Report has shown that Nigerians paid over N700 billion in cash as bribes to public officers in 2023.
The amount represents 0.35 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product in the review fiscal year.
According to the 2023 survey, conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics in conjunction with the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime Research and other bodies like the Mc Arthur Foundation and the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, the average cash bribe paid was N8, 284 per Nigerian in the review period.
While the nominal average cash bribe size increased since 2019 (from NGN 5,754), this does not account for inflation.
The inflation-adjusted average cash bribe in 2023 was actually 29 percent smaller than in 2019 in terms of what could be bought with the money.
“Overall, it is estimated that a total of roughly N721 billion ($1.26 billion) was paid in cash bribes to public officials in Nigeria in 2023, corresponding to 0.35 per cent of the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Nigeria,” the report showed.
According to the report, “Most bribes are paid in the street or in a public official’s office. In 2023, bribes paid in a public official’s office and in the street accounted for around 35 and 36 per cent of all paid briberies, respectively. 11 percent of bribes were paid in the respondents’ own home, while 7 percent were paid in public buildings such as restaurants, malls, or stations.”
Nigerians kick
Meanwhile, Nigerians are increasingly reporting bribe payments to official authorities as the report revealed that out of all citizens who paid a bribe in 2023, 8.6 percent reported their experience to an official institution capable of investigating or otherwise following up and acting on that report.
This represents a marked increase in the bribery reporting rate since 2019 when it stood at 3.6 percent.
The increase is primarily driven by developments in the Northern zones, where the bribery reporting rate increased markedly from 4.7 percent in 2019 to 13.4 percent in 2023.
In the Southern zones, the bribery reporting rate instead decreased moderately from 2.5 percent in 2019 to 1.7 percent in 2023.
The largest increases between 2019 and 2023 in the share of citizens who reported bribery cases were recorded by the police, anti-corruption agencies, and the media. Increasingly, Nigerians are also turning to non-traditional reporting mechanisms, with 68 percent of those reporting bribery cases approaching both official authorities such as the police as well as non-official authorities such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or the media.
Meanwhile, more formal procedures are initiated due to reporting, and fewer cases have no follow-up.
The report disclosed that “The share of bribery reports that lead to the initiation of a formal procedure against the public official increased nearly three-fold between 2019 and 2023, from 16 per cent to 45 per cent of bribery reports. The share of citizens who reported a bribery instance but experienced no follow-up after reporting went down from 25 per cent to 17 per cent, as did the share of citizens who reported a bribery incident and were advised not to go ahead with the report (from 18 per cent to 14 per cent).”
Further findings by the report showed that women are less exposed to bribery than men. “When in contact with public officials, women are less likely to experience bribery than men. In 2023, 39 per cent of all men who had contact with a public official either paid a bribe or were asked to do so but refused. The figure for women was significantly lower, at 28 per cent. This overall difference in bribery exposure between men and women is possibly driven by interactions with a few frequently contacted types of public official, in particular police officers, as well as some less frequently contacted types of officials such as Members of the Armed Forces and embassy and consulate officers, to whom men were more likely than women to pay or be asked to pay a bribe. Women in Nigeria are less likely to engage in bribery than men irrespective of where they live, their age, educational background and employment status,” the report revealed.
Bribery cases
There are proves to show that bribery is prevalent among public officers in Africa’s most populous nation.
For instance, a former acting Accountant-General of the Federation, Anamekwe Nwabuoku, on Wednesday, pleaded with Justice James Omotoso of the Federal High Court in Abuja to give him more time to conclude the refund of the public funds allegedly looted by him and his co-defendant.
Nwabuoku and his co-defendant, Felix Nweke, are facing 11 counts of money laundering to the tune of N1.6 billion.
They are being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
The defendants were accused of committing to the act while Nwabuoku served as the Director of Finance and Accounts in the Ministry of Defence between 2019 and 2021.
While Nwabuoku is the first defendant, Nweke is the second defendant in the charge marked FHC/ABJ/CR/240/24 dated May 20 and filed on May 27 by EFCC counsel, Ekele Iheanacho.
Nwabuoku was appointed acting AGoF on May 20, 2022, under ex-President Muhammadu Buhari after his predecessor, Ahmed Idris was suspended as AGF over alleged N80 billion fraud.
Vote of no confidence passed on government
As reported by Nigerians, corruption ranked 4th among the most important problems affecting the country in 2023, after the cost of living, insecurity and unemployment.
This suggests relatively stable and high levels of concerns about corruption over time and compared to other concerns such as education or housing.
Nigerians’ confidence in the government’s anti-corruption effort has been declining over time and across regions.
While in 2019, more than half of all citizens thought that the government was effective in fighting corruption, in 2023, the share declined to less than a third of all citizens.
The downward trend in the citizens confidence is observable across the entire country, with all six zones recording reductions of more than 10 percentage points between 2019 and 2023 in terms of the share of citizens who thought the government was effective in fighting corruption.