SINCE 1999, every government that has come to power has made fighting corruption its number one priority. President Olusegun Obasanjo created the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). President Muhammadu Buhari rode the anti-corruption horse all the way to Aso Rock twice. Now President Bola Tinubu is singing the same song.
Twenty-six years of anti-corruption speeches, probes, task forces, and asset declarations. Yet Nigeria still ranks 145th out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index.
You want to know why nothing changes? It’s not because our institutions are weak, though they are. It’s not because the laws lack teeth, though they do. The real reason is simpler and more uncomfortable than any of that.
Nigerians don’t hate corruption. We hate corrupt people from the other side.
Look at what has been happening in recent weeks. Former Kaduna State governor Nasir El-Rufai and former Attorney General Abubakar Malami are currently facing serious corruption allegations. Anyone with a passing interest in Nigerian politics knows these were not minor functionaries. El-Rufai was one of the most powerful voices in the APC for years. Malami was the chief law officer of the federation under Buhari. These men were at the table, eating with both hands.
But now they have moved to the African Democratic Congress. They are opposition. And just like that, on the social media streets, they have transformed overnight into persecuted patriots. The same keyboards that would have been burying them six months ago are now writing their defence. Let me be clear I am not saying they are guilty.
No court has convicted either of them and they remain innocent in the eyes of the law. But the cheerleading has nothing to do with evidence or due process. It has everything to do with which side of the political fence they are standing on today.That is not anti-corruption sentiment. That is tribalism wearing a borrowed suit.
Then came the Abia State photocopier story. A budget document showed ₦210 million allocated for a single photocopier in the state’s 2026 Appropriation Law. I waited for the outrage. What I found instead was people defending it and attacking anyone who dared ask questions because Governor Alex Otti is Labour Party, and Labour Party is the anointed vehicle of hope on the social media streets. To be fair, the Abia State government has since explained it was a typographical error, that the actual allocation for the machine was ₦12 million and the ₦210 million was meant for rehabilitation of the Lagos Liaison Office. Fine. But my point is this the initial reaction from most commenters was not scrutiny. It was protection. Because their man was involved.
You already know how that story plays if the same figure appears in a budget from a governor wearing All Progressive Congress (APC ) colours.
The same people defending Otti would have been writing obituaries for accountability in Nigeria.
This is the hypocrisy that is killing us slowly. We have built a culture where corruption is defined not by the act but by the political address of the actor. Your man in power is a reformer. My man in power is a thief. Swap the chairs and watch the descriptions swap with them. Trust our politicians to always find defenders no matter what they do, as long as they are on the right team.
And it does not stop with politicians. The average Nigerian who sells adulterated fuel, the man pushing fake drugs that are killing patients in rural hospitals, the civil servant padding payroll with ghost workers, the lecturer auctioning grades none of them think of themselves as corrupt.
Corruption in the Nigerian imagination lives exclusively in government offices. It wears a senator’s agbada and drives a government SUV. The man collecting ten thousand naira to pass a vehicle at a checkpoint is just hustling. The contractor who delivers a half-built road and disappears is just being smart. Only the politicians are corrupt.
That convenient self-exemption is what makes real change impossible. Corruption is not only a government problem. It is a cultural problem that runs from the highest office to the smallest transaction. Until we are honest enough to say that, every anti-corruption campaign is just another campaign slogan waiting to expire.
So what should a government serious about this actually do? Simple.
Stop the selective prosecution. Every administration in this country has gone after corruption in the opposition and protected it within its own house. Nigerians are not blind.
When the EFCC moves like lightning against government critics and moves like a tortoise against government allies, the message is received loud and clear. Go after every politically exposed person with credible allegations hanging over their head regardless of which party they belong to today. No sacred cows. None.
Build the institutions not just the headlines. Individual prosecutions make good television but they don’t change systems. Strengthen procurement laws. Publish contracts. Make asset declarations genuinely verifiable, not the annual ritual of filing papers nobody reads. Give anti-corruption agencies real independence not the kind that evaporates the moment a sitting governor becomes a target.
The hard truth is this. Nigeria will keep producing fresh corruption scandals for as long as our outrage is partisan and selective. You cannot fight what you only condemn on alternate days depending on who is involved. As Oliver Goldsmith once observed, law grinds the poor and rich men rule the law. In Nigeria we have added our own twist the law only grinds the people from the other party.
Until that changes, all the anti-corruption summits, all the asset declarations, all the EFCC drama will amount to nothing.
And somebody needs to start an honest public conversation about civic corruption the everyday kind that most Nigerians participate in and refuse to acknowledge. Schools, religious institutions, civil society. The fight starts there, not in a courtroom press conference.
Nigeria will keep producing new corruption scandals for as long as our outrage is partisan. You cannot fight what you only condemn selectively.
- Nda-Isaiah is a political analyst based in Abuja and can be reached on jonesdryx@gmail.com. His syndicated column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Saturday.