Sunday 6 January 2013

The Nigerian Bribe Takers


The Nigerian police topped the list of reported cases of bribery.

Charles Ahmed needed a job and so in February last year, he was asked to part with N250,000 to secure employment at the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps. He said that he was able to talk the staff of the para military outfit into collecting N150,000 but by December, he was still unemployed. For Mohammed, another job seeker, the N20,000 he paid to secure employment in a construction company last April had not yielded any result. "I have not been employed by the organization. I feel cheated. I do not even want the job again. I just want my money back," Mr. Mohammed wrote on egunjedotinfo, an anti corruption website.
In November last year, the website, dedicated to crowd-sourcing trends in bribery and corruption in Nigeria, was launched by the Integrity Organization Nigeria, an anti corruption, research and advocacy organization. "The primary goal of the project is to track, name, and shame corrupt individuals and organisations in Nigeria," said Soji Apampa, the founder.
World’s corruption capital
After the website’s launch, complaints of staff of public and private organisations soliciting for bribes began to appear on the site. The complaints ranged from an immigration official demanding N1,000 before he would stamp an international passport to a police officer claiming that they were mandated to make "returns" of at least N40,000 to their commanding officer mostly on Fridays. Within five weeks of its launch, the website has recorded N1.2 million as having been paid as bribes to both government and private officials, with the police leading as the top bribe-soliciting department. Nigeria has continued to remain rooted to the bottom of the global corruption rankings since the return of democracy in 1999.
In December last year, Nigeria was rated the 35th most corrupt country in the world by Transparency International, scoring a dismal 27 out of a maximum 100 marks. One month earlier, a Gallup poll had rated the country’s leadership as the second most corrupt in the world, with 94 per cent of Nigerians believing that there is widespread corruption in government. But corrupt practices are not limited to government officials. Writing on the website, a student travelling to Malaysia for a Masters Degree programme narrated his experience in the hands of an airline official. The student, who did not state his name, said that he was forced by the airline staff to tender an "irrelevant" document or part with $300 or he would not be allowed to board. "I thought of calling police but police also collected N5,000 before allowing me in, I thought of calling Custom but they also collected N1,000 too after checking my luggage. I had to call him (the airline staff) and pleaded with him to collect N5,000 which he refused. After serious begging, he collected N10,000 and they later clear my document and allowed me in,' the student said.
Naij

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