New paper by JANAR member Timipere Felix ALLISON (Nagoya University):
From Anti-corruption to Anti-anti-corruption: Why the Masses Turned against Nigeria’s Post-2015 War on Corruption
Abstract: It is considered axiomatic that, as victims of public corruption, the masses will support anti-corruption policies. However, Nigeria’s anti-corruption campaign initiated in 2015, faced stern rejection by sections of the masses who, through the ‘Bring Back Our Corruption’ counter-campaign, blamed the anti-graft programme for deepening socio-economic misery. Why did the same segments of the masses who called for anti-corruption measures during the 2015 election as victims of corruption turn around to resist the war on corruption? This study claims that while there has always been the potential for popular hostility to anti-corruption policies in Nigeria, only in the post-2015 period have all necessary conditions intersected to provoke mass resistance on the scale of the Bring Back Our Corruption pushback. These conditions include the degree to which the masses have become embedded in patron-client relations, the extent to which the subsistence of the masses depends on patronage from political patrons, and the intensity and coverage of the anti-corruption campaign.
For full article, see https://www.gsid.nagoya-u.ac.jp/bpub/research/public/forum/50/05.pdf.