 Hello and welcome to the first edition of the Development Dialogue series brought to you by the United Nations Development Programme, the UNDP, and Channels Television, and Maokai or Gwyn Yusuf. In the first of this very unique series, we focus on corruption and its impact on development. A common saying today in Nigeria is that if we don't kill corruption, corruption will kill us. Corruption manifests in many ways, failing institutions, weak enforcement of the rule of law, nepotism, and bribery. A 2019 survey on the patterns and trends of corruption in Nigeria carried out by the United Nations Office for Drug and Crime, the UNODC, in conjunction with the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, estimates that a total of roughly about 675 billion Naira were spayed in cash bribes to public officials in Nigeria last year alone. This figure corresponds to 0.52 percent of the entire gross domestic product as a GDP of Nigeria. But corruption is not confined to Nigeria alone. Transparency International's 2018 report scores more than two-thirds of the 180 countries it surveyed that year below 50 in its ranking. The average score was 43. It went on to report that the continued failure of most countries to significantly control corruption is contributing to a crisis in democracy around the world. It says, while the exceptions, the data shows that most countries are failing to make serious inroads against corruption. What then is a nexus between development and corruption? Will an absence of corruption automatically spell a boom in development? Are there any links between democracy and an increase or decrease in corruption? What are the benefits to citizens when corruption is reduced and are citizens able to make these linkages? Our very eminent panel of experts will help dissect some of these issues today and help provide a way forward. I have a singular honor to introduce Professor Mushta Khan. He is a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and Executive Director of the DFID-funded Anti-Corruption Evidence Research Consortium. Prof, you're welcome to the Development Dialogue series. We also have with us Dr. Oliver Stolpe who is representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Nigeria. You're welcome to the program as well. We also have William Sumer who is a governance expert at the UNDP in Nigeria. Welcome. And we also have with us Reverend David Urullo who is the Executive Director of African Network for Environment and Economic Justice Anij and coordinator of the Anij Centre for the Study of Corruption. You're welcome to the program. Thank you very much. Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Dialogue series. I did also mention at the start of my introduction that the Development Dialogue is a very unique series. It's no ordinary talk shop. The takeaways from this discussion will be collated and transmitted to the relevant government bodies with the expectation that it will serve as citizens' contributions to some of the policies they expect to see implemented by government bodies. So, in our students today, we also have in addition to our panel of experts on the subject matter, a very vibrant audience, and you watching us at home, we hope to encourage you to talk to us using the social media handles shown on your screen. The hashtag is DevTalksNG. So, let's quickly get to this. What exactly, if any, are the linkages between corruption and development? Professor. So, I think let me begin with two contradictory facts. One fact which I think all of us know from our experience is that many types of corruption are deeply damaging for development. Roads don't get built, hospitals don't have medicines, schools don't have textbooks, the wrong kinds of investments are made. Obviously, corruption has a massive effect on development. At the same time, look at the historical fact that every developing country at a certain stage of its development is massively corrupt. There was no example in history of a developing country which wasn't massively corrupt, and this includes very successful countries like China recently in the 1980s, South Korea before that, Japan before that, and indeed in the 1930s, the United States was highly corrupt. So, how do you reconcile these two pieces of evidence? And my answer is that there are actually many different types of corruption, and while at an early stage of development, you can't get rid of all types of corruption instantly, if you don't identify the most damaging types of corruption that are feasible to address and do something about it, then you won't get the development which actually allows you to reduce other types of corruption. So, there is a kind of two-way causality going on here, and that's why the analysis of corruption is so complicated. So, in our research project in SOAS, and if you Google it, SOAS and ACE, which stands for anti-corruption evidence, we look for examples of those opportunities where the corruption both has a bad impact on society, but where it is actually feasible to do something about it. And when is it feasible to do something about corruption is when some of the people who are engaged in that activity, who are powerful enough to do something about it, might in their own self-interest want to do things differently, because actually the corruption also hurts them. If you can't find such opportunities, then actually it becomes very difficult to fight corruption, which is why corruption is so endemic in developing countries and takes so long to fight. And one of the real problems that we have is that we don't do that analysis, we don't ask the really fundamental question about anti-corruption, which is who is going to enforce this. I mean, just knowing who is doing the corruption is not a big problem. Everybody knows who is doing the corruption in a developing country. You don't need to spend a lot of money on transparency. It's not going to help very much if when it comes to enforcement, it is not enforced because the people involved are very powerful and all of the people who are involved in that have something to hide. So you don't then get the enforcement. So actually if you think of the enforceability issue and then you ask what kinds of anti-corruption that makes sense to fight, you find and this is what we are doing in our research and Nigeria is one of the countries we also look at, is you have to take a very sectoral approach to corruption. You have to understand what is the problem in this sector, in the health sector, in education, in the oil sector, which is very big in Nigeria, in power generation, which is a huge problem in Nigeria. What are the feasible things you can do, which will have some buy-in from some of the stakeholders who are powerful enough to do something about it and can you change the incentives and the institutions in a feasible way, then you make that small step. And if you keep on making these small steps step by step and you increase the productivity and capability of your economy, you will finally create the support base for the big ticket anti-corruption, which is rule of law and enforcement in a very general sense, but I think most developing countries aren't there yet. So we waste a lot of time in doing things which can't be done because the poor anti-corruption commissions and the police and so on really cannot enforce these things and in the end what happens is that they also become corrupt. So that route has failed time and again and what we are saying is we really need to radically rethink what anti-corruption is and start doing things very differently. Dr. Stope, the UNODC has done a lot of research, only recently they collaborated with the NBS to come up with how the experience of Nigerians and corruption. What are your thoughts on corruption as it affects Nigerians and development? Yes. Well, thank you very much. Really dovetailing on what the professor just shared with us in terms of his thoughts. The study that we did jointly with the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics quite clearly gave us some good hints towards what we could be doing, what we should be focusing on, what should be our priorities. Now, the first thing that came out quite clearly is that while the anti-corruption agenda of the government has certainly reduced the space for corruption to take place quite dramatically in some spaces, it has done so much less in the area of petty corruption. The day-to-day experience of Nigerians being confronted with requests for small-scale bribes has not fundamentally changed. It has not deteriorated. It has improved a little bit, but it hasn't improved in a massive way. Basically, from 2016, about 32 percent of people who had an interaction with a public sector official ended up paying a bribe. In 2019, it was 30 percent. So there was a slight reduction, but it was not as dramatic as we might have hoped for. So obviously, refining the current strategy to focus more on this specific issue of citizens being forced to pay small-scale bribes would be definitely something that would make a difference in the life of the people. The second thing, and that I think dovetails very nicely with the argument of that we have to create demand for anti-corruption, but demand also needs to be met. So if basically government cannot show to the average citizen, especially the many poor, that it makes a change in their lives, it's going to have a hard time selling in the long term its anti-corruption effort. The second point that we found out, which again is very decisive for the way forward, it's only a very few agencies or types of public officials that are actually responsible for the absolute majority of bribes that are being collected. There's about seven agencies that collectively, or seven type of public officials I should be saying, that collectively are responsible for more than 80 percent of all the bribes that are being collected. So that again gives us some very decent hints on what to focus our attention going forward. Another I think very important factor is that the institutions of the criminal justice system and the broader law enforcement community have shown some very significant improvements in terms of their prevalence of corruption over the past three years. However, in comparison, they still remain also quite affected. So comparatively to other types of institutions, they still are rather vulnerable to corrupt practices, which means two things. One, let's build on what has been achieved. Let's try to find out what was exactly the reasons for these reductions that we have seen and further enhance them, because I don't need to tell anyone that the criminal justice system and all the agencies and institutions that form part of it are absolutely crucial in the fight against corruption. If they are affected by corruption, their ability to fight corruption is obviously undermined from the very start. The fourth point is the issue of young people. In Nigeria, we need to get more conscious of the needs of the absolute majority of the people. And these are young people. Age 19, absolute majority of people are essentially under 25 years old. We need to make sure that our anti-corruption efforts are really targeting the specific problems that concern that specific demographic group. One is, of course, the education sector. One is also that education itself should become a tool in the fight against corruption. And the last one is actually corruption in public sector recruitment. This is one of the areas where we've seen actually quite a deterioration. In 2016, about 16% of those people that had been hired into the public sector admitted that they had paid a bribe in that context. In 2019, it was 32%, so double. So there's obviously a negative trend in that very specific sector of public sector recruitment. I'm afraid we're out of time. That's okay. I have to yield the ground now to Mr. Sturma. You want to quickly speak to, because I know that you have experience in governance, peace, and security. If there are any linkages between corruption and, will I say fragile government institutions, do they in any way affect the peace and security or, yeah, the peace and security that citizens feel? And I think thank you so much. And just building to what my fellow panelist indicated, what comes out so evidently is just the complexity of corruption as a vice. And the reflection really is the husband significant effort across the world, putting up anti-corruption units in different levels of governance mechanisms, strengthening capacities for the rule of law, ensuring stronger oversight. But at the same time, what is continuously evident is that while there's progress in dealing with corruption, as my fellow panelist Dr. Oliver mentioned, there's still evidence that corruption continues to increase. So it is a complex issue. And probably one of the reflections that I'm thinking through, even as we are going through this session, is probably recasting the question a little bit and asking, what are those drivers of corruption? And how do we have a systematic investment, not just to deal with corruption or to deal with corruption as a vice, but to lay a foundation that is conducive enough for sustainable combating of corruption? And now starting to think through a social contract that is just not built by strong and robust institution, but a social accountability both horizontally, but at the same time a capacity to then ensure accountability with institutions vertically as well. So the nexus between corruption and weak of fragile institution, I think there is theoretical evidence and also empirical evidence around that, that if you're able to create a conducive environment where institutions that are mandated to protect the rights of citizens ensure effective and efficient delivery of services are strengthened, then there's a very high likelihood that the loops of inefficiency, which many times manifest as corruption will be mitigated. And that's why from a United Nations development perspective, we perceive corruption as a governance deficit, that when institutions of governance are not efficiently responsive to the needs of the citizens and do not have the capacity to deliver certain services efficiently and effectively, then it creates a loop for transactional course that manifests as corruption, whether that is through paying bribes, whether that is through lack of access of information or even lack of access of opportunities, which goes beyond accessing and paying financial resources, but not even having the information to make an informed decision. And that's why from our side, we are thinking, how do you create and make the right investment in a holistic, systematic way to create a conducive environment for combating and ensuring sustainable anti-corruption measures. Thank you very much. Well, let me come to you, Reverend Nogolo. You have done some work in the extractive industries, one of the perhaps one of the unique factors that is pointed to when you're talking about Nigerian corruption is the oil sector, is the fact that we're blessed with oil and, you know, as a result of that resource, which the people do not feel connected to and which is a source of a lot of government revenue that we're not able, the people are not really interested in government given account of how money is got from there are utilized. Can you tell us what your experience has been in the research that you've done in the nexus between corruption, especially with regards to the extractive industries and corruption in Nigeria? Thank you very much. Again, I would like to also say that from our co-panelists, what they have said is clear that the issue of corruption is a really big challenge for development issues and Nigeria is a very good case. When you talk about the extractive industry, well, I will say that to a larger extent, we've taken some effort to address the corruption in the extractive sector. As you also know, the oil sector actually played a major role in the Nigerian economy and that's where the real challenge is in the country. And I recall when during a bussager regime when there were campaigning for debt campaign, one of the conditions that came up from the debt relief was Nigerian signing on to EITI and EITI, Stratividence Transparency Initiative, was a framework to address this issue of governance deficit we're talking about because once you don't address the governance issue, then you cannot talk about tackling corruption. Like Prof Reiklin noted, the people who really benefit from corruption are the ones we expect to also put this institution in play. This is really the dilemma when it comes to the context of Nigeria. And then from civil society perspective from the work we've done in the extractive sector, I found that the power of the citizen is very important. And as victim of corruption, either at the petty level or the grand corruption level, there is a big challenge of awareness and capacity. And that's where I think I experience so far in the last 10, 15 years as really come to play. Now the information that citizens require to really see how corruption impact in the people is looking into things like how Neity has functioned in Nigeria. Neity is one framework that the government has come up with in tackling the challenge of corruption in the extractive sector. Now why is it that after Neity was passed, became a law in Nigeria, we still have not been able to address the corruption in the oil and gas sector? That brings again to the question that is it that the people that are involved in implementing the law are not effective enough or the institutions that were created are not effective? I think the challenge here is that there is impunity. And impunity in the sense that when rules are agreed on in the country, and you found that the people who has the power to implement the rules are not brought to justice because of the affiliation to a particular party, there is a problem. And so our experience from why Neity or EITI framework has not been effective to address corruption issue in the oil and gas sector in Nigeria is the culture of impunity that we have in Nigeria and the weak political will to execute some of these rules. And that is the reason why you found that when President Buhari was elected, one of the key reason why Nigerians voted for President Buhari was the commitment to tackle corruption, to fight corruption. But since Buhari election to where we are now, if you ask an operation in Nigeria, how do they feel about tackling corruption in the oil and gas sector? I'll leave that to the audience to answer. And because that brings to the challenge of why institutions are not functioning because of the weak governance system and because of the operators are not obeying the rules. And when you look the Neity audit report, since it started in Nigeria, we have the evidence clear. Neity audit report have shown how corruptions happens in the oil and gas sector in Nigeria. But the problem that we have had in the sector is that the institutions that are under, that are supposed to carry out the implementation to bring to justice those who are committing this crime in that sector are not effective enough. You're talking about prevention of corruption in the oil sector. I mean, you've heard a lot about the PIGB, the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill. I think it was appreciated into three different parts. Yes, that brings us to the questions of the lack of political will in leadership in the country. When President Buhari was campaigning in his first tenure, one of the first in here assured Nigerians and assured the international community was the passage of the petroleum industry bill. And since the election of President Buhari, the first tenure and the second tenure now, we haven't heard anything from the presidency on how the petroleum industry bill should be passing to law. The question is, will it make a difference at all? It will. It will. In the first place, if you heard from my co-panelist a while ago, when he talked about governance deficit, there's a governance deficit in the oil and gas sector. A situation where you have, for example, you have heard about the Malabu oil scandal, a situation where you have a petroleum minister appropriating an oil well to him's own private company. That's a big problem. You've heard about the issue of beneficial ownership. Who are the owners of the oil world in Nigeria? And the issue of oil license, how do you operate it? When there is no transparency and accountability, how people assess the license, it becomes a huge challenge. And I think in moving forward, in tackling this challenge, is to see how government allow institutions to be put in place. Petroleum industry bill provides that framework and that framework will help guide against the issue of discretion a situation where the president is the minister of petroleum. There definitely will be conflict of interest. And if this conflict of interest is not addressed in Nigeria, you will never going to see transparency and accountability in the oil and gas sector. I think that is the real challenge. And so that is why we feel strongly that if the president and the government is genuinely committed in addressing the government deficit in the oil and gas sector in Nigeria, first is to make the 80 to be functional. For instance, you just heard from the president to say that they're setting up a forensic audit on NDDC. Now you have 80 as an institution that is having a mandate to look into that sector. Why go after that independent forensic audit? Why not use the 80 to carry out the forensic audit of NDDC? And that would have been addressed. So that's where the political way. We have to take a break at this moment. Thank you so much, Reverend. We have to take a break at this moment. When we return, we'll have the panelists will react to their own, to each other's comments and we'll also have comments and questions from the audience. Please stay with us. Welcome back. You're watching the first edition of the Development Dialogue series brought to you by the United Nations Development Programme, that's the UNDP and Channels Television. In the studio, we have Eminent Panelists and also members of the audience to have a very vibrant conversation on the connection between corruption and development. Professor, you made the point, which I also saw here from the anti-corruption evidence, I think some research has been done on that, and they talked about how conventional anti-corruption strategies have typically delivered poor results in developing countries because they focus on improving the enforcement of a rule of law and raising the costs of corruption facing individual public officials. And they say that the alternative approach is to identify sectoral anti-corruption strategies that target specific problems with a high developmental impact and are also feasible to implement because at least some of the powerful people engaged in these activities are likely to support their implementation in their own interests, which I find very interesting. I'm wondering at what point do you think the interests of very powerful elite will intersect with that of the general public, especially when you look at how, for instance, looking at our context in Nigeria, how Nigerians are experiencing corruption? Do you want to quickly respond to that? Yes. So I think when we say powerful, we don't mean the very, very top powerful people. In a sector, who's involved? It depends on the sector and the problem you're looking at. Now, what do you find if I respond to this question of why is there a governance deficit in our countries? Why is there not a rule of law in our countries? And it's not an Nigerian problem. It's across the developing world. And why, when you look at more advanced countries, you find that people follow the rules and there is a rule of law. It is not a cultural problem. It is not a question of the commitment of some leaders. It is a structural issue. You follow rules when you have to. When your peers will not deal with you if you are breaking the rules. That's when you start following the rules, right? So when does that happen? That happens when a society reaches a high level of productivity. When you have many firms, many organizations, each doing very complex contracts, they have their reputations to defend in these complex contracts. They will not deal with someone who is violating contracts. So a company in the United Kingdom or the United States might want to break the rules. They don't break the rules not because they're good people or they're culturally sophisticated. They know that if I break the rules, no one will trade with me anymore. Now, this is not the situation in a developing country. You have to remember that in a developing country, 80 percent of the economy is informal. What does it mean? It means that the firms and organizations don't even have the money to register themselves. Who is breaking the rules? If you ask that question, it is not just the people at the top. Almost everybody is breaking the rules, right? We are a largely informal society, largely informal economy, where the peanut seller on the street with their basket of peanuts hasn't followed the property rights of, you know, do you own this pavement to sell your peanuts? Hasn't got the health and safety regulations. When they are bribing the policeman to go away, who is corrupt here, right? Is everybody is responsible? But the problem is it's not because they are bad people, is because we are a largely informal developing country. So when we say find situations where the people engaged in that activity, who are the powerful in that activity, who have an interest in doing something different and then support it, you have this incremental change. So this is the first thing. You have to understand that we are largely informal economies where almost everybody has something to hide. And that is why prosecutions don't work. When you take someone to prosecution, someone else has to come and give evidence. But the person coming to give the evidence has also got things to hide, right? So the prosecution, that approach breaks down because that approach works in a society where 90% of the people are following the rules and 10% aren't. But in a society where 90% are unable to follow the rules, even if they want to, then prosecution will not work because how will you go and give evidence? You are yourself violating the rules. And then don't forget the nature of politics in our countries. In an advanced country, a government can be elected to power, promising to spend what's on the budget. In a developing country, no government will get elected to power by promising to spend what's in the budget because the budget is very small. So actually patronage politics and clientlism is the norm in developing countries. So it is not this president or the last president or the any president in Nigeria or any president in my country, Bangladesh or in India or anywhere in developing, they get elected because they exercise patronage to get the legitimacy from people who support the need to win power. So we need to understand this context when we are talking about anti-corruption and not talk about infeasible things like somehow you will get a president who will violate their own electoral base to do things. They will not. Somehow you will get a businessman who will destroy themselves and commit suicide by giving evidence against their fellow businessmen. They will not. So when we say look for opportunities where the people in that in that activity will in their own self-interest try to make a small change which is developmental and more rule following, that is actually how change happens. If you look at how South Korea or Japan or the United States became less corrupt, it was from this bottom up pragmatic rules, amendments and changes which made their societies more and more and more rule following. It wasn't one president with the good will who came and said now we will enforce all the rules. Actually if you enforce all the rules in a developing country, most people would die because the rules are actually not aligned with the capacities of most people and what they're actually doing in practice. So we need to begin by understanding the informality of the economy, how people actually make their living and how they're doing things and work our way around to make that more feasible. Okay, well I don't know if this rings the bell anywhere here but you would seem that he's saying that it will have to start with the people if I'm getting you correctly. The president of Zopikabad and the government of president Mohammed Buhari came in with the mantra of change and shortly after there was an attempt to do a campaign telling the people that change begins with me and we saw the backlash for that but I'm very interested in the reports which you did and you talked about why people report in corruption, how people don't find it sometimes useful to report corruption they find that sometimes they have to spend but it was said that the incentives are not very high for people to report the situation of corruption. Would you say that this method will work or there is an intersection where the alternative method which professor proposes will work in some of the experiences that you have noticed. Well, first of all, I think and thank you very much for raising that issue. There's an encouraging and a not so encouraging fact in hidden in the in the report that we recently did. Now, the first very encouraging fact is actually the readiness of Nigerians to refuse attempts of corruption has increased. It has increased overall and it has increased in some of the geopolitical zones absolutely dramatically basically from 15 percent to almost 30 percent in only the span of three years. And when I say refuse attempts of corruption, meaning essentially being asked for bribe and standing once ground over simplified in essentially refusing to pay whoever the officer is that is asking the not so encouraging, unfortunately, readiness to report. So of all the people that ended up paying a bribe over the last 12 months or less than 4 percent actually came forward, found it worthwhile of reporting. Now, there is many factors probably contributing to that. First of all, we're talking about essentially low scale bribery. If I now after I have already been victimized, so to speak, need to go somewhere to report the bribe. If that process is complex and lengthy, maybe I'm made to wait. Maybe it takes me like a long time to actually take down my statement and to sign it. Maybe I have to come back several times. Who will do that for a one thousand five hundred and I rub bribe? So that's the first thing that we have to change the process of reporting in order to respond to the seriousness of the offense and the time a citizen will be reasonably willing to spend in a process of reporting. With modern technology, all of that should be possible. The second is very much in the way of how institutions actually respond to reports. Unfortunately, of those four percent that came forward to report facts of bribery, quite a large percentage, essentially, were not able to say whether any action had been taken. That doesn't mean that any action was not that no action was taken, but it certainly wasn't communicated back to them. Quite a number of them were discouraged, actually. That is a particular case when you go to this very same institution to whom the public official belongs that asked for the bribe. So for example, if you go to the police station to report that the police officer at the junction at the roadblock basically took a bribe from you, very often the experience is that people are being discouraged. And then, of course, also factors of informal solutions to corruption, essentially giving back the bribe, which are all basically imperfect solutions to the effort of the citizen and, of course, are not very encouraging to citizens as we can clearly see, because the percentage of people ready to report bribery has not improved. It's one of the few things that has not actually improved, not even to the smallest degree. So it's something that we need really seriously to look into and improve basically the capabilities and the responsiveness of institutions to act on reports of bribery and to do so in a way that is essentially commensurate to the expectations of the citizen. So do you see any area? Any, yes, within some of the institutions which you surveyed, where there could be areas where there are incentives for those inside those institutions to actually try to work to stop corruption or reduce corruption? Well, I have to say and in that, I do believe that I might be disagreeing with the proof a little bit. I still like to believe that most people would like to do the right thing given the proper opportunity to do so. So even in Nigerian institutions, I would say in general, the public officers would like to do a good job. It is the environment, the structures, the systems that sometimes makes that difficult to happen. The governance deficit, whatever you want to call it. So we need, I think, to work with the institutions themselves and at the same time with those that receive or are supposed to receive services from those institutions. I think if we bring those two factors together, there is actually possibilities for change. And as I said before, if we focus our efforts on those institutions that are really relevant to citizens, which are very few, then I think we have a true chance to make a change, that initial change that then may have that avalanche effect on other parts of the public sector. You would like to respond to what he said? Yes, if I may. In one minute. OK, so I think we are talking about some somewhat different things, right? So there is one kind of corruption, which is, you know, you expect some service from a public official and you have to pay a little bribe to get it. Actually, the scale of corruption is much bigger than the bribes that you are picking up in your survey. Let me give you an example. If you look at Nigeria and the power generation sector, OK, so you have a huge power deficit in Nigeria. You will not pick up this in the bribes, except in the small tail end bribes which you give to the meter readers and so on. But the corruption is from the the gencos to the discos to the transmission. And there's a history behind it. And the history is that the privatization was done in the wrong way years ago. And now you have all this debt, all this unsustainable debt in the discos and the gencos, which they can't meet. So they survive by ripping each other off. Now, this is a structural economic problem where punishing that little person at the end of the chain, who is the meter reader, isn't going to solve anything. So in our research, we are doing a completely different. We first look at what is the problem in the power generation and we actually identify it's very difficult to solve this. Right. So then we say, OK, but where is the problem most intense is with these small SMEs who are buying illegal diesel and doing captive power generation in the industrial clusters in places like Aaba, in places like Onitsha, right? And these guys, they are the powerful in this, right? They're the small SMEs. They're buying diesel they're generating. And we are saying, actually, there might be a better way of doing this. Maybe we can get investment into your SME cluster to use gas and have a local grid. And then you don't have to be corrupt by buying this illegal diesel and paying people to, you know, get this environmentally damaging electricity. Maybe we can solve the problem with lower corruption by solving the problem of these producers. This is what we're talking about. We're talking about sectoral systemic solutions which are somewhat different from, you know, the bribe to the person at one end, because these are the problems which if you don't solve, you will not get the Aaba industrial cluster producing better products. And then that's where the corruption is really harming development. I have to interrupt you, Prof. We I quickly have to remind our viewers at home that you can be a part of this conversation by using the handles showing on your screen. It should be on there about now. The hashtag to use is DevTalksNG. I did say this was going to be an interactive discussion and I will come into other members of my panel later. But I'd like to quickly come to the audience. So if you have your questions now, can we see a hand up? Yes. Let's have a mic and let's start here, please. Okay. Hello. Good morning. My name is Omar. I'm from the Cantafront Center. Thank you for all what you have been saying so far. But I think we are missing one point. All I've been talking about is the corruption. What breeds this corruption? We have not talked about this system, the political system we have in Nigeria. I like what Prof. Khan has been saying because he's inferring to grand corruption mostly in the oil sector, in the electricity sector, and all those in the infrastructure sector where there are a lot of unproductive investments. And what leads to these things? For me, it's the political system. As scary as it may sound, there is actually more corruption in democracy than there were during the military regime. And why? Because of our selection process. The political system affects the governance system where politicians are being elected or selected because of the huge money they spend and the investments they make. And that affects the governance system, which they infiltrate, which is why it's so difficult to develop. I think William Sumer already spoke to that. He talked about what breeds corruption. I think we'll come to that question shortly. Yes, please. Your name and... Okay. Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Ubu Collins from the Department of Political Science, University of Abuja. I quickly want to come from a traditional perspective to finding lasting solutions to the problems of grafts in Nigeria. In my community, my local community, there is a semblance of this Ahmadiyoha kind of system where if one is caught in the act of corruption or in any other related activity, this serves the person instantly. There is a system where people are served punitive measures using the traditional mechanism. And like Prof. Rightley said, back in Bangladesh, the approach is bottom-top. Now, in our own system, there has been a disconnect between the traditional institutions, the traditional mechanisms with the process of serving justice to the system and to those who are found corrupt. Now, my question is, how can we reconcile this with providing the adequate measures to fighting corruption and of course using the traditional institution as a system of bringing about a sort of deterrence? Thank you. Thank you. Any more questions? Should we take two and then go back to the panel? Okay. That's just it. Two more and then we'll quickly go back to the panel. Thank you for the opportunity. I am Mweke Obinna, Innocent. I just want to disagree a little bit with you, Prof. Ghan. Maybe build on it, but taking a sectoral approach to solving corruption in Nigeria, I think it will backfire, sort of, because corruption in Nigeria is systemic. It's quite so intricate that you cannot pinpoint the particular sector and then the extent to which the branches have gotten to. But I would like to look at it from this perspective, including on what Omar said. We were saying that we should look at political recruitment. I'm not just going to restrict myself to that. We should look at them from three different dimensions. You look at them from political, first, secondly, administrative, and then, thirdly, economic. Now, political, we look at the big corruption. Administrative, that is where the belt of it is. That is where, when you say corruption and development and oxymoron, that is where we focus. Then, economic, that is now where we focus on economic institutions. But taking a sectoral look at it, we eventually confuse everything, and then you eventually might find the kind of reports, conclusionary finding a report that there is nothing feasible you can do in this sector. That is my contribution. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I have somebody from over there. There's a mic over there. We'll come back this way. Yes, please. Go ahead. My name is Tangi Gejikuli. I'm a program coordinator of Nigeria Natural Resource Charter. My question surrounds social and economic corruption. We're looking at the actors in this situation. You have people, maybe the individual that you mentioned, some of the police officer, for instance, might be trying to augment, slightly controversial, trying to augment his revenues by bribing, for instance. You look at the NIA Delta bonkers and legal refiners who don't have any alternative sort of livelihood. So in your programming, are you considering sort of those displacements and how you cater for those sort of gaps that then realize, so you're looking at interruption effort. If you do achieve what you're trying to achieve, what then happens? We might potentially revert back to the situation that might come worse because you haven't created an alternative that fits into that space. Okay. I think we have about four questions now. Let's take one more and then we'll go on break. My name is Paul Yahiawe. I work for African Network for Environmental and Economic Justice. Last year, in April, the Economic Community of West African State was organized a meeting and our panelists... Just quickly to the question of the third. Because I want to link the... One of the takeaway from that meeting is that there is an apparatus trying to set in in the fight against corruption in the region, not just in Nigeria, in the region. And there's a need to focus on service to the people. And I want to ask if the panelists can isolate some benefit that we can apply in the country in a way of helping to address the corruption in Nigeria. This become important because if this... There is an effort, an effort going on that we need to... I have to interrupt you, I'm sorry. I hope that our panelists will be able to at least get a question from what you've asked. We'll take a break at this moment. When we come back, there will be answers to the questions raised and, of course, more engagement. Please stay with us. Welcome back. You're still watching the Development Dialogue series brought to you by the United Nations Development Program and Channels Television. And I'm sure you've said so far the conversation is beginning to get heated. Just before we went on break, we had a number of questions. Umar, you asked about what breeds corruption. We haven't quite addressed that question and you believe that the political environment could contribute to that. Colleen spoke to spirituality. The fact that before now, African societies had a way of addressing it through the spirituality system which they had in place. I think it was Genoa Chebe who said that his people have always been materialistic, but that what has happened now is that they've lost the spirituality which went to check that materialism and whether or not we could bring that... I hope I'm getting your question right. Okay. And then, of course, we also had contributions from you and I don't know if you have any more questions, but do you want to quickly speak to what breeds corruption? Um... I think the whole issue of the drivers of corruption provides a very useful lens to start asking what do we do about it. And I think at the beginning I said that any form of investment in anti-corruption needs to spend considerable amount of effort in actually understanding the multifaceted nature of the drivers. So he spoke about the political system. And by this, I'm assuming you're talking about the linkage between federal and central governments or a federal political system or whether it's a centralized political system or the nature of the politics itself. Well, you're talking about the emergence of leaders, perhaps more about how leaders emerge from the political process. From the political process, yeah, the selection process. Right, because for me on the other hand what I was looking at from a perspective of the drivers of corruption was what is the incentive structure that drives an individual or a system or an organization to engage in a transaction that is corrupt or that is perceived to be corrupt? Is it the delay of delivery of a service? Is it the duration it takes to achieve a particular goal? Is it the manner in which positions of authority or resources are located? That then the incentive then is to derive a coping strategy or a mechanism to navigate that hindrance and that obstacle which then manifests as corruption. So when we start talking about the drivers of corruption then we are starting to ask at the different levels. There's an individual level but there's also institutional and corporate levels as well. So in this particular regard if the manner in which leaders emerge and by leaders I'm talking about positional leaders I'm not talking about leaders as a value but positional leaders has a bearing to which they are perceived broadly then what happens is that then it breeds an incentive structure of how to either sustain or navigate that particular system in which case it could indeed play out in a corrupt way. And I could go ahead and talk about if I am seeking to renew my passport for example and I'm fully aware that this is my right and I'm aware that this might be able to take me two days to get my passport and for whatever reason it's day number three and day number four and week number five and I've not received this passport for example. The delay of getting this particular document which is a right then might inspire or trigger a strategy or a mechanism or incentive structure that challenges me probably to look for a different way of getting that passport. So you find that from a service delivery perspective an effective and inefficient delivery of a particular service can indeed drive and that is why again coming back the issue of the governance deficit the capacity of an institution including a leader to play and effectively deliver their role deliver their service and when I talk about service it's both social, economic and political services. I want to talk about this picture because I know you referred to how leadership emerges in the most developing democracies it's on the rent system rent and political patronage how do you address that do you think that there is any way out because sometimes they say it's a cyclical I mean a leader cannot come in and you know I give you an instance when President Buhari was going to be elected there were fears that you know he was going to put some people former leaders in jail that hasn't happened but that was one of the reasons why people were reluctant to support him especially amongst the elite so how do you think that chain could be broken? So I think these are all extremely important and interconnected questions and I wish we had more time but let me answer it very briefly the problem here is that when we say corruption we are actually describing many different types of things so at the broadest level corruption is when someone is violating some rules for their own benefit you know this is corruption but there might be massively different reasons for it now I think and this is the reason why when you have this systemic approach to anti-corruption it always fails because we are trying to fight too many battles at the same time and this is the question the other gentleman asked the result is just not only apathy but demoralization so what we have in developing countries is not just a Nigerian problem please understand this the whole world is demoralized because we keep fighting this thing called corruption and we keep failing and finally people look at their skin and say maybe something genetically wrong with us maybe something wrong with our culture maybe something wrong with our values and norms but it can't be that everybody's values and norms and everybody's culture is problematic so let's come down to it let's break down the problem to problems which are difficult to fix and problems which we will have to park for a bit and problems which we can fix now and this is my answer to the sectoral we've tried the systemic right the evidence is absolutely clear it doesn't work so let's try the sectoral so you asked about political corruption political corruption if you mean that you will have to spend money to get to power and this money is not available from legal sources because your corporate sector isn't big enough your trade unions aren't big enough your interest groups aren't big enough actually this is the most critical thing to fight so the answer is not let's go back to dictatorship is to say let's have a democracy the democracy will not be perfectly clean let's have lots of checks and balances let's keep on revealing the corruption and fighting it but let's not kid ourselves that this problem is going to go away tomorrow okay this is a long term fight and it will only go away when the economy is diversified enough and rich enough that a leader can collect enough taxes from enough legal sources from companies from interest groups from whatever completely legally and offer to collect taxes completely legally and then redistributed to different constituencies completely legally and win an election if you ask that question we are decades away from that not just Nigeria but all developing countries decades away from that when you get there and it still doesn't happen then let's talk about culture but right now it's not a cultural basic economics it's not going to happen what can happen is let's make a distinction between rules that people have which they can't follow because the rules are infeasible to follow and rules that are feasible to follow but they are not following now the rules that are feasible to follow and they are not following is where you have the extraction that the bureaucrat is taking something from you that they needn't have taken but they are extracting from you but I think this is actually a relatively small problem the really big problem is that a massive amount of development problems are happening because the rules are not working for people so when I go to the you know the sectoral problem of the SME in a cluster there is no way they can follow a rule and survive they have to get their power somehow they can't get their power legally what do you expect them to do they will find some way of getting their power they will bribe now we have to understand what is going on there and come up with rules that works for those people this is consistent with what you are saying about organic and from below it's not just culture from below but economics from below let's understand how people are growing their chickens let's understand how people are they will find some rules that will work for them and that might not be blocked by other people because this might not be the rent that they are getting but if it is then you are right then they will stop it but actually the law in Nigeria allows SMEs to have their grid based power except that no one has figured out how to do it so if you can do it you will then get one SME cluster who is generating power legally and paying for it legally and it will be cheaper for them than the illegal diesel they are buying now they will be a winner if you go to the artisanal refineries in the Niger Delta when you talk about extractives it's not the people at the top who are making money the poorest of the poor in the Niger Delta they don't want the enforcement of the rules they are doing the bunkering they are doing the artisanal refineries we have to sort out the problems from there so the artisanal refineries increase their capabilities find some way that they can operate without breaking rules then slowly slowly as your economy has pockets of activity where people say look I am following rules I can survive following the rules I am not corrupt, I am developmental why are you not following the rules the problem is we don't have enough of that there are very few people who can say look I am following all the rules and you are not because most people cannot survive by following the rules I will come to the historian and ask him why it is difficult what it has anything to do with economic empowerment how prevalent is that especially in the real sector I don't know how to put this now but let me quickly come to you because I want you to speak to this spiritual dimension we are very religious people why is it that despite all our religiosity so to speak there is very little to show in terms of you know the connection with the reduction or the fight against corruption this is difficult to answer because obviously the norm the social norm is a very powerful thing in the society and that even if you found that even the corruption we are talking about it's not just the public sector alone it's essentially very one of the most popular church I saw that the founder have to raise an alarm how the accountants in the institutions have defrauded the church so corruption is not restricted to the public sector alone but I want to quickly add that moving forward one issue that we almost put in perspective is the recognition that to a larger extent we are also recording sources because the issue of measuring corruption is a very controversial issue we are not able to again measure and say this is the amount of corruption that is happening in this particular sector and so you will not be able to say this is the achievement we have achieved but moving forward in tackling a question even in the religious sector and in the public sector I would like to say that the issue of the benefit of tackling for example opening up is creating awareness it's one fundamental will to move forward and identifying little effort of sources like Proph can rightly identify is one area and there are good people in the public sector I can tell you in 2004 and 2005 about 480 million dollars of Abashia's money was returned back to this country it went into the public sector for infrastructure investment we monitored that investment across the entire country some claim that money was used for building schools we couldn't find the school some claim to build the road we couldn't find the road now between 2004 and 2005 and now in 2017 now the Swiss government returned back another 322.5 million dollars to Nigeria and there was a huge sign of ceremony in Washington between the Nigerian government and Swiss government and the Nigerian government agreed in principle for civil society to monitor how this money will be used in Nigeria and the actual degenerate did a letter to the national cash transfer office that civil society will be allowed to monitor to have an access to how this money is going to the poor people across Nigeria I tell you this is the first time in the history in this country that government official because one of the key challenge either in the private sector or in the religious sector is breakdown of trust the people don't trust government but the first time in history in monitoring the disbursement of the 322.5 million dollar to Nigeria we have seen where the cash transfer office in principle allow citizens to have access to how this money is moving from the central bank down to the beneficiary there are no problems for example in Osho state government officials are conniving to deny the beneficiary of the 55,000 dollar per month they take about 1,000 dollar away and we found that in Osho state and we reported it to the government official those officials have been dismissed and just against that background we can see the scale up USCC and ICPC have come together and say look we need to tackle the challenge of corruption in the social investment sector now what we are saying is that we need to know a way to eliminate the need of fighting corruption the first time in history in this country we have seen now that the very poor people are benefiting from grand corruption because the 322.5 million dollar Sabacha stone that was touched in swiss bank returned back to Nigeria is not just going to unknown project we can see people from Kuji saying that they are getting their 55,000 dollar per month and that is what we need in fighting tackling corruption because if we rely on the principle agent framework of tackling corruption when we expect that the principle are sent we cannot solve the corruption problem so I completely believe that the context is very important the people is very important the citizens are very important and that is where I was conversing with my colleague the capacity of the citizen is very important data are not generated for example what UNODC have done is a fantastic piece of work and that is why I must comment channel they need to be conversant with this data and to use this data to drive the narrative because otherwise the same story will be there look what has happened in the 90 data over 12,000 contracts we cannot find who is the owners of the contractor all we just need is to also train the journalist to be able to write the story in the way that people need to understand because information is power and the only way you can get the people to be involved and to change the old narrative because the principal they are involved and the only way to change the narrative is to gain ownership on how we drive the anti-corruption fight and this is also applicable to the religious sector and the public sector let me come to you Oliver he talked about the 5,000 cash transfer which a lot of citizens are benefitting from the loot which is returned from General Sonia Bachar's stash in the Swiss banks which points to a connection between how grand corruption could affect poor people however there is still the talk of corruption still being present do you think people are corrupt because they do not have economic well without or is it in the nature of man or is it greed what precisely could it be well I think in all of the above I don't think you can sort of pinpoint it down but it will be very different the police officer that collects basically on the road petty bribe we don't know why he does so maybe he had just a child born and doesn't know how to feed it maybe he just wants to get drunk in the evening we don't know so the reasons of why people take bribes are really very diverse I think what we need to put in place are proper accountability mechanisms to reduce the occurrence to make the detection more likely to happen to change incentive structures maybe but at the end of the day I don't think we can basically come up with sort of like the one explanation and then let's fix it and that's why in that sense I'm very supportive of a sectoral approach not because I believe in the long run it's going to change the entire immediately but we need to start somewhere and we need to show some successes I think what we have seen with the data is that there are some good stories like for example police was able to reduce prevalence of corruption from 46% in 2016 to 33% that is a very good result but at the same time of course 33% of citizens still paying bribes is a lot is too much by any standard so we need to build on these success stories and we need also to be very encouraged by the fact that Nigerians are more willing to refuse attempts of bribes seeking behavior and we need to understand for example of why there are so massive differences across geopolitical zones because why for example the readiness to refuse bribes has skyrocketed in the northeast it has dumped at the same time in some of the southern so we need to understand what is the drivers of these kind of very different behaviors despite you would think more or less similar essentially exposures and situations that people are exposed to okay let me quickly take more questions now from members of the audience yes please the gentleman in the suit over there yeah okay good morning good afternoon everybody I'm Frank Justice Sumi from the Faculty of Law the University of Abuja I'll be coming from the legal perspective and fetching my fetching a quote from Prof. Uintah University he said corruption is when someone is breaking some law coming we I and more than 180 million Nigerians know that why Abuhaari was elected was because of his change mantra idea and still yet he have given a policy and a philosophy that change begins with me and transcending also to making good developments my question is this section 6 of the Constituent Nigeria enables the judiciary to interpret the law and the judiciary is saddled with the responsibility of enabling justice to the voiceless the executive of the government as we have seen is fond of neglecting court orders taking a glimpse on the Souris case and the Dasuki case courts have given judgment and still yet the presidency has neglected such court orders so I think what is the synergy to be done in addressing this thank you I'll quickly take this Azuka from ICPC says the solution to corruption maybe fighting corruption is to mainstream anti-corruption integrity as well as monitor and evaluation yeah, monitoring and evaluation into government citizens should also be trained to monitor government agencies how feasible is that to train citizens to monitor government agencies oh I've just been told we have to go and break at this point we have to take another moment when we come back we'll take maybe some questions more and have our panelists give us their closing remarks please stay with us welcome back you're still watching this program dialogue series brought to you by the United Nations Development Program the UNDP and channels television it's our closing moment now where we begin to wrap up with our panelists and of course members of the audience they have sent in their questions I wonder if we can take all of them before we go but let's quickly see if we can run through them Samuel Assime says he's from SISLAC and Transparency International says how do we solve the issue of despondency among citizens I can't read the rest of this it says in the 2016 survey by UNODC corruption was seen as the second most important issue affecting Nigeria in 2019 it's moved to sixth position so I think he thinks as a result of despondency this one is from Nafeesat who says how do we hold government accountable to drive development through law enforcement I have this one from Yousuf who says corruption is seen as a way of life where those who do not partake in it as soon as abnormal persons how do we reduce or tackle this menace in our society given our weak institutions and Umar is asking how do you address rent-seeking culture created by the government system which produces unproductive public investment Lakone is asking corruption number of points corruption and social structure too much attention and political corruption character, reef configuration it's talking about the national orientation agency do the right thing transform Nigeria how is that working in addition to the questions which you already had before we went to a break so if you can quickly fit that into your closing comments it will be fantastic who wants to go first okay tell everybody then William you go first so I think and the questions that have been posed some of them are food for thought I think for all of us but there's one thing that I would like to fall back on which is and there's a school of thought that is emerging around corruption having both a demand and a supply side right and sometimes simplifying this very complex thing helps for me to have mental pictures of what we're talking about and I was discussing with my fellow panelists here regarding this myth that it's too small to be important so if I'm paying 20 Naira bribe or 200 Naira bribe that is not as significant as the 20 billion that is transacted in a different space and I'm wanting to fall back to this conversation around is there an opportunity to look at corruption and anti-corruption conversations from a values perspective from an issue a perspective of integrity and I think one of the comments came in in terms of how do we really build this value of integrity so that if I'm a 12 year old and I'm currently paying 100 Naira as a bribe and it's expected in the next 30 years I will be full grown adult but having the understanding that I can be able to navigate a system by paying a bribe then what we are doing is that we are building a value system that is already embedded in that culture and so looking at corruption as well as a generational process that acculturates a particular value system also gives us another entry point of how to deal with what is others of a complex process all right so in reducing the despotency and trying to change the apathy it was fighting corruption it is also good to recognize that we are also achieving results and that's what I said about our project which again we have been able to mobilize over 700 citizens NGOs across country to keep an eye on how recovered asset is spent particularly the $322.5 million now we need a collective action and the question that also came was that how do we trade? These citizens that have to go on this training are not able to keep an eye what are those beneficiaries in the poor villages are actually receiving these 55,000 Naira and those villagers the first time the relationship between what Abasha's tool and kept in Ciceland and the 5000 Naira they now receive in the different villages and that it gives us the signal that when government is saying that we are fighting corruption they don't understand what that really means in terms of the social investment in the country and we as citizens do have responsibility we have a collective responsibility to work with government officials and in moving things forward it is possible to train citizens very well the mantra project that we implemented we support with DEFIT project DEFIT funding provided that evidence that yes we support from donor agency citizens can be empowered in a training to keep an eye to follow the money across Nigeria Thank you so much Dr. Oliver Stolpe Yes I mean again I just want to essentially re-emphasize a couple of things First of all responding to the question that came from Cislak Yes it appears that the general confidence of Nigerians in the effectiveness of the anti-corruption drive has reduced to some extent In 2016 70% were generally confident In 2019 it was 50% I don't think that the ranking of corruption as an issue is necessarily reflective of corruption being less of an issue in the eyes of the citizens just that other issues may be even more predominant in their current importance but certainly in terms of like the attitudes of citizens seem to be in terms of like their confidence of what's happening is reducing a little bit which brings me back to my initial point I need to focus on especially that type of anti-corruption that makes a difference in the life of the citizens what Dr. David Reverend David just said is exactly along those lines showing the results actually of asset recovery is one of them making sure that citizens are less affected by day-to-day petty bribery is another one Which is why we'll have to interrupt you because we're certainly totally out of time I don't disagree with anything other panelists have said but I think we're missing a very important point so I think culture and integrity are extremely important but I refuse to believe that somehow developing countries have lower integrity and culture than more advanced countries which have lower corruption I don't believe that at all and if you see people going from a developing country to an advanced country as soon as they land they behave differently so it's not culture and integrity you're a poor mother and you take your child to a hospital and there is a long queue and chaos going on and someone comes along and you pay 500 naira the doctor will see you will pay it it's not integrity it's nothing, no culture and integrity will train people not to do it because that's human nature so we have to work on it but it's not enough similarly information all information is available about what's happened nothing happens so we can have more information but it won't so let me come back to the main message that I've been giving today and that is that let's distinguish between two types of problem one is when bad people engage in corruption to extract when they needn't have extracted this is a tough problem it's something we will have to fight when the distribution of power is better in our societies there is a lot of corruption happening by people who don't want to be corrupt but who are forced into corruption because the rules aren't working for them if we can fix those problems in sector by sector so that the SME in a small cluster if the artisanal refinery, if the doctor who really wants to go and get medicines gets their medicine supply if we can solve those tiny micro problems which people think is not really very exciting it's that that changes society it's a long struggle it's going to be a fix it step by step it's a fine place to leave it Professor Moustikthang, thank you so much for coming the development dialogue series I have to thank my panelist thank you Dr. Oliver Stolpe William Sumer of the UNDP Nigeria and also Reverend David O'gala of Aneed Centre thank you so much for coming and thank you also to you very vibrant audience members for your questions and contributions we've come to the end of this conversation our first in the development dialogue series a partnership between the UNDP and channels television thank you to members of the audience which I did and our viewers at home for being a part of the conversation so we'll come your way again in two months time I'm Malkwa Oguyosef, goodbye