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Friday, December 06, 2019 10:00AM / NBS / Header Image Credit: NBS
Out
of all Nigerian citizens who had at least one contact with a public official in
the 12 months prior to the 2019 survey, 30.2 per cent paid a bribe to, or were
asked to pay a bribe by, a public official. This means that, although still
relatively high, the prevalence of bribery in Nigeria has undergone a moderate,
yet statistically significant, decrease since 2016, when it stood at 32.3 per
cent.
Three out of the country's six zones (North-East, North-West and South-West) have recorded decreases in the prevalence of bribery since 2016, with the North-West experiencing a considerable (and statistically significant) decline in the prevalence of bribery, from 36 to 25 per cent, while the two other zones recorded smaller decreases. By contrast, the North-Central, South-East and South-South zones recorded further increases in the prevalence of bribery from 2016 to 2019.
Although a smaller percentage of Nigerians that had contact with public officials paid bribes, or were asked to pay bribes, those who did pay bribes continued to do so quite frequently: in 2019, Nigerian bribe-payers paid an average of 6 bribes in the 12 months prior to the survey, or one bribe every two months, which is virtually the same as the average of 5.8 bribes paid per bribe-payer in 2016. As a result, it is estimated that some 117 million bribes are paid in Nigeria on a yearly basis, the equivalent of 1.1 bribes per adult.
The
2019 survey shows a notable increase since 2016, from 52 to 63 per cent, in the
overall proportion of Nigerians who had at least one contact with a public
official in the 12 months prior to the survey. This can be interpreted as a
positive sign for the provision of public services in Nigeria.
Healthcare professionals, namely doctors, nurses and midwives, and public utility officials are the two types of public official with whom the largest share (31 per cent each) of Nigerians had at least one contact in the 12 months prior to the 2019 survey. Police officers came a close third, with 30 per cent.
Differently from actual trends of bribery experience, more than half of Nigerians believe that corruption increased in the two years prior to the 2019 survey. Furthermore, the analysis of the list of the most pressing problems afflicting their country, as reported by Nigerian citizens in 2019, shows that corruption has moved from 3rd to 5th position, as there has been a sharp increase in the level of public concern about security and health issues. Around 9 per cent of Nigerians considered corruption to be the most important problem facing their country, a significant decrease from the 14 per cent recorded in the 2016 survey. These findings all point to the fact that the perception of the public, whose understanding of the issue is of the utmost importance, does not always reflect the actual occurrence or experience of corruption, as they can be influenced by numerous factors, including the emergence of other priorities at the national level.
The payment of bribes to private sector employees is much less prevalent than to public officials: the prevalence of private sector bribery in 2019 was 5.7 per cent, while the prevalence of public sector bribery was 30 per cent. Furthermore, the number of bribes paid per bribe-payer to private sector employees in the 12 months prior to the survey was 3.3 versus 6.0 paid to public officials. The prevalence of private sector bribery was virtually the same in 2019 as in 2016 (5.5 per cent), whereas the average number of bribes paid increased from 2.4 to 3.3. However, patterns in the two sectors are not directly comparable as the regulatory frameworks are as different as the types of interaction between citizens and employees of the two sectors.
Bribery
dealings can be initiated in different ways: direct bribery requests by a
public official accounted for 60 per cent of all bribery transactions in
Nigeria in 2019, representing a moderate decrease from the 66 per cent recorded
in the 2016 survey. As in 2016, indirect requests for a bribe accounted for 20
per cent of all bribery transactions, while spontaneous payments to facilitate
or to accelerate a procedure accounted for 8 per cent. Some 5 per cent of
bribes were also paid with no prior request from the bribe-taker as a sign of
appreciation to a public official for services rendered.
Around two thirds of bribes (67 per cent) are paid before a service is provided by a public official, according to the 2019 survey, a proportion only slightly smaller than the 70 per cent recorded in the 2016 survey. The consistently large share of bribes paid in anticipation of a service to be rendered by a public official is an indication that bribes are often requested before action is taken to deliver a service.
More than 93 per cent of all bribes paid
in 2019 were paid in cash, a slightly larger share than in 2016. According to
the 2019 survey, the average cash bribe paid is 5,754 Nigerian Naira (NGN), a
sum equivalent to roughly $52 in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). Overall, it is
estimated that a total of roughly NGN 675 billion was paid in cash bribes to
public officials in Nigeria in 2019, corresponding to 0.52 per cent of the
entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Nigeria. The economic cost of bribery
becomes even more palpable when considering that, on average, bribe-payers pay
an amount equivalent to 6 per cent of the average annual income of Nigerians.
The
prevalence of bribery in relation to several types of public official has
decreased significantly since 2016. The greatest change is in relation to
police officers, meaning that the share of people who paid a bribe to a police
officer, out of all those who had at least one contact with a police officer in
the 12 months prior to the 2019 survey, decreased from 46 to 33 per cent. The
prevalence of bribery in relation to prosecutors decreased from 33 to 23 per
cent, judges/magistrates from 31 to 20 per cent, customs and immigration
officers from 31 to 17 per cent and embassy/consulate officers from 16 to 8 per
cent. The decrease in the prevalence of bribery in relation to
customs/immigration officers, judges/magistrates and police officers was particularly
significant in rural areas, but less so in urban areas. By contrast, the
overall prevalence of bribery increased in relation to just a few types of
public official, among them land registry officers.
Prevalence of bribery, by
type of public official, Nigeria, 2016 and 2019
Public
officials who are entrusted with some of the core functions of the State, not
least those involved in law enforcement and administering justice, account for
some of the largest shares of direct bribe requests: in around two thirds of
all bribes paid to police, prosecutors or judges/magistrates and members of the
Armed Forces, the bribe payment was initiated by a direct request by these
officials.
As in the 2016 survey, a significant disparity in the prevalence of bribery between men and women was also noted in the 2019 survey. This disparity becomes even larger when factoring in the urban/rural dimension, as the data show that women living in rural areas are those least likely to pay bribes (21.6 per cent),[1] whereas men living in urban areas are the most likely (39.3 per cent). To a lesser extent there was also a consistent disparity between men and women in the average number of bribes paid. When looking at the age-specific pattern of bribery prevalence by sex, an interesting aspect about the age of bribe-payers in Nigeria can be observed: at a prevalence of 39 per cent, the peak among men aged 25-34 is much more pronounced, while there is almost no variation across age groups among women.
The
difference in the prevalence of bribery between the most and least educated
groups in Nigeria widened from 9 to 18 percentage points from 2016 to 2019,
which was driven by a limited and decreasing experience of bribery among people
with a lower level of education in the population. [2] In both the 2016 and 2019
surveys, it was found that the higher the level of educational attainment, the
higher the prevalence of bribery. More specifically, in the 2019 survey,
Nigerians with the highest level of (tertiary) education were almost twice as
likely as people with no formal education to report that they had paid a bribe
when in contact with a public official. A similar pattern exists in relation to
economic status indicators of households, as the prevalence and frequency of
bribery of the most prosperous households in Nigeria are more than double those
of the poorest.
According
to the 2019 survey, almost one in two bribes (45 per cent) are paid for the
purpose of speeding up or finalizing an administrative procedure. In a large
share of cases, bribes are paid for purely speeding up a procedure (38 per
cent), while the share of bribes paid to avoid the payment of a fine reached 21
per cent in 2019.
Accounting
for 26 per cent of all bribe payments, the most common service sought when paying
a bribe in the 2019 survey was a public utility service, followed by the
issuance of an administrative licence or permit. Other commonly sought services
reported in the 2019 survey include a medical visit, exam or intervention, the
issuance of an administrative certificate or document or of a tax declaration
or exemption, and the import/export of goods. Furthermore, around 3 per cent of
cases were related to payments to the police for “bail from jailâ€, a type of
payment that does not refer to the legal type of bail administered by courts,
but rather to payments extracted by corrupt officials for the release of
arrestees from jail prior to the formal commencement of a trial.
The
proportional distribution of services was remarkably similar in both the 2019
and 2016 surveys, with rare exceptions. This similarity suggests the
motivations and reasons for the payment of bribes remain consistent, at least
in the short-term.
How citizens respond to bribery
When
confronted with a bribe request, just one in five Nigerians (19 per cent)
refused to pay, a slight increase since 2016 (16 per cent). The power
relationship between public officials and citizens typically favours the former
and when a public official elicits a bribe, they tend to be successful and do
so with impunity - an outcome that may embolden corrupt officials to make even
more bribe requests.
Worse still, 48 per cent of adult Nigerians who refused to pay a bribe in the 12 months prior to the 2019 survey reported suffering negative consequences because of that refusal, although this share has decreased from the 56 per cent found in the 2016 survey.
In
2019, out of all citizens who had to pay a bribe, only 3.6 per cent reported
their latest bribe payment to an official institution capable of conducting an
investigation or otherwise following up and acting on that report. Although
this situation has remained virtually unchanged since 2016, when the bribery
reporting rate was 3.7 per cent, a significantly smaller proportion of bribery
reports were made to the police in 2019 than in 2016 (out of all bribe-payers
who reported the bribery incident to an authority in 2016, 56 per cent reported
it to the police, versus 43 per cent in 2019) and, by contrast, reports to
anti-corruption agencies increased from 4 to 8 per cent.
The low level of bribery reporting is largely explained by the fact that 51 per cent of those who reported a bribery incident experienced either no follow-up, were discouraged from reporting or suffered negative consequences. Furthermore, the main reasons for not reporting a bribe, among those who experienced a bribe, were that paying a bribe is such a common practice in Nigeria that it is not worth reporting it (35 per cent of all bribe-payers who did not report the incident) and that filing a report would be pointless as nobody would care (28 per cent).
Percentage
distribution of the main reasons why a bribery incident was not reported to an
official or unofficial institution, Nigeria, 2016 and 2019
The
selection process used to recruit public officials plays a crucial role in
shaping the culture of integrity that should drive the civil service as well as
ensure that new recruits have the highest standards of professionalism and
merit. However, the survey findings indicate that the public sector recruitment
process requires closer monitoring as almost one third (32.5 per cent) of
people who secured a job in the public sector in the last three years admitted
that they paid a bribe, either personally (16.4 per cent) or through a member
of their household (16.1 per cent), to facilitate their recruitment, more than
double the share in 2016, when the combined total reached 16 per cent.
The 2019 survey also found evidence that a considerable number of people recruited into the public sector secured their posts with the help of a friend or relative, many in addition to paying a bribe: of all successful applicants surveyed in the last three years, 28 per cent were helped by friends or relatives. Indeed, almost half of all public sector applicants in Nigeria are still hired as a result of nepotism, bribery or both.
The 2019
survey data show that approximately half of those who secured a position in the
public sector in the three years prior to the survey passed a written test
and/or oral interview during the recruitment selection process. Importantly,
the data suggest that the means of selection had a role in facilitating or
preventing the use of illegal practices during recruitment. Among those who
underwent an assessment procedure (written test/oral interview),6 per cent made
use of bribery, while the share was as much as 35 per cent among those who were
not formally assessed.
Share of successful applicants for public sector positions who used nepotism, bribery or both, by completion of written test and/or interview, Nigeria, 2019
In
May/June 2019, 21 per cent of the adult population of Nigeria reported that in
the last national or state election they were personally offered money or a
favour in exchange for their vote. This practice needs to be tackled properly
in order to increase confidence in the electoral process, as 86 per cent of the
population reported that they perceived electoral fraud to happen either very
frequently or fairly frequently in Nigeria.
Click Here to Download 2019
Corruption In Nigeria PDF Report
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