Corruption, Nigeria, and the Moral Imagination
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Published:February 2016
Moral Economies of Corruption
A paradox to taking a culturalist approach to corruption is that the various moral discourses critiquing it cannot be reduced to a mechanical set of principles allowing one to conclude particular actions are right or wrong. How does one conceptualize the processes through which moral claims are negotiated? What constitutes the publics and the public spheres in which this negotiation takes place, and how can one discuss the social negotiation of “right” and “wrong” without trafficking in circular logic? (We know “the community” regards an action as wrong because of popular protest. We know people engaged in particular acts because they were condemning “wrong” behavior.) This is not entirely satisfactory. After laying out the problematic of moral economies, the chapter develops a reading of a fascinating essay by the noted poet Odia Ofeimun as a window onto how moral economies operate, at least in one singularly gifted moral imagination.
Bibliography
Arewa House, Kaduna (AH)
Kano State History and Culture Bureau (HCB)
Nigerian National Archives, Kaduna (NAK)
Rhodes House, Oxford (RH)
United Kingdom National Archives, Public Record Office (TNA PRO)
(Newspapers are Nigerian unless otherwise noted.)
Boston Globe (USA)
Daily Champion
Daily Independent
Daily Telegraph (UK)
Daily Trust
Guardian
Guardian (UK)
Irish Times (Ireland)
Lakeland Ledger (Florida, USA)
National Mirror
New Nigerian
New York Times (USA)
Observer (UK)
Post-Express
Premium Times
Punch
Sahara Reporters
Sun
Tell
This Day
Time (USA)
Vanguard
Wall Street Journal (USA)
Washington Post (USA)
West Africa (UK)
Nigerian Corruption and the Limits of the State
Corruption provides a new optic onto the Nigerian state. Rather than a set of real-world institutions that approximate Western models, the Nigerian state should be seen as an ideological project of labeling the activities of particular actors as being those of “state” officials. The ideological project of “the state” makes the institution appear to be more than the sum of its parts, as not being political or nakedly extractive. To the extent that corruption discourse condemns practices for deviating from the norms of bureaucratic governance, it is a political performative. When bureaucratic structures themselves are problematic, corruption discourse is no simple tool of technocratic critique. It underpins the ideological process through which the Nigerian state functions at all. Condemning “corruption” implies a vision of a non-corrupt alternative, not degenerated, properly bureaucratic, fully modernized. It is a legitimating fiction, all the more powerful because it operates through its own denial.
Bibliography
Arewa House, Kaduna (AH)
Kano State History and Culture Bureau (HCB)
Nigerian National Archives, Kaduna (NAK)
Rhodes House, Oxford (RH)
United Kingdom National Archives, Public Record Office (TNA PRO)
(Newspapers are Nigerian unless otherwise noted.)
Boston Globe (USA)
Daily Champion
Daily Independent
Daily Telegraph (UK)
Daily Trust
Guardian
Guardian (UK)
Irish Times (Ireland)
Lakeland Ledger (Florida, USA)
National Mirror
New Nigerian
New York Times (USA)
Observer (UK)
Post-Express
Premium Times
Punch
Sahara Reporters
Sun
Tell
This Day
Time (USA)
Vanguard
Wall Street Journal (USA)
Washington Post (USA)
West Africa (UK)