Nigeria And Keny Corruption Essay

Instead of focusing on diversifying, the leaders of the country focus on gaining power and standing in the government. “Nigeria’s most daunting challenge lies in overcoming the severe divisions among its competing religious and ethnic groups” . Moreover, once they gain it, their problems do not end, since they must look over their back, never knowing how long they will hold on to the little power they have. Meanwhile, the common person suffers, as he is neglected by his government and must survive on his own. “The standard of living declined even further than before and external debts increased.” This neglect of the common man bodes ill for the government, as it is the common man who votes in the polls. However, the vote does very little, since corruption is rampant in Nigeria.

There are few nation-states that one could point to as being truly “corruption-free” (Denmark hosts the most corruption-free gov’t according to Transparency International’s 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index). However, this is a trait that holds back the growth of the whole of society, weakening the disadvantaged and emboldening the powerful. As Transparency International goes on to state:

The Republic of Niger, a poor, landlocked country, located in the heart of Sub-Saharan West Africa. Niger has seen its fair share of change throughout the decades; moving away from the control of the French Parliament in 1960, Niger formally declared its independence. Despite this bold act of independence, Niger would not see its first steps towards democracy until the early 1990’s, when they held their first open election as a free state. However, even with the empowerment of the people in a democratic government, Niger has seen itself nearly torn apart as a result constant coups, that have occurred as recently as 2010. Such instability has led to incredulous amounts of corruption and poverty, within the Niger government. This lack of stability and constant turnover in government, has been a driving factor behind the lack of resources available for education in Niger.

Ultimately corruption takes away from the total resource pie, which essentially takes away from the common populace. When a nation’s resources are fraudulently diverted, societal development and progress suffer across the board. Accordingly, nongovernmental organizations such as Transparency International concur with this assessment and also depict corruption as an anti-poor mechanism. Hence, corruption feeds into the cycle of poverty in developing nations, leaving the majority of wealth for the elite minority, while the majority of the populace lives in abject poverty. In the end, corruption and poor governance, combined with an abundance of accessible and valuable resources throughout the region provide ample motive for the generation of a power grab.

In recent times, a lot of countries in Africa practice a federal system of government where a mandated person is elected and in power for four years, but will not leave power because of corruption and oppression, making it difficult to create a room for a change. Most presidents will remain in power for decade’s threatening its people, oppressing and creating division amongst its citizens, thus democracy is abused. Most times, the president of 80% of countries in Africa, divert funds for its state and country into their own personal accounts, leaving people to die of

corruption” (Welsh and Woods, 2007, xi-xii). While the requirements do not explicitly state that these countries which have stable and effective government institutions need to be democratic, the features of governments who meet the requirements of governments giving aid (these requirements are often

The Nigerian economy has quite the surplus of natural resources they offer the potential for economic growth. “Crude oil accounted for over 95% of exports and over 65% of government revenue in 2004;” Nigeria is number eight in the world's exporter for oil. But agriculture still is a big part in the basic economic activity for the Nigerians.

oil in Nigeria. Nigeria’s large supply of high quality crude oil helped Shell climb to the top,

Nigeria is an Agricultural and oil rich nation but characterised by Political instability, corruption, poor

Corruption can be defined as the use of entrusted power to accumulate public wealthy for personal benefit. Corruption is not peculiar to any country, continent or state; it is sure a global issue which is an endemic to all government all over the world. However, corruption is prevalent in the Niger delta region of Nigeria; public officers in this oil producing state of Nigeria are corrupt. Consequently, it has defied the Niger delta from developing politically and economically which has left the states reputation in a mess. Radicalization of youths, abject poverty and -political instability are the three leading effects of corruption in the Niger delta region of Nigeria.

The Federal Republic of Nigeria, known as Nigeria, is located on the African continent and borders on the south the Gulf of Guinea, on the east Cameroon, on the northeast Chad, Niger on the north, and Benin on the west.

This paired with poor law enforcement yields an impossibly hard to get rid of corruption. In Kenya, political corruption has grown rampant. People, who are supposed to be representing the interests of their constituency, instead take money from the constituents to keep their representative positions.

Democracy has been familiarized as being the essential goal of any political institution. A government system modeled of the people, by the people and for the people is a highly attractive concept to most developing states that suffer from governments that still control the lives of its citizens. However, such states struggle to enable the process of formally consolidating their government. That is to say, despite many developing nations adapting the idea of democracy, they still face challenges that prevent them from being recognized as a democratic state. In fact, very few “new democratic” nations are believed to have a strong and secure system, leaving others to be viewed as only “condemned’” to remain democratic” while they “muddle through as ‘unconsolidated democracies’” (Diamond, 1997, p. 47). Where societies expected a state with increased individual liberty, protection from abuse of power, new economic and political opportunities, they instead encountered a poorly institutionalized regime lacking traits of good governance. A variety of arguments are provided to explain why such nations struggle to mirror the western states in the promotion of democracy. Of these many issues, political corruption is deemed to be a leading cause to why democratic consolidation remains elusive in most developing countries. Corruption plays a staggering role in stalling democratic consolidation in a number of ways. High levels of corruption are evidently associated with

Corruption is a complex political, social, and economic anomaly that negatively affects developing and developed countries. It weakens democratic institutions, holds economic development, widening the rich-poor gap and certainly leads to governmental instability. The World Bank definition of corruption states that “…the abuse of public office for private gain”.

Nigeria is Africa’s leading producer of oil and the seventh largest producer of crude oil in the world, and equally endowed with other numerous natural resources. But rather than utilizing its resources for maximum development, the country is unfortunately bedevilled with how to efficiently and effectively distribute oil revenues in an equitable manner. The revenue allocation phenomenon in Nigeria is basically the issue of distribution of national (resources) revenue, mobilized by the central federal government. And as far as the revenue allocation debacle is concerned, the haggling is between those who bake the national cake (major contributors to national revenue) and those at the helm of affairs to allocate it. There