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To demonstrate how the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) can sustain relevance in the bid to check corruption despite the encroaching regulatory intervention of the Economics and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Nigeria.

An analytic approach; to make the case that the ICPC is still relevant in the regulatory scheme as a dedicated agency to corruption issues in Nigeria, the provisions of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2004 are reviewed and the structure of the ICPC is examined. The powers and functions of the ICPC are highlighted with the sole intent that the opportunities which exist for the ICPC to be relevant within the current regulatory scheme can be identified and analysed.

Whilst the risk of competitive regulation persists, there is a persuasive case for retaining the ICPC as a separate agency dedicated to the fight against corruption.

To challenge the ICPC to change the focus of its regulatory activity from prosecution to prevention through the adoption of forensic strategies that would strengthen private and public institutions and reduce opportunities for corruption.

This paper offers a measure of clarity on the regulatory scope of the EFCC and ICPC in the fight against corruption, economic and financial crimes.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of Nigerian anti‐corruption provisions targeted at curbing corruption by public officers.

This paper examines relevant provisions of the code of conduct for public officers in the Constitution of Nigeria, and other statutes directed at curbing official corruption, and then undertakes an assessment of their impact in the fight against corruption. The assessment is drawn from the direct pronouncements and actions of the highest political figures in Nigeria since return to civilian rule in 1999, and the views of policy makers and implementers, development partners and academics on the anti‐corruption fight in Nigeria.

Since the advent of civilian rule in 1999, the Nigerian government has introduced several reforms through the enactment of new constitutional provisions and statutes directed at official corruption. The code of conduct provisions in the Constitution provides for and enforces an ethical guide for public officers; the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act (ICPC Act) prohibits corruption in the conduct of government business generally; the Public Procurement Act (PPA) introduced mandatory requirements of transparency, and prohibits nepotism, inflation of contract and other corrupt acts in the award of government contracts; while the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Act (NEITI Act) introduced mandatory requirements of transparency and disclosure in extractive industries. Although the government introduced these reforms with enthusiasm, it has shown a lack of will power to implement them to a logical conclusion. The result is that the reform measures introduced through these legal provisions have not had any substantial impact in curbing corruption in the respective sectors covered by them.

This paper is restricted to an examination of the impact of legal provisions directed against official corruption in Nigeria. It does not discuss legal provisions directed at economic and financial crimes in Nigeria.

This paper presents an assessment of the impact of the legal provisions directed at curbing official corruption in Nigeria since 1999. The assessment reflects the views and attitudes of the highest ranking public officers, technocrats in charge of implementation of the legal reforms, legislators, development partners and informed academics.

This paper aims to assess the roles of agencies in combating illicit financial flows (IFFs) in Nigeria. Specifically, this paper explores the roles of the major anti-corruption agencies – the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) – in curbing IFFs in Nigeria. This paper reviews the various activities and achievements of these agencies in combating IFFs and concludes that in spite of the effort made by these anti-graft agencies, Nigeria still ranks top among African countries suffering from IFFs. Therefore, this study recommends a need for a collective and coordinated strategy by authorities worldwide to address the difficulties posed by financial crimes.

This study reviews the roles of anti-graft agencies in combating IFFs in Nigeria. Specifically, this study explores the roles of EFCC and ICPC in combating IFFs.

This study concludes that in spite of the effort made by Nigeria’s anti-graft agencies, IFFs have continued to increase thereby impeding the effort to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 16.4 – reduce IFFs.

This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by exploring Nigeria's major anti-graft agencies and their effort in curbing IFFs in Nigeria.

This study aims to contribute to the emerging discourse on elite financial crime, with particular attention devoted to the role played by the legislature in corrupt practices in Nigeria. Separations of power, watchdog role of legislature and ideologies have become a major influence in democratic system. Legislative power has developed as a means of providing oversight functions over the executives, thereby inhibiting fraudulent practices in governments.

The paper argues that the political institutional structures embedded with monopoly, discretion and little or no accountability facilitate financial corrupt practices within the legislature. The paper uses publicly available evidence to show that the legislators in developing countries are actively engaged in corrupt practices.

The evidence provided in this paper shows that separation of power and representative democracy had not brought about transparency and accountability in government activities in Nigeria. Legislature often trade-off their constitutional power and their claim of service to the public interest by engaging in financial criminal practices.

This paper does not set out to provide a comprehensive analysis of political corruption. Instead, it considers the “dark” side of legislative practice by examining the involvement of legislature in facilitating corrupt financial practices in Nigeria.

The inability of the regulators to effectively sanction legislators implicated in corrupt practices suggests that the current institutional and regulatory apparatus are not fully equipped in dealing with the financial criminal activities of legislators.

Despite the arrest and prosecution of some legislators, a number of cases are swept under the carpet. Therefore, this paper suggests that Nigeria need to reform its political system and institutions to promote transparency and accountability in government and to build trust in the legislative process.

This paper considers the “dark” side of legislative practice by examining the involvement of legislature in facilitating corrupt financial practices in Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the seeming paradox that underpins Nigeria’s war on corruption. This paradox centres on the undue interference of the presidency in the war against corruption. This interference has resulted in selective prosecutions and a deceleration in the tempo of the anti-corruption crusade.

The study used an admixture of primary and secondary data to evaluate whether indeed Nigeria is fighting against corruption to win it. The primary data were derived from key informant interviews. A total of ten diverse experts were interviewed through the instrumentality of unstructured set of questions, which were administered to them with room for elaboration. The secondary data were sourced from archival materials.

The findings of the study centre on three key issues: a characteristic one-sidedness in the prosecution of alleged corruption offenders by the anti-graft agencies. Those with pending corruption cases who have decamped to the ruling All Progressives Congress have had their cases placed in abeyance. There is evidence of the politicisation of the war against corruption as well as evidence of weak institutionalisation, which robs the anti-corruption agencies of the capacity to act independently.

The anti-corruption war may likely be derailed if the operational efficiency of the anti-graft agencies is not enhanced and their independence guaranteed.

If the anti-corruption crusade fails, it will have multiple negative domino effects on national development and quality of life of the Nigerian people.

The paper is original because no recent study has interrogated the declining efficiency of Nigeria’s anti-graft agencies or linked this declining efficiency on weak institutionalisation and interference from the presidency.

This paper aims to explore the challenges faced in combating fraudulent practices in the Nigerian public sector.

This paper is essentially the result of primary data of in-depth semi-structured interviews. An in-depth interview was conducted with 14 respondents comprises (4) auditors, (4) accountants, (2) legal practitioners, (2) staff of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) and (2) staff of the Federal Inland Revenue Service. The interviews data collected were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach.

This study found that among the challenges to combat fraudulent practices in the Nigerian public sector is first the prevalence of Godfatherism in the Nigerian public sector. Godfatherism offers selective judgment, lack of agencies autonomous and the party system which remains a challenge. Second, the issue of political immunity undermines public governance which illustrates an exemption of punishment, constitutional protections and the political environment are some major challenges faced in preventing fraud in the Nigerian public sector.

This study, therefore, offers an important platform to Nigerian anti-graft bodies such as the “EFFC,” “Independent Corrupt Practices Commission” (ICPC) and “Code of Conduct Bureau” (CCB). Thus, it perhaps eases the way of combating fraudulent practices in Nigeria.

This paper is original and unique in its form and has value to anti-graft bodies and practitioners in the Nigerian public sector, private sector other African economies and academics.

“Corrupt practices” is a recurring feature of media coverage. The paper seeks to encourage debates about the influence of institutional structures on agency to break away from methodological individualism. This paper aims to encourage reflections on the role of both the structures and actors which have shaped the continuous expansion of corrupt practices in Nigeria.

Whilst recognising that deviant behaviour by some individuals is always possible, this paper has rejected methodological individualism and shows the value of locating anti-social practices within the broader socio-political and historical context. Within a socio-political framework, this study adopts the theories of critical realism, developmental state and globalisation to understand the relationship between social agency and society, focusing upon the institutional structures and the role of social actors.

The evidence shows that socio-political and economic development, politics, power, history and globalisation have continued to reproduce and transform the institutional structures and actors which have facilitated anti-social practices in Nigeria. The paper concludes that large sums of government revenue have been undermined by the anti-social practices of the Nigerian political and economic elite (both local and international), which have enriched a few, but impoverished most, Nigerians.

As a consequence of recurring corrupt practices in Nigeria, there is a pressing need for reform to curb these practices which have had, and continue to have, a serious effect on Nigeria and its future development.

It provides a framework for understanding and explaining the inter-relations of actors and institutional structures and the linkages and influences that have shaped the practices in Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the Economic and Financial Crime Act 2004 to investigate whether there are defects in the 2004 Acts which enable abuse of the system by those who are responsible for fighting corruption and other economic crimes in Nigeria.

The paper adopts qualitative methods of research. The research studied the laws and regulations relevant to the recovery and management of proceeds of crime. However, personal experience of the author in the civil service, security and law enforcement accounts significantly.

The paper finds that the provisions of the EFCC Act 2004 relevant to the recovery of proceeds of crime and management of recovered assets are defective. The 2004 Act contains loopholes that enable mismanagement and diversion of recovered assets for personal use. Although the EFCC Act empowers the Minister of Justice to issue Regulations to regulate the activities of the EFCC, the Asset Tracing, Recovery and Management Regulations 2019 the Minister of Justice issued cannot be used to close the loopholes. Thus, there is an urgent need to amend the EFCC Act 2004.

Non-availability of data on the mismanagement of seized and recovered assets is a severe limitation. Thus, analysis in this research focuses on the laws and regulations to illustrates the defects in the 2004 Act. Also, the study could only use reported cases and incidence of corruption among the security and law enforcement to illustrate unsuitability of security and law enforcement for the position of the chairman of the EFCC.

There is no comprehensive work that examines the defects of the provisions of the 2004 Act that breeds lack of transparency in the recovery of proceeds of crime as well as mismanagement of recovered assets. Therefore, this paper is of value to the Nigerian Government and the National Assembly in considering amendments to the EFCC Act 2004. The paper is also of importance to researchers.

This chapter focuses on data journalism, a relatively new brand of journalistic practices that take advantage of the growing availability and application of digital data and computational tools for news production. Although this brand of journalism has been on in some advanced democracies, it is still a relatively new development in Africa, especially Nigeria. Journalists still rely mostly on eyewitness reports and interviews to write their stories, thus leading to lack of depth in media reportage of critical issues. This chapter explores the nature of data journalism conceptualised as a social science pragmatic approach to news gathering and reporting, tracing its history and inherent strengths and weaknesses. It examines the windows of opportunities it provides towards guaranteeing transparency and accountability in Nigeria's nascent democracy. It concludes that, though data journalism complements the conventional investigative reporting to enhance good governance system in Nigeria, strengthening other institutions of government such as the police, judiciary, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) becomes imperative in entrenching accountability and transparency in Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the perceptions of the grassroots on the impact of combative policy measures, strategies and programs introduced by the government and the civil society to reduce persistent occurrences of bribery practices in Nigeria.

Multi-stage or cluster sampling was used to acquire the data for this paper via survey questionnaire administered to the grassroots in Abuja, Nigeria. The data set is used to assess the impact of the various policy measures, strategies and programs on the persistence of bribery practices in Nigeria. The multiple linear regression method was used to estimate the data generated from 836 responses in Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26.

The result of the estimations indicates that the respondents perceived that some of the policy measures, strategies and programs introduced have reduced persistence of bribery practices in Nigeria, whereas others have remained ineffective in reducing the persistence of bribery practices in Nigeria.

Previous studies on the impact of anti-bribery policy measures, strategies and programs were largely based on the perceptions of international institutions and business executives; this study appears to be the pioneer to focus on the perceptions of the grassroots in Abuja, Nigeria.