“Money,” Mr. Fayemi said. “It is the language of Nigerian politics. As much as you want to get away from that, you also have to be mindful of those short-term things you must do.”
Seems like an interesting book, A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria by anthropologist Daniel Jordan Smith- via Tyler Cowen;
"This book examines the relationship between corruption and culture in Africa’s most populous country. It offers an answer to the question of how ordinary Nigerians can be, paradoxically, active participants in the social reproduction of corruption even as they are also its primary victims and principal critics. Taking its cue from Nigerians, who see corruption at work in every corner of social life, the book presents an ethnographic study of corruption, demonstrating that there is much to be learned about social action, collective imagination, and cultural production when they are seen through the lens of an anthropological account of corruption. The book takes readers into the everyday world of Nigerian citizens as they encounter a society plagued by corruption. From police checkpoints where motorists offer banknotes in exchange for safe passage, to Internet cafés where thousands of young Nigerians craft their notorious e-mail scam letters, to local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) created to siphon international donor dollars into individual hands, the book provides a detailed portrait of the social organization of corruption. It examines not only the mechanisms and contexts that explain corruption but also how the intense discontent that Nigerians feel about corruption propels contemporary events and stimulates Nigerians’ collective cultural imagination.
When Nigerians talk about corruption, they refer not only to the abuse of state offices for some kind of private gain but also to a whole range of social behaviors in which various forms of morally questionable deception enable the achievement of wealth, power, or prestige as well as much more mundane ambitions. Nigerian notions of corruption encompass everything from government bribery and graft, rigged elections, and fraudulent business deals, to the diabolical abuse of occult powers, medical quackery, cheating in school, and even deceiving a lover. Although the use of the term corruption risks privileging a seemingly Western concept, my aim is to examine the Nigerian experience of corruption. I argue that it is empirically justified and theoretically important to study this spectrum of ideas and behaviors under the rubric of corruption, not only because Nigerians connect them in their collective conceptualizations, but also because together they reveal the complex intertwining of popular morality, contemporary social processes, and postcolonial statecraft."
To me talking of corruption as part of a culture indicates a fatality and a belief that corruption will always prevail and there isn’t much we can do.
Related;
Nigeria Fact of the Day
Nigeria contender sets out stall
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