. But others
have institutions, laws conventions, and practices, which effectively discourage and punish
corrupters and corruptees. Effective sanctions – moral, social, political, and legal – are an
essential part of the anti-dote against corruption, human rights abuse and all forms of anti-
democratic tendencies”.
It was therefore not surprising that when he was elected President in 1999, anti-corruption
crusade became the cornerstone of his government. One of the first things he did as he
assumed office was the sponsorship of a bill to prohibit and punish corruption. As an offshoot
of that bill passed as Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act 2000 was the
Two years later, his government launched another anti-corruption instrument with the
creation through an act parliament, of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
(EFCC). The Commission apart from its general responsibilities was also mandated to
The Advance Fee Fraud and other Related offence Act 1995
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These anti-corruption drives in the public sector have been tremendously successful in
Nigeria but the government did not rest on its oars, as it went beyond these seemingly
harsh instruments of instilling probity and discipline in the consciousness of the Nigerian
public servant. Ten, President Olusegun Obasanjo had openly acknowledged the rot in the
Nigerian public service at the inauguration of the new members of the National Assembly
on June 5, 2003 when he declared that Nigerians have so far too long been feeling short
changed by the quality of public service. He lamented that our public offices have for too
long been a show case for the combined evils of inefficiency and corruption, whilst being
Against this background, the president in December 2003, commissioned a research project
to review service delivery in Nigeria, the report of which was released in February 2004.
picture of public service delivery in the country, and concluded that services are not
inaccessibility
Poor quality
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4. Publish information about performance.
The overall demand of that report was that public services should be redesigned around
customers’ requirements, and that the success of the programme would require
committed leadership from the top, stressing the necessity of ministers demonstrating their
commitment with a leadership declaration about service delivery. Consequent upon this
research initiative and its reports and recommendation, the presidency held a special
retreat in March 2004,. To deliberate on the identified flaw of the Nigerian public service and
At that historic retreat, the former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo made the following
unforgettable remarks:
This retreat is to reassert our ownership of the initiative to serve Nigerians better. We accept
full responsibility for driving it to a successful end. This is the core of the message from this
retreat to the people. That message should be about leadership that has all the attributes
which we all agreed to in the last retreat, namely selflessness, integrity, objectivity,
accountability, openness, honesty and patriotism. It is also the message of leading from the
front the battle to sanitize our system, morally, politically and economically. About all, it is
the message of the leadership that the Nigerian people can trust”.
The outcome of that retreat is the birth of the reform initiative dubbed in the public service as
SERVICOM, or Service Compact with All Nigerians. The core provisions of the compact
Set out the entitlements of the citizens clearly and in ways they can readily
understand.
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List of fees payable (if any) and prohibit demand for any additional payments
Details of agencies and officials to whom complaints about service failures may
be addressed
satisfaction.
the Code of Conduct Bureau whose aims and objectives are the establishment and
ensuring that the actions and behaviours of public officers conform to the highest
standards of public morality and accountability. In their respective cases, ICPC and EFCC
have exhibited demonstrable resolve in their capacity to chase and prosecute offenders,
with much to show. EFCC”s arrests as at 2000 while it recovered properties in cash homes,
land, luxurious care computers and household equipment valued at nearly 3 billion US
dollars.
The EFCC binoculars covers wide field of public officials and private individuals: the
ministers, chairmen of boards and parastatal, staff of the presidency many of who have been
investigated and shoved into detentions in chains, ministers, state chief executives, police
inspectors general who compromised their offices have been terribly embarrassed by
EFCC. The bottom-line is that in Nigeria today, public officials can hardly get away with
anything in public service, because the fear of EFCC and its unbending chairman, Mall am
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Neha Rimbaud, the game in the national police, the probing muck-raking private press is
the beginning of wisdom. But the fear is: will the new leaders in government be able to
sustain the tempo of the integrity drive in the nation or the public sphere?
This will be dependent not so much on the effectiveness or the sharpness of the regulatory
or enforcement instruments in place now, but on transformation of the economic base of the
country and the provision of social facilities that make life decent and meaningful, as well
as the quality, nay the exemplary leadership provided by managers of the nation’s public life.
When there is equal access to opportunities, when employments is guaranteed and when
there is political stability and material security are assured, tendencies that compromise
CONCLUSION
From experiences and practices in countries reviewed, including that of Nigeria, one
string that runs through is that INTEGRITY is a culture that takes time to take root in
any system, particularly the public service, because there are a number of compelling
forces that would ordinarily prevent people from behaving ethically, one of which is the
contextual appreciation and definition of what is ethical or moral. What is moral in one
Hence, it is necessary to always codify public morality within a universal framework, and
apply same enforcement, prosecution and punitive or reward rules. It is equally important
that these rules are effectively communicated so that nobody has an excuse of being
Similarly, it is important that issues and themes in public morality are made part of the
nation’s education curricular so that people come into public service, not as neophytes but
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as fresh public servants conscious of burden of office and prepared to serve with conscience
Finally, the greatest demand on the inculcation of integrity in public service is on the
leadership, because followers can always rationalize or justify their actions and inactions on
Abdulwarees, a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Diplomacy and Management, is Director, Media &
Strategic Communications, Muslim Public Affairs Centre, and Deputy Director, Strategic Planning &
Corporate Development, Voice of Nigeria
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