The keenly contested presidential elections in February saw Nigerians offered, among other things, a choice between two very different ways of tackling the corruption in the country. The keen contestation was largely due to the challenge thrown by other candidates to the incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari who had swept to power on an anti-corruption platform in his election campaign in 2015. The campaign worked largely because the electorate perceived corruption to be one of the key failings of the then President Goodluck Jonathan’s government. However stagnating economic growth and disruptive regional conflicts had subsequently overshadowed the Buhari government’s anti-corruption efforts,
During the build-up to the 2019 elections, Nigerians were presented with divergent views on anti-corruption strategies by over seventy presidential candidates. However, the candidates who obviously caught the attention of most Nigerians were from the two main political parties—Buhari from the incumbent All Progressives Alliance (APC) and Atiku Abubakar from the main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
Atiku, President Buhari’s main opponent, proposed a liberal anti-corruption strategy that included granting of amnesty to those with corruption charges in order to help recover billions of dollars embezzled from the country. It also involved a highly controversial proposal to completely privatise the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). The NNPC is Nigeria’s state owned oil and gas corporation and responsible for regulating the managing the sector in Nigeria. However, his approach to corruption did not resonate strongly with ordinary Nigerians. Many had concerns that his approach could create a culture of impunityandamplify corruption by the country’s political class and powerful elites.The massive corruption under the PDP government prior to 2015, especially with regard to the oil and gas sector, lend credence to their scepticism.
On the other hand, Mr Buhari, who gained significant political capital in 2015, maintains a tough posture on corruption, which contributed strongly to his victory. Yet after almost four years in power, Mr Buhari’s anti-corruption strategy has not yielded the desired outcome. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC),and other government anti-corruption agencies, have failed to claim many high-profile convictions. And a February 2019 Gallup poll found that 84 percent of Nigerians think that government corruption is widespread, and likely down by just 2 percentage points from 2014. Meanwhile, some critics argue that Buhari’s anti-corruption policy is a subtle ‘political witch-hunt’ targeted mainly at political opponents and members of opposition parties.
Using policies based on rule of law alone to fight corruption seems unlikely to yield results. In the face of intransigent corruption, and an entrenched Presidential view about how best to tackle it, how to break the impasse?
Effective enforcement or systemic anti-corruption strategy has been difficult to achieve in Nigeria for the following reasons. The last few years after the return of democracy have witnessed the rise of political ‘entrepreneurs’ who owe little by way of political affiliations and cross parties based on their perceptions of the relative power of these parties and bring with them the ability to mobilise resources and voter support. This makes enforcement difficult. Businesses in the private sector can also carry out their activities informally and can generate benefits for themselves and their families through political connections. Hence, enforcement of formal rules is difficult in such contexts, that is, those with rule by law, or selective enforcement. This is true of most developing country contexts but the pervasive rents linked to the oil sector presents policy makers with a more complex scenario in Nigeria. Redistributive ‘live and let live’ rents from the sector are important for political stability in the country and it is due to a combination of these structural reasons why policies like privatising NNPC are highly unlikely to work effectively.
The pertinent question remains, with politics what they are, what can feasibly be done about corruption? Studies by the Anti-Corruption Evidence (ACE) Research Consortium at SOAS, University of London, in partnership with several Nigerian research institutes, shows that effective anti- corruption requires two mutually inclusive factors: policies should be based on horizontal enforcement rather than top down vertical enforcement that requires a rule of law context. This involves rules being adhered to in their own interests by productive and powerful actors involved in specific sectors of the economy. This can be complemented by rule of law reforms. Buhari has so far focused on the second and ignored the first. What could it mean in practice?
The powerful have no incentive currently to enforce rules on themselves and their peers – but incentives can be changed. The central idea entails carefully identifying critical sectors where changes in the structure of incentives could trigger productive behaviour from key stakeholders. For example, the privatisation of Nigeria’s power sector has not met expectations, largely because of the dominance of politically-connected companies in both the generation and distribution value chain. This makes it difficult to create incentives for genuine investors to enter the sector. In this context, the immediate approach requires an off-grid solution by creating credible incentives in smaller power plants that are embedded in industrial clusters or solar generation. Having a coalition whose incentives will be aligned with increasing electricity generation and willingness to pay is crucial.
The success of this strategy, to a large extent depends on policy makers in the government having a clear understanding of why private and public organisations are engaged in corrupt practices –For sure there will be politically relevant sectors where reducing corruption will be difficult. However there are others where private incentives to reduce corruption are high coupled with political agency, for instance in the country’s power sector or with recent reforms in fertiliser subsidies. There are some signs so far that Buhari and his administration are open to a new way of doing things – and this is critical because without some change, Nigerians have little to look forward to on corruption than more of the same.
Joseph Ajefu
Dr Ajefu is a Research Fellow for the Anti-Corruption Evidence research consortium (ACE) at SOAS University of London.
