Section 5: Actions taken by providers to increase class size and reduce costs
5.2 Collaboration
Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo was quoted by Akanbi (2003:123), as having said:
We have for many years held the view that corruption, in all its ramifications, is the greatest single impediment to our national aspiration….Corruption checkmates all vision for a morally strong and economically prosperous society. Indeed, corruption is an antithesis of development and progress.
Also,
Democracy and good governance have remained elusive as the ballot box has become a metaphor for disempowerment.
Popular participation in governance has waned to new irretrievability; and the increasing frustration and anguish have combined to kill the spirit of voting and political participation (Okolie, 2010).
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Again,
Corruption is not just one of the causes of intractable poverty in Africa. It is the root cause (Herrick, 2005:12).
There is no gainsaying that corruption has remained the greatest singular factor retarding the growth and development of the African continent despite the enormous natural and human resources. Its negative impact is felt in the administrative, economic and socio-political sectors as highlighted in the citations quoted above and briefly discussed below.
Administrative capacity of Nigeria and indeed Africa has not developed due to the recruitment of political cronies into the civil and public services who are not qualified. This affects their training, development and capacity to man their respective offices, hence mediocrity becomes the norm in the system and corrupt practices and loyalty to personalities becomes the yardstick for promotion against meritocracy. The sum total is the consistent weak administrative structure and culture difficult to anchor any complex envelopment model as expected of modern bureaucrats. Hence, the inefficient public service which has become the hallmark across board in the continent and Nigeria in particular.
The economic impact of corruption can be simplified by observing the enormous unemployment due to long term economic decay and its multiplier effects snowballing into monumental poverty problems such as homelessness, urban vagrancy and the disturbing emigration of skilled workers, academicians, exacerbated by ever increasing capital flight and infrastructural deficiency and decay, which further increase the demise of many manufacturing outfits, thus compounding the situation of the saturated labour market. The net effect is unending austerity measures and increasing national debt whose impact is felt by the poorest of the poor – living below one US Dollar a day. Thus a summary of economic impact of corruption is poverty and underdevelopment in Africa and Nigeria in particular.
Socio-politically, electoral fraud leads to obstructionism and erosion of interest of the citizenry as well as the legitimacy of government. Thus weakening democratic principles and practice and engender clientelism and repatriomonialism which re-enforce corruption in other sectors of the society. Lack of accountability and transparency as are common in such government as in Nigeria generates institutional decay and glorification of personalized rules, hence, the rule of law is trampled upon and constitutionalism becomes a mirage. This clearly explains the level of political decay as experienced across Africa and Nigeria in particular. With the accompanying instability and violence highlighted
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through insecurity of lives and properties; a hallmark of our daily experience among others in this part of the world.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE
i. Corruption is the bane of Africa Development. With concrete examples discuss the impact of corruption on the development of the Nigerian state.
ii. What is your understanding of corruption? Explain with domestic examples.
iii. Identify the benefits of corruption in Africa. Illustrate with clear and specific examples.
iv. Outline and discuss briefly four causes of corruption in the Third Countries.
4.0 CONCLUSION
Corruption has remained the central factor of the world underdevelopment and indeed Africa. It leads to capital flight, brain drain, political instability and clienteles and distributive politics as well as economic decay and poverty which generate numerous negative indexes of underdevelopment as witnessed in these states across the world.
5.0 SUMMARY
We have discussed the centrality of corruption to the underdevelopment of the Third World countries and indeed Africa in this unit. Corruption is generally regarded as any act leading to the abuse of trust and personal advantage of an agent of the state or its associate. We identify structural and normative factors facilitating corruption and its manifestation in the socio-political and economic sphere of the Third World and indeed Africa. We undertook a discourse to correlate the relationships between corruption and development in the African continent and concluded that they are not compatible as empirical evidence overwhelmingly suggests that corruption is antithetical to Third World development.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
“Corruption is the bane of Africa’s development.” With concrete examples discuss the impact of corruption on the development of the Nigerian state.
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7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING
Franz Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth.
Igwe, Stanley (2010). How Africa Underdeveloped Africa. Port Harcourt: Professional Printers and publishers.
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