Causes of Corruption in Nigeria Part 2

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For Olayiwola , there are several factors that are responsible for the prevalence of corruption in Nigeria. These include: Institutional factors such as agitations against equal distribution of well-remunerated positions in government, which are not based on merit but on connections, contracts or ethnicity. The effect of this is that it undermines credibility, integrity, respectability and image of institutions charged with the responsibility of law enforcement and adjudication of punishment, such as the Police, the judiciary and prison services. (Olayiwola, 2013:60).

Poor Salary Structure and Conditions of Service, Poor Administration, which occurs in forms of inadequate control, planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, budgeting and reporting. Staff negligence such as, lack of regular bank reconciliations, stock-taking and verification of prices in the market and issuing of cheques without proper blocking of the unused spaces that could be manipulated by corruption perpetrators. Traditional factors such as religious affiliation, strong kinship ties and parochialism, extended family, etc.

Socio-cultural Induced Corruption, Sowunmi (2010) remarked that there are some socio-cultural causes of corruption, such as: Customs, family pressures on government officials and ethnicity. The traditional institutions have contributed immensely to the growth and gloom of corruption in Nigeria, even in countryside. There are for him, the traditional values of gift giving and tributes to leaders, which often lead to what Brownsberger (1983) describes as “polite corruption,” or the sort of corruption which level is relatively low. Chabal and Daloz (1999) reasoned that in Africa, such factors as the obligations of mutual support, the imperatives of reciprocity, the importance of gift exchange, the payment of tribute, the need to redistribute, even the habits of cattle rustling, or, more generally, of plundering others, all have a bearing on the phenomenon of corruption on the continent today.