Raheem Oluwafunminiyi* and Famiyesin Michael
Department of History
Adeyemi College of
Education, Ondo
Correspondence:
creativitysells@gmail.com
Abstract
In
2014, during a live Presidential Media Chat broadcast on national television, a
former Nigerian President was credited to have stated that “There is no
corruption but mere stealing in Nigeria”. The statement was in response to series
of questions and criticisms of his administration’s handling of mind-boggling
corruption cases under his watch. While swift attempts were made by the
presidency and few other government agencies to downplay the hoopla the
statement had generated, it did little to assuage citizens’ concerns about the
government’s readiness to tackle both systemic and endemic corruption in the
country. A growing trend in the last few decades shows that the political class
employ the use of ambiguous languages to downplay the corruption discourse in
Nigeria. In time past, bribery or kickbacks were the most common forms of
corruption in the country. This has, however, taken a more dangerous turn in
recent years with acts of brazen embezzlement and mindless pilfering of public
funds among political and public office holders making everyday news. Given the
following, our paper seeks to interrogate the languages of corruption in
Nigeria. We tend to examine how they continue to encourage the brazen acts of
corruption and embolden public office holders to appropriate and misappropriate
the commonwealth of the masses. Though the citizenry too are not less culpable
in advancing some of these languages which inadvertently creates a fertile
ground for corruption to fester, the political class, which our paper beams its
searchlight on, appear to employ these languages to consciously defend and
institutionalise corruption in Nigeria. We argue that the use of these
languages have aided in perpetually stifling the anti-corruption war, reduced
the ability to successfully prosecute financial and economic crimes and most
importantly, further deepened the crisis of underdevelopment in the country.
Keywords:
corruption, languages, Nigeria, political class, stealing
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