CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.0 Introduction
Corruption is Nigeria’s leading single problem. Corruption is prevalent and omnipresent in Nigerian society. It has infiltrated all facets of life, and every segment of society is involved. In recent times, Nigeria has held the unenviable record of being considered one of the most corrupt countries among those surveyed. The Political Bureau, set up under the Ibrahim Babangida regime, summed up the magnitude of corruption in Nigeria as follows:
Corruption pervades all strata of the society. From the highest level of the political and business elites to the ordinary person in the village. Its multifarious manifestations include the inflation of government contracts in return for kickbacks; fraud and falsification of accounts in the public service; examination malpractices in our educational institutions including universities; the taking of bribes and perversion of justice among the police, the Judiciary and other organs for administering justice; and various heinous crimes against the state in business and industrial sectors of our economy, in collusion with multinational companies such as over-invoicing of goods, foreign exchange swindling, hoarding and smuggling.
At the village level, corruption manifests itself in such forms as adulteration of market goods or denting of measures to reduce their contents with a view to giving advantage to the seller.
Other manifestations of corruption in Nigeria today include the buying of votes, election rigging and malpractices, the use of money to sway the national and state assemblies, and political donations by private corporations.
President Olusegun Obasanjo, upon coming to power for a second time on May 29, 1999, promised that fighting corruption would be one of the policy thrusts of his administration. Accordingly, the first bill he forwarded to the National Assembly was the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offenses bill, which became the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offenses Act of 2000 (hereinafter the "Act"). The provisions of the Act set up the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offenses Commission (hereinafter the "ICPC"). President Obasanjo established, among other initiatives throughout the Presidency, a policy and programmes monitoring unit and a Due Process Office. This project seeks to critically examine the legal and institutional framework for combating corruption with specific focus on the ICPC.
1.1 Background to the Study
Corruption is a word with so many facets and ramifications that it cannot be easily defined. The World Bank has defined corruption as "the abuse of public office for private gain." According to the World Bank, a public office is abused for private gain when an official accepts, solicits, or extorts a bribe. Further, abuse of a public office occurs when private agents actively offer bribes to circumvent public policies and processes for competitive advantage and profit. Even if no bribery occurs, public office can be abused for personal benefit as well, through patronage and nepotism, the theft of state assets, and the diversion of state revenue.
These definitions are deficient, however, in that they are concerned only with public sector corruption, thereby ignoring corruption in the private sector. Additionally, Transparency International (hereinafter "TI") has defined corruption as "the misuse of entrusted power for private benefit." This definition appears to be as deficient as the World Bank's definition. "Entrusted power" suggests power within a public office, however, in some cases it may also arise in private matters. Furthermore, corruption may involve an exercise of power neither expressly nor implicitly granted.
In the Nigerian case of Biobaku v. Police, Bairarnian, J. defined corruption as the receiving or offering of some benefit as a reward or inducement to sway or deflect the receiver from the honest and impartial discharge of his duties. However, this definition appears to define bribery more so than corruption because corruption is a wider concept that encompasses bribery. In effect, corruption may occur without the element of receiving or offering some benefit as a reward or inducement to sway or deflect the receiver from the honest and impartial discharge of his duties.
Assisi Asobie, a renowned professor of political science at the University of Nigeria, defined corruption as "unethical behaviour or practice."
According to Professor Asobie, corrupt activity is that which violates the ethics of society in general, or the ethics of one's office, position, profession, or calling, where ethics means a system of morals, the rules governing behavior, or standards of conduct. This definition is so wide that it defeats its own meaning and may result in confusion of thought and analysis. In legal parlance, corruption normally means conduct prohibited by law. Going by Asobie's definition, there may be some unethical conducts which, though not illegal, nevertheless qualify as corruption. There may also be unethical conduct that does not amount to corruption. For example, it is unethical for a person to slap his father, yet this does not amount to corruption, strictly speaking.
Lateef Adegbite also adopts the moralist approach in defining corruption. He defined corruption as "moral deterioration, depravity and perversion of integrity by bribery or favour." He said that corruption in its widest sense "connotes the perversion of anything from its original state of purity, a kind of infection or infected condition." According to Adegbite, corruption in its most basic sense means acting or inducing an act with the intent of improperly securing an advantage. This definition suffers from the same defects as that of Professor Asobie. In legal parlance, an act or omission which constitutes corruption must be prohibited by law at the pain of punishment. Furthermore, a person involved in corruption may seek to secure an improper advantage for another person rather than himself.
Unfortunately, the Nigerian Criminal Code, the Penal Code, and the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offenses Act of 2000 do not provide a sufficient definition of corruption. For instance, Section 2 of the Act provides that "corruption" includes "bribery, fraud, and other related offenses. "
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Corruption is the most serious developmental challenge to Nigeria. Corruption is driven by Official tolerance for illicit enrichment, concentration of wealth and economic power in the hands of a few, blending of political and economic interests and total dependence on Crude Oil for income. It undermines democracy and good governance in Nigeria.
Corruption is also a threat to the security of human lives as thousands of lives are lost annually in Nigeria due to poor road and transport infrastructure, poor healthcare services and poor security and social services generally. Corruption is believed to be prevalent in Africa and Nigeria in particular due to the absence of strong institutional and legal frameworks to combat it.
The very serious impact of corruption on socio-economic development of any country has continuously received the attention of the international community. Several international instruments have been drafted and adopted to combat corruption at both regional and international levels. The United Nations (UN) has an instrument in this regard. In Africa, the African Union also has adopted a treaty on combating corruption. In Nigeria, there are in existence several institutions and a large body of legislation aimed at addressing the problem of corruption. The creation of ICPC was expected to cause a major shift in combating corruption, notwithstanding, corruption remains a cankerworm of gargantuan proportions that has eaten very deep into the fabric of the nation known as Nigeria.
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