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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Serving the few, starving the many: how corruption underdevelops Nigeria and how there is an alternative perspective to corruption cleanups
Author:Agbiboa, Daniel EgiegbaISNI
Year:2011
Periodical:Africa Today (ISSN 1527-1978)
Volume:58
Issue:4
Pages:111-132
Language:English
Geographic term:Nigeria
Subjects:underdevelopment
corruption
External link:http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/africa_today/v058/58.4.agbiboa.pdf
Abstract:Between 1970 and 2000, the proportion of the population subsisting on less than one dollar a day in Nigeria grew from 36 percent to more than 70 percent, from 19 million to 90 million. The country ranked 159th out of 177 on the UN Human Development Index in 2006. This paper expounds the thesis that corruption is negatively correlated to economic growth and development. In particular, it argues that corrupt and inept leadership is responsible for the state of uneasy stasis in the Nigerian political economy. After a discussion of the conceptual and theoretical background that explores the key concept of corruption, the paper examines the corrupt and perfunctory practices of Nigeria's postindependence rulers, with emphasis on the Obasanjo legacy from 1999-2007. Next, it explores the corruption-underdevelopment nexus in the oil-rich Niger Delta. The paper proposes to remedy the pervasiveness of corruption by incorporating insights from the theory of public choice into the design and execution of new corruption cleanup programmes. Such insights include the emplacement of new and more germane rules, reform of existing laws and institutions, provision of more effective and relevant incentive structures, and establishment of enforcement mechanisms to reduce the profitability of postconstitutional opportunism. Bibliogr., notes, sum. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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