It is no longer news to suggest that Nigeria is on the verge of being completely destroyed by corruption. What is news is that since the middle of the 19th Century, the Berlin Conference of 1884 -1885 to be precise, the biggest theft in world history has been the colonisation of Africa.

Secondly, since 1960, the biggest theft in human history has been the colossal amount of money, approximately $450 billion or N285 trillion, lost through corruption in Nigeria, the main homeland of blacks in the world. This is the reason to begin to understand the political economy of a phenomenon which is doing so much damage to a territory of vast human and material resources that are enough to build a modern state that can compete very well with others worldwide in the era of globalisation. While Nigeria has effectively or functionally failed, it still retains a national carcass which can be resuscitated with good leadership.

Political economy, as used here, refers to the interconnectedness of political and economic factors in understanding development dynamics in social formations or national entities. And its use precedes the Keynesian paradigm of government intervention in market forces. A political economic analysis integrates considerations of historical, cultural and social factors with those of political and economic systems. In this sense, behaviour and values, in other words, psychology and sociology combine with political and power factors and the production, distribution and exchange elements of economics to determine the human condition over historical periods. Ultimately, what is happening to people’s incomes, well-being and livelihoods becomes the concern and target of political economy. In the case of the analysis here, the fact that recent studies have established that critical public institutions are the main centres of corruption justifies a political economic analysis of corruption in Nigeria.

On balance, oil resources have immediate target beneficiaries of about two million Nigerians and through multiplier effects of about five to 10 million people. This is the money that is appropriated and expended by the president, ministers, federal agencies and departments, the National Assembly, governors, commissioners, state assemblies, local government chairmen, and councillors as well as sundry government contractors (who inflate contracts), consultants  and others. The excess crude account which captures the surplus from favourable international crude oil pricing has become a controversial fund subject to abuse.

Outside the capital that is managed in the non-contracting private sector, the mainstream economy including manufacturers, bankers and traders, it is the federation account money that has been the main victim of corruption. Of course, fraud and other forms of crimes exist in the wider society on an unacceptable scale.  There have been other forms of politically-induced corrupt accumulation through indigenisation, privatisation and monetisation.  The biggest  damage  to the  society seems to come  from the theft of public  money which is meant for development purposes like power, education, health, public  transportation, water,  housing, national security, among  other sectors.

All forms of corruption are bad, but the one that bites hardest seems to be political corruption.

However, in the case of the federation account, it is distributed to the Federal Government, states and local governments. Its distribution is in such a way that most non-oil producing states receive about 10 to 15 per cent less than the oil-producing states.

There is a problem of a national thieving elite versus the broad masses both of which classes are everywhere. Those who steal public resources use them to purchase political power, so they recycle themselves. They create or amend the constitution to protect their interests and thereby promote the hegemony of corruption.

This corruption trickles down to pollute the rest of the society and correlates with or promotes bribery and other forms of crimes and vices.

A better society is one that has systemic equity and egalitarianism.

Sen is a communication and development specialist.

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