I will start this discourse with the matrix below from the Nobel Prize winner Milton

Friedman.

Let us investigate this matrix, row-wise.

​1st square ​represents ​you spending your own money on yourself​​. That includes
your family and all those you hold dear. So when you spend your own money on
yourself, you tend to spend the least possible and try to gain the maximum value. Of
course a rich person will spend more than a poor person, but he will also demand more
value for whatever amount he spends.

The​ 2nd square on the right of the top row ​deals with ​you spending your
money on someone else​​. Imagine you’re buying sweets to distribute amongst your
work colleagues, most of whom you barely know. For those closest to you or those you
seek favors from, you will most likely buy excellent sweets. For the others, you will buy
decent sweets which will not burn a hole in your pocket.

The ​3rd square​​(first on the bottom row) talks about ​you spending someone else's
money on yourself​​. The best example would be the food allowance employees get
when they are traveling on company's business. Usually, the company sets a limit, say
per meal. You will be reimbursed maximum that much amount when you submit the
bills. If you eat for less than the limit, you don't get the balance refunded to you. In such
a case, pretty much everybody will try to spend up to the limit. Even if normally you
spend less on a meal, now you will ensure you go to a high-class restaurant where you
can spend up to the limit. In this case, you don't economize i.e. you don't try to save
money.

The ​4th square​​ is colored red because it is the ​worst possible scenario​​. This is the
domain of bureaucrats and politicians. They get their money through taxes or rent on
‘government assets’. These are typically forced out of citizens regardless of how good or
bad the bureaucrats and politicians are. Knowing that the money they spend is not
theirs and the people they spend it on (i.e. the general public) are not related to them,
they simply don't care​​. This is a problem regardless of the country.

So now, let’s get down to the solutions for solving corruption issues

1. Better Technology

The 1st step is to set pragmatic rules and then use the right technology that makes
rule-following pragmatic. When everyone around you realizes that the rule and its
implementation is logical, there is less of a reason to break it (unless you are crazy).
Some areas where better technology can help include:

1.1. Develop a website where the procurement of all government services will take
place. Anyone wanting to interact with the government will go to this site to
fill forms, submit documents and make payments. The technologies to do this
are available and there are many Nigerians companies that can deliver good
intuitive solutions that will meet the needs of the common Nigerian. If this is
well done, bribe seekers, givers, and takers in govt services will be almost
eliminated.
1.2. Make it easy for the public to (anonymously if they choose) report corrupt
government agents. Again this can be facilitated through a website where
ordinary citizens can go and report misdemeanors of govt agents. To ensure
smooth and easy crowd management of the website, there should be slots for
the reporting public to include the names of the erring agents, their
designation and their agency. We can then have a Radio or TV station that
does daily broadcast on the top X (10, 20, 30 etc) offending govt agents. As
can be imagined, no right-thinking govt agent, be it a policeman or an LG
clerk, would want to appear on the Top X list.
1.3. There should be educational materials, through text, audio and videos (in as
many local languages as possible) aimed at enlightening the general public on
how to relate with govt agents on all matters. This way, citizens can check on
the website to know if govt agents are performing their duties as authorized.
1.4. There are also citizen tracking services that can be deployed both to Law
enforcers and to ordinary citizens to track the common misdemeanors, such
as defecating in public places; littering; assaults etc by regular citizens every
day. The services usually come in the form of apps that are downloaded to the
phones and used to track misbehaving citizens. To get expected uptake, the
govt or some private organization, need to incentivize people uploading
reports eg by rewarding them with a percent of the fine paid by the culprit.
 1.5. Make electronic and cashless transaction more prevalent (100% wherever
possible) when dealing with govt agencies. Subsidize the payment
technologies so much that people get incentives not to use cash. Cash
transactions are the source of half the headache.

These are starting points. There are millions of things we could do as system designers. The
goal of any society should be to make rule-following pragmatic. Illogical and stupid rules
naturally make even logical people ignore rules. Once the rational people start following the
rules, the government can go brutal on the irrational rule-breakers.

2. Never have a meaningless rule that cannot be enforced well

Any rule that cannot be enforced is tyranny & unfair. The good ones would be the only ones
to follow them (due to self-conscience) and bad ones will not (no enforcement). An example
of this is the prohibition law in the US in the 1920s that made it illegal for people to buy
alcohol.

Alcohol is so entrenched in the Western culture and so easy to manufacture that the laws
were openly flouted. Crimes, gangs, mafias and corruption ruled in cities like Chicago due to
that. Nigeria has many such rules that are similar eg the laws against Cannabis,
Homosexuality and many more i cant remember at the moment. Alcohol is bad, but cannot
be banned. Same for cigarettes, drugs, prostitution etc. If you cannot enforce a rule very
well, don't have it in the rule book. By having these weak rules, you weaken the fear &
respect for the law. You then create these dirty surfaces over which germs then fester. Throw
these unused furnitures out of the window.

3. Simpler rules

In Nigeria, you can’t just approach the Banks and buy forex. Officially, forex is sold by the
CBN to the Banks and BDC who in turn sell them to businesses and individuals respectively.
This complicates what is essentially supposed to be a transaction which have huge
consequences on how small businesses transact with the rest of the world

Many of our laws just exist to complicate the life of the common person and favor a
privileged few. Our laws make it excruciatingly difficult for someone to open a new mine, a
fintech company, a new factory and so on. Our rules are so bad that our entrepreneurs
either have to look abroad for growth or bribe.

When laws are stupid & complex, even honest people will ignore them. When an honest
man is forced to break laws on a daily basis, the society decays.

Simplify, simplify, simplify.

4. Reduce scarcity

Just a few years ago, most people would have bribed someone to get these basic things eg a
telephone line. Now, you don’t pay bribes for this anymore due to the ‘abundance’ of GSM
and the competition for customers among the telephony companies. However, there is a lot
of bribes being paid for various services due to the govt induced scarcity on these services.

To eliminate this type of corruption, our system needs to make it easy for honest and
rational people to get their basic needs & desires satisfied in a straightforward way. There is
a reason why all the Nordic countries became so egalitarian and corruption-free.

5. Rule of Law -> Destroy a culture of fear

This is the fundamental duty of the government. Setting up the rule of law so that the good
guys are not afraid to talk the truth. That means anyone who threatens, hurts or murders a
journalist, judge, government servant or a whistleblower must be treated mercilessly. Once
you bring the murderers and gangs to justice with tailor-made laws & fast-track courts, the
culture of fear disappears. Once good people stop being afraid, they will be more open to
whistleblow. This is a classic law & order issue.
On the flipside, governments should also stop scaring people with misuse of slander & libel
laws. Anyone in public life should not be given the right to hide behind slander laws.

6. Reduce government involvement & destroy monopolies

When governments are too involved in the economy, you create power-centers that become
above the law. The government agencies become monopolies and laws would get written
around them eg the NNPC, NIBSS. It creates these "principalities" who become too powerful
not to impact the life of the common man. "Rent Seeking" arises from these powerful people
taking "rents" for any economic activity that ordinary people do without adding any value eg
collecting taxes from market women without doing anything for their market.

Get rid of these principalities and get rid of any kind of monopolies - government or private.
When there are multiple companies vying to provide services to the people, corruption
becomes less necessary. The GSM phenomena in Nigeria demonstrated this perfectly.

As you can see below, the world's most corrupt countries have too much government
involvement or are run by oligarchs/autocrats.
 7. Provide better wages to Civil Servants including the Police and Military

In Nigeria, policemen get peanuts as official salary. This makes it impossible for an honest
person to get in and survive. As the good apples exit, rotten apples replace them. As it is
practically impossible to survive on the government salary, bribe-taking becomes a very
simple and straightforward option.

Pay the police well and be merciless when they take a bribe. When they are paid well, they
have a lot to lose by breaking the rules.

8. Broken window theory - create clean zones

In public policy, there is a concept called the broken-window theory. In a street, if there are
windows broken by miscreants and not acted upon, it sends signals to the miscreants that
rule-enforcement is weak. Crimes will fester in those areas. In the same way, you tend to put
garbage in those areas where there are already piles of garbage. You are less likely to throw
garbage in a clean mall.

The broken windows of an abandoned hospital building in Northampton, Massachusetts

Like a lot of crimes, corruption is a disease - in that it can spread easily if there are not
antibodies. To solve corruption, we need to create zones of "cleanliness" - where rules are
both straightforward and enforced strongly.

Government could start this in specific departments (let us say passport office) or specific
areas (say Abuja) and do a complete reset of the rules & enforcement. Make it impossible for
anyone to break the small list of logical rules you set. Eradicate the disease in that zone,
quarantine it and go to the next zones.

9. Align Power with Identity

It would be safe to assume that that the current political structure has not worked. It has not
led to development or national cohesion. It has also prevented the implementation of
policies that will adequately curb some of the worst vices from citizens that have prevented
corruption.

It is true that like most countries with a colonial past, the current Nigerian state is an
amalgam of different nations that were pulled together to be administered centrally by the
British for economic and political expediency. Thus, after independence, the structure of
power inherited from the colonialists was national – the person with power at the center
exercised it over the entire country. The structure of identity, however, was at subnational
levels. The resultant effect was that the people saw themselves first as ethnic or regional
citizens before being Nigerians. This misalignment of power and identity is at the heart of all
the crises and agitations that have plagued the nation from independence and which appear
to be reaching a crescendo at the moment. It follows, therefore, that if there is to be any
coherence to the restructuring debate, due attention must be paid to aligning the structures
of power and identity. There are two suggested ways of achieving this.

1. The first method is to decentralize the structure of power so that it meets identity at
sub-national levels. There are a number of developed countries in the world that
have been able to successfully decentralize power along identity lines. These
countries include Switzerland, Belgium, and Canada. In Switzerland, power is shared
along structures that correlate with the three main languages of German, French and
Italian. Similarly, policy-making has been devolved to local authorities known as
cantons. The cantons largely determine and control the resources of their regions. As
good as this approach may sound, it is complicated by the multiethnic nature of
Nigerian cities and the high number of minorities that are scattered across the
country. A more viable option may be decentralization based on proximity and
shared economic values instead of decentralization along ethnic lines.
2. The second approach is to move the structure of identity, from sub-national levels,
towards the structure of power, which is at the national level. This can be loosely
called a mental restructuring. The task is to get citizens to start seeing themselves
first as Nigerians, before any other consideration. It would involve a complete change
 in orientation and narrative, thereby de-emphasizing ethnicity and reinforcing
national values. However, getting citizens to a point of shared identity and struggle
would require total commitment from the leadership. There can be no half majors or
lip service as it has been experienced in the cases of the National Youth Service Corps
(NYSC) scheme and unity schools. These programmes were designed to break
sub-national identity barriers, thus enthroning a post-civil war generation of
integrated Nigerians. However, decades after their creation, successive governments
have neglected the two schemes and the objectives for which they were set up are
now largely unmet.

Killing corruption is a complex, long slog. It involves everything from building a strong
economy to creating the right policies that make sense. It is not a switch that you can turn
on and off. Even if you have honest law enforcers and leaders, you cannot solve it without
fixing the underlying problems. Even if you give death sentence to bribe givers/takers, you
cannot solve it.

Attitudes are a reflection of the environment and are an adaptation. That means, we need to
change the environment and make it conducive to obey the rules. This will not eradicate
corruption; like germs, corruption will continue to live but can be turned powerless.

Our focus should primarily be on how to prevent honest and rational people from engaging
in corrupt practices. This can be done by designing a better system. Once you get the honest
people out of the corruption ring, you will get the strength of truth to fight the small fraction
of real bad people.

References:
1) Restructuring Nigeria: the Power-Identity Conundrum, By Jeremiah Angai
2) The Roots of Corruption:Mass education, economic inequality and state building, Eric
M. Uslaner, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College
Park, MD 20742-7211, USA

​ ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
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​ ttps://soapboxie.com/world-politics/Corruption-in-Nigeria
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