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A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria
Daniel Jordan Smith

Stuart Simpson
posted 1 February 2007

In the West, Nigeria is the poster-boy for African corruption. Most of us will have received emails from Nigeria requesting our help to siphon off oil money or launder ill gotten gains sitting in Swiss bank accounts. While we all know that these emails are themselves frauds, they assume that we are aware of the former corrupt military leaders and the present corrupt democratic leaders of Nigeria who are getting rich at the expense of ordinary Nigerians. Corruption has come to dominate discussions of African development, and Nigeria dominates the discussion of corruption.

Nigeria is oil rich and yet most people live in poverty. Where is all the wealth going? Conventional wisdom is that Nigerians are being cheated out of their due by their leaders. Or to put it another way, Africans are corrupt and following from this we need to monitor them. Of course, this assumption smacks quite heavily of racism. Radical critics of the focus on African corruption point to corruption in the West: Italy is lower down Transparency International's league table than many African states; our own Prime Minister may be implicated in selling peerages for cash. But as Bob Geldof tells us, in Africa 'corruption kills people'. Corruption may be an international phenomenon, but the consequences for the developing countries of Africa are too serious to be overlooked merely because the accusation sounds racist. And the charge of corruption is not levelled at ordinary Africans, who are the victims, but at African leaders.

The consequences of the discussion of corruption for African countries are serious. If African governments are corrupt and corruption causes poverty then African governments should be denied development funding, or at the least funding should be strictly defined and spending monitored by international agencies. There is little point in funding the lifestyles of African leaders while ordinary Africans suffer. If African governments are corrupt then we need to worry about the increasing supply of funds to African governments from China, who do not tie any strings to the cheap credit they provide. It is into this discussion that Daniel Jordon Smith has submitted a work which seeks to analyse the routes, the extent and the implications of corruption in Nigeria.

A Culture of Corruption is not an attempt to provide an objective analysis of the reality of corruption or the impact corruption has on the Nigerian economy and the country's development. Smith is an anthropologist; his primary concern is with the perception of corruption amongst Nigerians and the impact this perception has on the behaviour of Nigerians. Anyone who is concerned with the discussion of corruption and how it relates to the development of African economies should read Smith's book. The notion that corruption causes poverty is accepted by Western development banks and their critics alike. Smith demonstrates better than any opponent of this idea could that this assumption is rooted in the perception of Africans' behaviour rather than in an analysis of the economics of development.

Smith's work is dominated by anecdote, popular Nigerian jokes, stories, newspaper headlines and rumour. If your intention is to illustrate how Nigerians view themselves and their society, as is Smith's intention, then this is entirely defensible, perhaps necessary. If your intention is to understand the dynamics of one of Africa's largest economies, however, then this approach won't get you very far.

Several times Smith cites the popular rumour that while Nigeria exports vast amounts of crude oil, its refineries sit idle. Nigeria must import petrol, and often suffers shortages which create long queues at petrol stations. This is popularly attributed to the corruption of government officials. As Nigeria's main export is oil, it would be worth placing this rumour in context.

It is true that Nigeria's oil refineries are operating at a level way below capacity. It also true that only two oil refineries have been built in the whole of Africa in the past ten years, one of which was built by the Chinese in the capital of Sudan. Nigerian refineries, like most other refineries in Africa, are in need of modernisation. To understand why Nigeria, like so many African countries, finds itself in this position it is necessary to look behind the perception of the Nigerian culture of corruption and ask specific questions about the Nigerian economy. In the past week, India and China have both announced plans to invest in Nigeria's existing refineries. The Indians will also be building a new one. It is possible that Nigeria's refining capability has been hampered by corrupt officials. It is also possible that it has not been viable to modernise or build new refineries without the vast resources and expertise that can now be provided by India and China, along with the increased international demand created by these two rapidly expanding economies. Either way, Smith is not interested.

We do not know why Nigeria's refineries are not working. For Smith the reality is not important, the perception of ordinary Nigerians that they and the economy are suffering due to corruption is important. Smith's work is dominated by phrases such as, 'while I do not know how pervasive this is, even exaggerated stories are evidence', or, 'how pervasively and deliberately Nigerian doctors resort to such tactics is impossible for me to say…', 'I have no idea whether my colleagues misused any of the…money…', 'hard to sort out fact from rumour', etc. What is important to Smith is the perception of corruption rather than the reality of corruption.

Consequently, Smith is more interested in exploring the conflicting attitudes towards corruption amongst Nigerians themselves, than in defining corruption objectively. In this way almost every aspect of human behaviour becomes within the remit of corruption. It may be military dictatorship, public execution of suspected criminals by vigilantes, or being cheated on by your girlfriend. 419, the number of a piece of Nigerian legislation dealing with a particular type of fraud, seems to occupy the place of 'shit happens' in Nigerian culture. Any event that is not good, but which requires no further analysis is described as 419. From this Smith describes how Nigerians are not only victims of corruptions, and its harshest critics, but are also deeply complicit in corruption themselves. With a definition of corruption that encompasses all aspects of human interaction, this is hardly surprising.

Nigeria, like many developing countries, is served by inefficient and impersonal bureaucracies. Smith describes his attempt to obtain a Nigerian driving licence and other necessary documentation to allow him legally to drive a newly purchased second hand vehicle on Nigeria's public roads. In order to obtain the necessary documents within a matter of days, Smith takes along a Nigerian friend and introduces himself to the relevant officials as an 'in-law' - Smith is married to a Nigerian. Bribes are needed to speed the process along. It should be pointed out that to obtain similar documents in the UK within a few days would also require considerable bribes.

This episode is seen as symptomatic of the prevalence of corruption in Nigerian society and Nigerians' ambivalent relationship to corruption. If one official takes a bribe all for himself, for example, he exhibits the modern trait of selfish individualism, and his acts are condemned. If he shares the bounty with those around him, he exhibits a more traditional Nigerian attitude; what Smith calls the client-patron obligation.

Bureaucracies are efficient because they are impersonal. They run on procedure and routine. The combination of inefficiency and impersonality requires those who use their services either to confront the causes of the problems of deficient procedure and routine, or to attempt to deal with officials as people; being nice to them or slipping them cash. While this is clearly a problem, especially as many Nigerians would be stretched to afford the necessary bribes, it is a leap of the imagination to describe this situation as merely another example of corruption, such as the possible corruption of government officials that may or may not be the cause of Nigeria's lack of oil refineries. This latter possibility hardly demonstrates an ambivalence in the Nigerian national character. If bribes are commonplace and wages are sporadic, the fact that some may be left out of the bribes would annoy anyone in this situation. There is nothing particularly traditional or Nigerian about it. The perception that Smith forces on this situation does not go far in explaining the reality of the situation.

Smith presents corruption as a state of mind - a worldview that is a combination of traditional Nigerian culture and the lived experience of a dysfunctional modern society. This is not helpful. Many problems are described by Smith, much chaos, poverty and suffering - all of which fall under the catch-all of corruption.

In one rather shocking story, we are told how the murder and decapitation of a young boy sparked headlines suggesting it had to do with witchcraft and ritual sacrifice. Smith insightfully dismisses this interpretation as a reflection of backward superstition, suggesting instead that the occult is often used by Nigerians as a catch-all explanation of the worst excesses and problems of their society. In fact, the riots that followed this terrible crime quite specifically targeted local '419 men', who are implicated in the popular imagination with all that is unjust - the '419 men' may have been involved in organised crime or may have been just rich. Something bad happened, 419 was seen as the culprit.

In this episode Smith shows how a meaningless account of occult practices was used in the media to explain not only the immediate matter in hand, but also various other unrelated problems and injustices. The parallel with our own obsession with corruption is clear. A Culture of Corruption shows how corruption has become detached from any description of actual events and has become instead a mystical explanation for anything and everything bad that happens in Africa.

A soon to be released documentary produced by the education charity WorldWRITE questions the link that has been made between corruption and development. The question of how China has managed to develop despite notorious corruption is put to a World Bank official, who offers no response. The question is not whether corruption takes place in developing economies, but whether it is the limiting factor in development. This is what needs to be asked.

While Smith restrains from passing moral judgment on Nigerian society and draws no practical lessons for development from his analysis of corruption, others do both. Corruption is more and more seen as the limiting factor for African development, and resulting in the denial of basic human freedoms to ordinary African citizens. Aid or investment is said only to fuel the flames of corruption, allowing illegitimate regimes to retain power while development dollars find their way into Swiss bank accounts but never to development projects. Corruption is allegedly caused by the irresponsible financing of African states, and also deters finance to those states. While the catch-all of corruption is used to explain away any and all problems faced from African societies, the objective problems that African economies face are rarely discussed.

While the consequences of corruption are often cited, the actual nature and extent of corruption and how it leads to such consequences is a subject that does not demand much thought. The reality of a collapse in Western development spending, and the efforts of NGOs and development banks to deny African states access to investment that comes strings-free from China are serious obstacles to development in Africa. It is this reality that the war against corruption supports. Smith does nothing to question the assumptions behind the war on corruption. In examining corruption as a cultural phenomenon of perception A Culture of Corruption does help to highlight the strange supernatural properties that corruption has come to embody. Corruption acts behind the scenes to damage economies, democracy and people's lives. Maybe it was this occult power of corruption that Geldof was telling us of when he announced to the world that 'corruption kills'.