FROM PHYSICIANS TO PATIENTS A HISTORICAL MAPPING OF ANTICORRUPTION REGIMES IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Successive regimes in Nigeria have shown various efforts to combat corruption in the country. Yet, in contrast to their anti-corruption passion, they turned out to become obsessed with corruption. This article, which methodologically deployed information derived from extant literature analyzes the seeming paradoxical shift of supposedly anti-corruption regimes from combating corruption (physicians) to being corrupt (patients). A major explanation for this seeming paradoxical character twist of successive anti-corruption regimes is found in the context of the Nigerian State and attitudinal disposition of the political elite and its contagious effect on the civil society.