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On the Origins of Corruption: Irregular Incentives in Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Varda Eker
Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Lagos

Extract

Corruption is a wide-spread phenomenon in the developing world. The term is usually reserved for ‘the practice of using the power of office for making private gain in breach of laws and regulations nominally in force’, or as more flamboyantly defined by M. McMullan, ‘a public official is corrupt if he accepts money…for doing something that he is under duty to do anyway, that he is under duty not to do, or to exercise a legitimate discretion for improper reasons’.1 Corruption is thus a description of activites emanating from and related to officialdom. Irregular activities among private individuals are a matter of private enterprise. They are not usually classified as corruption, but as straightforward theft, fraud, embezzlement, and the like.

Type
Africana
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

page 173 note 1 Andreski, Stanislav, ‘Kleptocracy as a System of Government in Africa’, in Heidenheimer, A. J. (ed.), Political Corruption: readings in comparative analysis (New York, 1970), p. 346,Google Scholar and M. McMullan, ‘Corruption in the Public Services of British Colonies and Ex-Colonies in West Africa’, in ibid. p. 319.

page 173 note 2 Lenski, G. E., Power and Privilege: a theory of social stratification (New York, 1966).Google Scholar

page 173 note 3 See, for instance, Andrcski, Stanislav, The African Predicament: a study in the pathology of moderniatzon (New York, 1968)Google Scholar; Huntington, S. P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven and London, 1968)Google Scholar; Weiner, Myron, The Politics of Scarcity (Chicago, 1962)Google Scholar; Nye, J. S., ‘Corruption and Political Development: a cost-benefit analysis’, in The American Political Science Review (Menasha), 61, 1967, pp. 417–27Google Scholar; Leff, N. H., ‘Economic Development through Bureaucratic Corruption’, in American Behavioral Scientist (Beverly Hills), 8, 3, 1965, pp. 814Google Scholar; D. H. Bayley, ‘The Effects of Corruption in a Developing Nation’, in Heidenheimer (ed), op. cit. pp. 465–95; and S. P. Huntington, ‘Modernisation and Corruption’, in ibid. pp. 492–500.

page 174 note 1 See, for instance, J. van Klaveren, ‘The Concept of Corruption’, in Heidenheimer (ed), op. cit. pp. 38–40; Ronald Wraith and E. Simpkins, ‘Nepotism and Bribery in West Africa’, in ibid. pp. 331–40; and Cohn Leys, ‘New States and the Concept of Corruption’, in ibid. pp. 341–5.

page 174 note 2 Andreski, op. Cit.

page 175 note 1 See E. C. Banfield, ‘The Moral Basis of Backward Society’, in Heidenheimer (ed.), op. cit. pp. 129–37.

page 177 note 1 Among other explanations for the popularity of corruption are: the absence of an established upper class, the absence of a sense of national identity, the only partially successful socialisation of western values, and the existence of a climate of corruption.

page 177 note 2 Leibenstein, H., ‘Bandwagon, Snob, and Veblen Effects in the Theory of Consumers Demand’, quoted in Langholz-Lemore, V., Hidden Myth Structure and Symbolism in Advertising (New York, 1975), p. 122.Google Scholar

page 178 note 1 J. van Kiaveren, loc. cit.

page 178 note 2 Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Crime and the Quality of Life in Nigeria (Lagos, 1980), p. 14.Google Scholar

page 178 note 3 Ibid.

page 179 note 1 Ibid. p. 19.

page 179 note 2 Ibid.

page 180 note 1 Sources: International Financial Statistics Yearbook (I.M.F., Washington, 1980),Google Scholar and Crime and the Quality of Life in Nigeria.

page 182 note 1 Cramer's statistic is defined as where N is the sample size, and K (in a K × K table) is the number of rows or columns.

page 182 note 2 Mitchell, Margaret, Gone With the Wind (London, 1936). p. 758.Google Scholar