CORRUPTION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1   Background of the Study
Corruption is unarguably one of the most topical issues in the discourses of the deepening crisis and contradictions of post-independence Nigeria. The level of attention devoted to it ·may not only be due to its rapid and unprecedented expansion to all facet of human Endeavour and its menacing consequences, but also because of the seeming fecklessness of successive attempts at combating it. The problem has become so endemic that, as (Omotola 2006; 2004) has pointed out, one can begin to talk about the political culture of corruption in the country. To be sure, Transparency International, an international non-governmental organization that is reputed for its exploits in its measurement of countries' Corruption Perception Index, ranked Nigeria as the most corrupt among the 52 countries ranked in 1996 and 1997.
This could be regarded as of little significance as the country was then under the firm authoritarian grip of the military. The hope that the advent of democracy in 1999 would mark an appreciable breakaway from the past, including the country's perennial problem of corruption, largely remains in the pipeline. Nigeria, in what seems senseless squandering of hopes, ranked as the most corrupt in 2002, the second most corrupt in 2003, and the third most corrupt in 2004 (Omotola, 2006). These findings point to the fact that the anti-corruption war has hardly made a positive impact in the country, perhaps due to the depth of the phenomenon.
It is important to know that ‘corrupt’ acts are displayed at various sectors in Nigeria, but this work would focus more attention on exposing and proffering solutions to various means of