CORRUPTION” IN THE NOVELS OF ADAOBI NWAUBANI TRICIA’SI DO NOT COME TO YOU BY CHANCE AND LABO YARI’S THE CLIMATE OF CORRUPTION, A RESEARCH PROJECT TOPIC ON ENGLISH AND LINGUISTIC
Chapter one
General introduction
1.0 Introduction and statement of the research problem
Corruption refers to any act of practice which is deviant to the norm of a given society. It signifies a form of behaviour that departs from morality, ethics, tradition, law and civic virtue.
Corruption is a phenomenon which reaches far beyond the giving, demanding, and receiving of bribes, by money by public officials. Corruption is an “Umbrella offence” as it covers a variety of illegal activities.
Bayley David supports this perspective. He argues that corruption, while being tied particularly to the act of bribery, is a general term covering the misuse of authority. In essence, it is a result of considerations of personal gains, which need not be monetary (720).
Joseph Nye opines that corruption is behaviour which deviates from the normal duties of a public role because of private-regarding (family, close private clique), peculiarly or status gains or violates rules against the exercise of certain types of private-regarding influence. This includes such behaviour as bribery (use of reward to pervert the judgement of a person in a position of trust) nepotism, (bestowal of patronage by reason as ascriptive relationship rather than merit), and misappropriation (illegal appropriation of public resources for private – regarding uses),(419).
According to Carl Friedrich, individuals are said to be engaging in corruption when they are granted power by society to perform certain public duties. The result of societal expectation from public officer sometimes precipitate corrupt tendencies because the holder of the office is expected to meets certain demands above his income (15).
Bayart and Hibron, cited in Akano see corruption as a malaise that currently afflicts African states. Due to this, Governments in Africa have ceased to operate as political entities and become willing participate in a wide-range of corrupt and criminal activities (69).
In another perspective, Alam defines corruption in developing countries as an unavoidable outcome of modernization and development. “In Africa, many people see corruption as a practical problem involving the Outright theft, embezzlement of funds or other appropriation of state property, nepotism and the granting of favours to personal acquaintances the use of public authority and position to exact payments and privilege (Harsch: 33).
Pita Agbese has observed that in post independence Nigeria, all political coalitions and groups have been engaged in determined efforts to capture the apparatus of state in order to use the state’s redistributive powers to a mass wealth for themselves. Soon after capturing the government, the incumbent regime usually erects significant barriers to entry and monopolizes the study of legislation, thus making certain that other groups do not participate in the allocation of resources. For locked out groups, participation in the economic systems must be obtained through payment of bribes to incumbent bureaucrats, all of whom are members of the politically dominant group (229-230).
