Deconstructing the discourse on corruption in Nigeria, By Abiodun Adeniyi

Corruption seemed intertwined with the evolution of Nigeria as a nation-state. It has been a malaise, a big elephant in the room, regularly talked about, loathed through synchronic rhetoric, but growing in systematic proportion, with little or no hope of redemption. The discourse of corruption looks, therefore, like an exposition of the nation’s attempt at social, economic and political development. From the descriptive “ten percenters” of the 1960s, it has gestated to greater fractions, sometimes 100 per cent, with gusto, extraordinary impunity and bravado, after the fashion of persons plundering a captured territory. The looting of the public patrimony has been differently described as prebendal, predatory, rapacious, locust-like, or mindless. However, we are still challenged to continually examine its context, which is patently multi-dimensional, octopodal and cyclical, if to sustain an attempt at reminding the populace that the practice, deep-seated as it may…