Relationship between Corruption and Terrorism in African Countries

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Corruption and terrorism have become a common phenomenon in every society nowadays and the negative effect it has on the political and socioeconomic structure of a country can be hard overemphasized. There has been a global outcry and collective effort to tackle social ills through the implementation of anti-graft laws, anti-corruption policies, and various counterterrorism strategies across the world. As the fight against corruption and terrorism continues, other nations have been successful in their quest to limit the level of corrupt practices and terrorist attacks while other countries are still highly penetrated by corruption and terrorism. In order to discover a more suitable and realistic way of fighting corruption and terrorism, there is need to examine if the two constructs are related and the direction of the relationship, as the approach will assist if the two social ills should be tackled independently or simultaneously, or mutually. Corruption and terrorism have been the subject of many studies because of their alarming increase over the last two decades. Among the studies conducted on corruption and terrorism are; Adeniran and Owoeye (2018) conducted a prospective study on logistical perspective towards counterterrorism of Boko Haram Insurgency in Nigeria. Lessons were drawn from the Boko Haram's geographical location, evolution and their mode of operations in previous attacks. Boko Haram group was declared terrorist in the northeast part of Nigeria, and the in the global world because the insurgency grew into one of the largest areas of violence in Africa, and major conflict in global ABSTRACT Background: There has been a global outcry and collective effort to tackle social ills through the implementation of anti-graft laws, anti-corruption policies, and various counterterrorism strategies across the world. As the fight against corruption and terrorism continues, other nations have been successful in their quest to limit the level of corrupt practices and terrorist attacks while other countries are still highly penetrated by corruption and terrorism. This study examines the relationship between corruption and terrorism in four African countries (Nigeria, Niger Republic, Cameroon, and Chad) using data between 2010 and 2017 on the corruption perception index and global peace index. The year 2010 was chosen as the base year because of the availability of data for all the four countries. Global peace rank was used to determine the rank of terrorism. Spearman rank correlation was employed to establish the relationship between corruption and terrorism. The reason for employing the Spearman correlation was justified in the study.