Corruption in Public Administration and National Development in Nigeria

Abstract

Although the facts of weak institutional structure, inefficiency, poor professional standards, low productivity, a culture of waste, over-bloated staff structure etc., have been identified as problems of the civil service in Nigeria, only scant attention has been paid to the debilitating effects of corruption. This paper chronicled some of the annals of administrative corruption, vis-à-vis., their impacts on administrative development in Nigeria. Adopting the qualitative approach, the paper utilized the Market-Centred perspective as an analytical guide and considered corruption, not just as the epicentre of the problems of administrative development in Nigeria but also as the bane of the nation’s development processes. Besides the plugging of corruption loopholes and the institution of a more robust reward system for corrupt-free administrative officials, the paper recommended stringent measures to restrain systemic corruption, by making it a high-risk activity where perpetrators must be apprehended, severely punished and dispossessed of corruptly earned monies and property.