₦airaland Forum

Alright, so I guess we've come to a consensus.

If you believe that these external rankings of Nigeria's corruption are wrong (e.g., Nigeria should be 170 rather than 134 or even last, let's say), I can understand your perspective.

However, hopefully it is clear that if indeed these rankings are roughly accurate, Nigeria's biggest problem is not in fact corruption.

I don't have time to look more closely at their methodology, but perhaps I (or someone else here) can look deeply into it and find out how exactly their methodology underestimates the corruption levels in Nigeria relative to the countries ranked after it! (this is a key point that some here seem to be missing. . .)

@dayokanu: Nope, I have not. I'm at about the 6 month mark now, and not continuously (just a month at a time or so.)

I feel you, but just wonder if Nigeria truly is more corrupt than every country on earth.

@Eziachi and @ola olabiy:

Here are the latest rankings:
http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results

Nigeria is ranked 134.

Look at the countries near it or after it. The Phillipines. Ukraine. Honduras. Pakistan. Libya. Iran. Paraguay. Kenya. Russia. Venezuela.

Many of these countries are better off than Nigeria is. So should I just believe that, "No, the methodology they used is flawed! Nigeria is really the most corrupt country on the Earth, and should be ranked 178 on that list rather than 134!!" ?

Or should I start thinking a bit more and questioning whether corruption is the biggest problem, or the size of Nigeria's federal government?

Katsumoto:
Are you sure that these can not happen following the reduction of corruption? Politicians encourage big govt. because it enriches them. Foreign investment and from Nigerians alike will be encouraged by a less corrupt society.

I don't think the gains will be long-lasting unless everything is privatized.

There is a bit of a chicken and egg aspect to it, though. But I want PHCN and most of the other functions that the FG does privatized.

Katsumoto:
I am sorry but I missed the post you are referring to.

Post #155, on the previous page.

tensor777:
You know what Dapo Bear your points were quite clear and comprehensive. There is corruption in the US and corruptiion in Nigeria.
The main difference is that:-
1)Internal control systems make crude embezzlement almost impossible in the us but other more involved forms of corruption like contract inflation,racketerring pork barrel projects and influence peddling still take place there
2)Another point is that the private sector in the form of American households are by far and away the biggest spenders in America dwarfing business investment and government spending so the impact of corruption on the American system is much lesss than in Nigeria where there is still an over dependence on oil sales.

Yep. The entire state of Alaska, Halliburton, Chicago, revolving door between lobbyists/politicians, campaign finance. Corruption in the US is quite sophisticated and less obvious. Not as hamfisted as in Nigeria.

But as you say in point #2. . . ultimately it doesn't hurt the US very much. To use a wierd sort of heuristic analogy, If the US government is "10% corrupt" but only represents 20% of the US economy, then overall corruption is only 2% of the GDP. In a country like Nigeria, the government might represent 80% of the economy. If 25% corrupt, then that represents 20% of the GDP.

Privatization is a big part of not only economic growth and prosperity, but also fighting corruption. But I never really hear Nigerian politicians talk like this, unfortunately.

@Katumoto: I eagerly await your response.

tensor777:
All in all I would be very wary of a president that says its main objective of being in government would be to fight corruption. In view of recent experience I don't doubt  that such a slogan would go down well with certain elements in the diaspora BUT there are much more pressing issues that Ribadu should focus on.
Such as wholesale privatisation and commercialisation of the economy, security, and last but not least the Nigeria Police Force.

Exactly. Privatization and shrinking of the government and its functions seems equally large a priority to me.

Anyway, long story short. . . corruption in Nigeria vs. that in the US is not what I'm using to say that corruption might be blamed too much for Nigeria's ills. I initially compared Nigeria to its peers (as ranked by measures like the CPI), not to the US.

Katsumoto:
You still miss the point; Sagamite's analogy was apt. Someone collecting a 5% bribe for assisting with the approval of a contract is different from collecting the entire INFLATED budget and doing nada. Don't compare corruption levels in the US and Naija.

Sure, it is clear that the latter causes a larger DEGREE of harm than the former. But they both cause harm, do they not? Perhaps in the former country corruption represents 1% of the GDP, in the other it represents 10%.

That I point out that the 1% loss exists in the US this out means I'm justifying the corruption in Nigeria, or somehow say the corruption levels are comparable?

Perhaps you are right, maybe I am missing the point.

Anyway, this discussion initially wasn't about corruption in the US vs that of Nigeria. It was a comparison of Nigeria with its peers, at least as ranked by the CPI. @debosky raises a good point; perhaps these rankings underestimate corruption in Nigeria. Maybe they don't pay enough attention to corruption in government. That is worth looking into.

But what if it turns out that these corruption measures accurately measure Nigeria's corruption relative to its peers? Then we must look for a different solution to Nigeria's problems, I think.

EDIT: minor typos

@Ibime: Heh, eyes are closed on some issues, opened on others. For example, it wasn't closed on Ribadu's PhD @ Cambridge.

Sagamite:
Mate, it was not worth mentioning/comparing/pointing out in the first place.

That is like saying the boy in your high school was fast too when people are talking about how fast Usain Bolt is.

Meh. I'm not using the example of government procurement to excuse corruption in Nigeria. I'm just pointing out that similar things occur in the US. Is the frequency and economic damage caused by corruption as high as it is in Nigeria? Obviously not (and less economic damage because the economy there is more diversified, less dependent on gov't spending.) But the same sorts of things happen everywhere in the world. I don't think your analogy is a good one.

@debosky: I'm researching the CPI and trying to see if it would place less weight on this government factor in Nigeria. I'm skeptical of your claim, but it is worth looking into.

Some of you all seemed to have misread my comments. I'm of course not claiming that corruption levels of the US are comparable to Nigeria. Just pointing out that corruption exists here as well (just in less obvious ways.)

@dayokanu: We don't have guys here who just steal directly like that. But I'm just trying to say that there is substantial corruption here too. Contract inflation, cronyism, things of that sort. It happens everywhere. I just question everyone assumption that Nigeria alone is uniquely corrupt amongst nations. Or somehow Nigeria is the only place where people steal government monies. Happens everywhere. . . just in less ham-fisted ways in the Western world.

dayokanu:
Eku bear,

You dont know the level of corruption in Nigeria.

Let me give you an example.

there was a project by the Ministry of water resources to dig 2 bore holes in every local govt. A good bore hole probably costs 750k

But 10million naira was approved for each borehole by the Ministry (How many % inflation is that)

Ok Muktar shagari Minister of water resources slashed 5million off every bore hole leaving 5million, At every level of the bereaucratic structre they slash something. eventually the contractor gets 200k for the borehole . He spends 50K digging the equivalent of a septic tank which the govt official come to launch with all fanfare in 3 weeks the boreholes cant produce water.

A borehole that had 10m allocated actually had about 50k spent on it

We have the exact same thing here in the US for government contracts, especially military contracts, construction, IT, etc. Everybody inflates their bids for US government contracts. In fact, if you charge too little, they won't even give you the contract.

With that said, I doubt the inflation factor in the US is as high as it might be in Nigeria. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen here too on ALL contracts.

Sagamite:
I don't know many countries in the world where to even get a bank loan for entrepreneurial endevour from a non-state, private sector bank and the bank's loan officer will ask for a cut from the loan to approves it.  

Venezuela and Indonesia are not developed or advanced.

I would be more than happy to be as developed as Venezuela right now, @Sagamite. $10k/year GDP, constant electricity, good infrastructure are all I need to feel happy about a country. If Nigeria had this, I suspect that most of would be quite pleased.

@debosky: Your point seems to be that the current ranking of Nigeria's corruption (147/180 or so) underestimates the true corruption levels. You take issue with their methodology, claiming that their survey will underestimate corruption for reasons X, Y, and Z.
Now, are you also claiming that their methodology will not underestimate corruption in peer countries? Somehow it is unique to Nigeria that corruption is underestimated, but in peer countries, things are measured properly?
Perhaps because Anenih's, Ibori's and the equivalent do not exist in Kenya, Venezuela, and Indonesia? (Keep in mind that the leader of Venezuela is Hugo Chavez, who is arguably worse than anything we have to deal with in Nigeria.)

I just want to be very, very clear on what exactly your argument is.

Sagamite:
There is no country with similar corruption levels as Nigeria that is developed or advanced.

Venezuela is very well off. . . gdp per capita of $10k+ is very good. Indonesia isn't doing too poorly; $2300+.

Looks like I'm going to have to quote from that report again:

Other sources appear to confirm that although corruption may be perceived as a major bottleneck in Nigeria, it is not much worse than in comparator countries. Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index (CPI), which attempts to quantify the degree of corruption as seen by businesspeople and country analysts, ranges between 10 (highly clean) and 0 (highly corrupt). Table 2.9 shows that Nigeria ranks 147th (of 180 countries), close to Indonesia; Kenya and Venezuela appear to be slightly worse. These results may, at first sight, seem intriguing. Internationally, Nigeria is perceived to be a country in which corruption is a major problem. In fact, the data from table 2.9 do suggest that corruption is (in relative terms) problematic because it ranks Nigeria 147th of 180 countries. However, a closer look at the data shows that corruption does not appear to be much worse in Nigeria than in the other comparator countries, especially Kenya, Venezuela, and Indonesia. According to the investment climate survey data fewer firms in Nigeria perceive corruption to be a major or very severe constraint when compared with Kenya, Venezuela, and Indonesia, which is in line with the perceptions reported by Transparency International.
It can be argued that managers internalize corruption and hence report a lower level of corruption even though the problem is actually higher than perceived. To address this concern we looked instead at objective indicators of corruption, such as the amount of bribes paid “to get things done.” Even in this case, as shown earlier, objective indicators of corruption show that the amount of bribes paid by firms in Nigeria is lower than that paid in Kenya and similar to the amount paid in Indonesia. Furthermore if we look at the evolution of corruption over time we notice that in the past few years Nigeria’s corruption level has been improving. This finding is confirmed by other sources and is a result of the significant effort taken by the Nigerian government to fight corruption through enacting the Corrupt Practices Act and establishing the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (figure 2..

http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2009/03/18/000350881_20090318152502/Rendered/PDF/476070PUB0338855B01Official0Use0Only1.pdf

@debosky: So your point is that the countries ranked as more corrupt than Nigeria by international groups might in fact be less corrupt? Or perhaps there is something particularly insidious about Nigerian corruption versus that of similarly corrupt countries?

If that is your point. . . what evidence do you have that trumps the work of those international groups?

Plenty of countries are equally or even more corrupt. Yet they are progressing despite their corruption. Why? Does this not suggest that we've overstated the importance of corruption on the economy?

dayokanu:
^^ Sorry but I think corruption is the major thing.

You cant have corruption entrenched the way it is in Nigeria and have any meaningful development.

All the foreign aid and IMF loans we have had since the last 40yrs where have they gone to?

It is somewhat counterintuitive, but no, corruption is not the biggest problem. Lack of electricity, poor roads, lack of access to capital are the biggest problem in Nigeria (of course, some might argue that corruption is the reason there is no electricity. . . )

I made a post on this a couple days ago here:
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria?topic=578787.msg7522194#msg7522194

Scroll down to the bottom of that page, there is a link to a World Bank report on the Nigerian economy. Kenya, Indonesia, Venezuela are similarly corrupt, but are a lot more economically competitive than Nigeria is.

If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Anyway, I strongly recommend reading through that report when you have time. Lots of good stuff there.

fstranger1:
That is unfair

You know the truth and you know that what Tinubu is doing would never have been approved by Awo.


Please! Please, respect the Sage!

Agreed, let us never compare Tinubu to Awolowo again. That is an insult to Awolowo. Awolowo was a servant of the Yoruba people. Not a servant of his own political and economic interests. Awolowo wasn't installing his kin and homeboys into every political office, even kicking out incumbents.

Sagamite:
Come on, obviously all you will here is corruption, corruption, corruption but that was his job. And he did it very very well.

Also lets be frank, corruption is fundamental to the problem of Nigeria. I don't really see or have ever seen any Nigerian politician talk about pragmatic economic development that is not the hackneyed ones of (Power, infrastructure etc) bar Pat Utomi. To be frank with the level of education, mental retardation and moral perdition of the average Nigerian, such talk is a waste of time and academic, no wonder Utomi is still an academic.

I need more from him than this. Hell, Tinubu who I distrust has better ideas for economic development than Ribadu does. Tinubu and Fashola are developing a model of PPP that will bring in the capital Nigeria sorely needs to develop infrastructure. Why isn't Ribadu talking about any of these sorts of things? Ideas about economic development CAN be marketed to the masses, if you explain them well enough.

I don't think Jonathan or Buhari have ideas on economic development, new ideas of merit worth writing home about or better than Ribadu's.

Good point. Perhaps I'm holding Ribadu to a higher standard. But he MUST be held to a higher standard, since he is a relative newcomer and nobody.

There are enough papers and ideas of what Nigeria needs to do. The implementation is the challenge, and one of the major hinderances in corruption. Here is a man that has been pragmatic and knows about corruption and hates it as much as I hate moorons.  

Corruption again is only part of the problem, not all of it. Even if Nigeria were entirely corruption free, it would not develop optimally unless we find ways of bringing capital from abroad to build infrastructure (roads, power), invest in farming, etc. Long story short, the Nigerian economic pie is too small. So even if it were shared perfectly well, it wouldn't be enough food. The economy needs to be grown.

And sorry for taking so long to respond.

@dayokanu: Just this week there was political violence in a town in Ekiti West LGA. Some jackass on one of the Ekiti newsgroups spun the political violence as "pushing and shoving", but did not mention that this pushing and shoving led to people being carried to the hospital 

The ACN knows how to play the media game very well.

Sagamite:
Even if your point were true, since there is no alternative you can point to, your best attempt to achieve improvement is not to support incumbency, but to keep on punishing the misrulers by voting them out.

Supporting the incumbent because you do not think the opposition is any better will not change the incumbent's actions.

Well, all of this is a moot discussion, since Ribadu has 0 chance of beating GEJ.

But let's pretend that the ACN represented a strong opposition, but one which would be just as bad if they achieved power. Should I then support them over GEJ's PDP? All other things equal, perhaps your strategy might make some sense (actually, I don't even necessarily agree that it makes sense, but let's just assume this for now.)

But are all other things equal? No. If I support the ACN/Tinubu Congress of Nigeria, then this only strengthens Tinubu's profile and increases the probability that he becomes Oloye of Yorubaland. I have zero interest in seeing Yorubaland enslaved by one man.

Ibime:
As for anyone that said Ribadu is slow, try doing a PHD @ Cambridge like Ribadu was, let's see whether you would last a month. Or try building legally watertight cases like Ribadu had to do at EFCC.

Ribadu? PhD @ Cambridge? Do you even believe what you just wrote?

Anyway, I googled. He did a training course at HBS in some sort of police management course. Not an MBA or PhD, just some police course. For all we know it was a two week seminar   (As an aside, I see this thing a lot on LinkedIn these days. I was looking at someone's profile. . . they didn't list the place they went to college or graduate school as part of their education, instead just listed the 3 month training course they did at Harvard. So you look at their resume and think, "ooh, wow! Harvard!", and then see that they were there for only a few months   )

In any case, that obviously is no evidence of intelligence. I'm sure most of these Nigerian politicians could pull some strings and go visit Harvard for a couple weeks too and get a certificate from them  

Ibime:
Even if the biggest dunce leads Nigeria, he will improve your life x2 by simply corruption and indiscipline.

Haba! Corruption is PART of the problem, but not all of it. Quite possibly not even the biggest part.

And NEWSFLASH: President doesn't have to be a smart technocrat, only his ministers do.

Eh, I never claimed he has to be. But at the same time, let us not give Ribadu more credit than he is due. He did a fairly excellent job at the EFCC. This doesn't mean he is good material for the presidency.

Gbawe:
Have you seen any evidence of this? Take a deep breadth son . you usually make sense but you've been talking off-kilter since GEJ beat Atiku silly. Remind yourself he is the same GEJ who is ignoring the ogun State impeachment debacle till today so Gbenga Daniel could deliver for him this morning and later in April. He is the same individual enjoying the backing of the most ruinous hands in Nigeria's history !! He stood there while Anenih openly threathened delegate recently . His IG , deployed to win the election , personally supervised the freedom of Teslim Folarin from a murder charge (when bail was not even on the card) so that he could then be flown to Abuja , courtesy of GEJ, to deliver delegates for Jonathan. I can go on but the list is long. Snap out of it dude !! Jonathan is simply the annointee of everything evil and rank about Nigeria. What you said was what was said of Yar Adua . When some of us stated that Yardy was "dead on arrival" because , like Jonathan , he is too heavily compromised by ruinous hands and will thus be constrained by those very hands . Three year of Yar Adua and where are we as a nation? We cannot keep doing things the same way , and with the same set of people , while expecting a different outcome for Nigeria. Once again , wake up and see what you need to see . jonathan's win changes nothing and it should certainly not erase the memory of his numerous actions that have shown , without doubt , he is "more of the same".

@Gbawe: My natural, natural inclination is to be an ACN man. I think you know this. But regardless of the things that GEJ has done (or not done), it isn't clear to me that the ACN is any better.
Here are my reasons:
[list]
[*] The ACN in Ekiti State plays extremely dirty politics. Election rigging, political thuggery, winner-take-all politics, divide and rule, branding an entire town a PDP town (when the elections went 50/50!) and using that as an excuse to starve the town of resources! Yet this same ACN will yell, "PDP, PDP!" in an attempt to distract me from the evil actions that they themselves are taking.
[*] It appears that Tinubu's goal is to make himself the Saraki of Yorubaland. There is absolutely no justification whatsoever for him to be installing his wife, in-laws, etc in so many political offices in the SW. Anyone who seeks to create such a dynasty in Yorubaland is my enemy, pure and simple.
[*] You seem to know quite a bit about the ACN and their strategies. It was from you I learned that the reason all the ACN presidential candidates are Northerners is because the ACN leadership implicitly respects zoning! And you yourself who said that the ACN leadership is part of the Nigerian political elites. If this is true, why the hell do I give two sh1ts about the ACN? ACN/PDP are just two sides of the same twisted coin.
[/list]

Look, I don't like the PDP. But the ACN simply hasn't differentiated itself enough from the PDP for me to prefer it. Political thuggery, godfatherism, and they also are part of the same old political elite.

Hell, if anything, the ACN might be WORSE. One can make an argument that Tinubu's clear goal of making himself Oloye 2.0 is a bigger threat to progress in the SW than the PDP is.

So if this analysis is correct (something you'll no doubt clarify for me and point out where there are holes), perhaps GEJ is the lesser of two evils.

@tensor777: dude, just relax. Isn't worth the stress. Best to just skip over certain posts imo.

All he talks about is corruption, corruption, corruption. No ideas on economic development, no new ideas of merit. He is a glorified policeman.

Dude is a one hit wonder. . . got some acclaim from the EFCC saga and has milked that for all its worth.

Best analogy I can find for him would be Rudy Guiliani trying to get the Republican ticket by milking 9/11. I remember we used to mock him on sites like dailykos.com, calling him the "President of 9/11"

And like Rudy, the more you see, hear and examine Ribadu, the less compelling he seems.

Anyways, he has no chance of beating GEJ even if he were actually intelligent. So perhaps not a big deal either way.

Ribadu, smart? What evidence is there for this?

Yeah, the ACN/CPC alliance would have been strong enough to give the PDP a run for their money. But Ribadu and Buhari separately will lose, and lose massively to GEJ.


Probably for the best though. ACN looks to be just as crooked as the PDP, in certain ways. Maybe a relative outsider like GEJ will be able to change things for the better.