Copyright © 2020, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
In one form or another, corruption has been with us since the dawn of civilization. Today, corruption remains among the major challenges for both developed and developing countries across the world. Corruption is a phenomenon that has a detrimental impact on every aspect of the social and economic performance of a country. Among other things, corruption hinders development, aggravates income inequality, reduces investment, both domestic and foreign, leads to the inefficient allocation of public funds, significantly lowers the quality of public sector services and deprives people of access to basic public services.
The urgent need to fight corruption was first recognized by the international community in the adoption of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) in 2003. The Convention introduces a comprehensive set of standards, measures and rules that all countries can apply in order to strengthen their legal and regulatory regimes to fight corruption. With 187 States parties, UNCAC is one of the most ratified United Nations conventions. Corruption has also been recognized as a major impediment to development in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Under Goal 16, “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions”, Member States have committed to “substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms” (target 16.5) among the population (16.5.1) and among businesses (16.5.2).
The first step in that process is for countries to measure the level of and trends in corruption and bribery effectively by conducting experience‐based sample surveys on a regular basis. When well designed and implemented, experience‐based surveys can avoid the pitfalls of both administrative data on corruption and the shortcomings of perception‐based corruption studies, which by definition capture opinions about corruption rather than the actual phenomenon itself.
Nigeria has been exemplary in implementing experience‐based corruption surveys. In 2016, the National Bureau of Statistics of Nigeria (NBS), in partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and with funding from the European Union, conducted the first‐ever comprehensive nationwide survey on the experience of bribery in Nigeria. To measure if progress had been made and to determine in which areas more needed to be done, the Government of Nigeria carried out a second corruption survey in 2019 with the technical support of UNODC and funding from the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Published in December 2019, the survey report, Corruption in Nigeria: Patterns and Trends, highlights areas of progress and areas that still pose a grave concern. One particularly important finding is that women are consistently less likely than men to pay bribes when in contact with a public official, and initial evidence indicates that female public officials may be less likely to take bribes than their male colleagues. The report concluded that there is a need to conduct further research on how socioeconomic and cultural factors and their intersectionality underpin the linkages between gender and corruption in Nigeria.
On the one hand, culturally learned risk‐averse behaviour that is ingrained in women, and the disproportionate sanctioning that women receive when caught engaging in corrupt activities, may suggest that women are less likely than men to engage in corrupt activities. On the other hand, it is often claimed that women simply do not have the opportunity to engage in such activities as they are excluded from collusive and corrupt gendered networks. Such networks, which are predominantly male, effectively serve to limit the participation of women in both the public and private sectors as well as in the political sphere. Research indicates that criminal behaviour is increasing among women and is coinciding with increased female participation in the labour market. It thus remains to be seen how the increased participation of women in socioeconomic and political life will change their involvement in corruption.
This report is a response to the need to conduct further research on gender and corruption in Nigeria. By presenting the first empirical evidence on gender and corruption in the country, it is aimed at encouraging debate about whether and how gender equality in the public administration of Nigeria can contribute to an effective reduction in corruption. The report also provides in‐depth analysis of the differences in bribe‐ paying between men and women, as well as differences in their attitudes and perceptions, with a view to assisting the improvement of anti‐corruption strategies at both the national and local level.
