Strategies for Advancing Anticorruption Reform in Nigeria

A vast literature documenting the structural embeddedness, grotesque scale, and devastating consequences of political corruption in Nigeria threatens to overshadow the tenacity of the country’s anticorruption “wars,” the recent gains in controlling electoral corruption, the development of a robust n...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Daedalus (Cambridge, Mass.) Mass.), 2018-07, Vol.147 (3), p.184-201
Main Author: Suberu, Rotimi T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Candidates
Civil society
Constitutional reform
Constitutionalism
Corruption
Corruption in government
Crystallization
Discretionary power
Elections
Embeddedness
Federalism
Fiscal federalism
Governance
Laws
Opacity
Patronage
Politics
Presidential candidates
Presidential elections
Structural embeddedness
Transparency
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Summary:A vast literature documenting the structural embeddedness, grotesque scale, and devastating consequences of political corruption in Nigeria threatens to overshadow the tenacity of the country’s anticorruption “wars,” the recent gains in controlling electoral corruption, the development of a robust national discourse about improving the effectiveness of anticorruption reform, and the crystallization of potentially viable legislative and constitutional reform agendas for promoting good governance. Especially remarkable was the 2015 election of opposition presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari, who ran on an anticorruption platform. Drawing lessons from those national anticorruption struggles, this essay distills several interrelated steps by which reformist political leaders and activist civil society organizations might advance anticorruption reform in Nigeria and, potentially, elsewhere. These strategies involve depoliticizing key oversight institutions, curbing presidential and gubernatorial discretionary powers, restructuring patronage-based fiscal federalism, expanding and entrenching current transparency laws, and promoting participatory constitutionalism.
ISSN:0011-5266
1548-6192
DOI:10.1162/daed_a_00510