Step up Nigeria: Ordinary citizens fight corruption

About Step Up Nigeria

In order for Nigeria to lift millions of its citizens from poverty, we need to first of all improve the quality of governance. This blog discusses ways to ‘Step Up’ governance in Nigeria such as reducing corruption, promoting transparency and accountability in the provision of public services and strengthening citizen’s demand for an improvement in public service delivery.

The aim of this blog is to present analysis and views on current governance issues in Nigeria.

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EXCITING NEWS - Step Up Nigeria blog has now become a Non-Government Organisation (NGO) in its own rights- called Step Up for Social Development and Empowerment in Nigeria. New blog posts, podcasts and information on projects is now available from the Step Up Nigeria website https://stepupnigeria.org

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Tuesday, 13 August 2013

YouTube and the fight against corruption

The recent TI global corruption barometer revealed that 81% of Nigerians paid bribes to the police. For many citizens it has become a normal way of life. Last week, a policeman who demanded a bribe from a motorist in Lagos was sacked. What was different from the countless other cases of police bribery that go unpunished every day? This incident was secretly filmed and uploaded on YouTube; consequently the policeman was sacked.

Link to the YouTube video summarising the incident

A few weeks ago, Step Up Nigeria highlighted how Kenya’s Inspector General of Police encouraged Kenyans to secretly film police officers asking for bribes following their own poor scoring in the TI global barometer. There are risks to this approach (e.g. the personal safety of the person capturing the evidence), but the Lagos motorist case has shown without doubt, the potential to empower citizens through camera-phone technology and platforms like YouTube in the fight against corruption.

Wednesday, 10 July 2013

‘Corruption has increased’ – say majority of Nigerians, ‘but we can make a difference’

According to Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer which surveyed a 1000 Nigerians, there is good and bad news for Nigeria’s fight against corruption:

Bad News

85% of Nigerians believe that corruption has increased over the last two years.
94% believe corruption is a problem in the Public Sector.
72% believe Government is run by a few big entities acting in their own self-interest
75% believe the Government is ineffective in its fight against corruption.The institutions perceived to be the most corrupt were political parties and the police, while 81% admitted to having paid a bribe to the police.
24% reported paying a bribe to the judiciary.

Good news

56% of Nigerians (a slight majority) believe that ordinary citizens can make a difference in the fight against corruption.

Despite the depressing statistics on what Nigerians believe and have experienced on corruption, we can take encouragement that a slight majority believe that ordinary citizens can make a difference. The challenge for Nigeria is working out how.

http://www.transparency.org/gcb2013/country/?country=nigeria