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Corruption And Underdevelopment
[A CASE STUDY OF HALLIBURTON]
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For Reconstruction and Development [the World
Bank] and International Finance Corporation [IFC], which are more often
than not, the sole intelligent planner for these economies. Hence,
holding the stick and carrot, they kill or make “the key economic policy
of the new world of globalization, democracy and market economyâ€
[El-Rufai, Nasir 2003: 41]. Some have argued that privatization is
predicated on the following principles. Firstly, in promoting private
sector and liberalized market economy, the government is divested of any
kind of business and competition with its citizens because as El-Rufai
explained “when government owns, nobody owns and when nobody owns,
nobody caresâ€. Yet, this is only feasible when the government decides to
abdicate her responsibility and sovereignty. From the Socratic period
through the renaissance to the contemporary times government or social
contract is built on trust that the sovereign allocates and reallocates
resources to bridge the yawning gap that would otherwise be created
through competition and disparity in expertise, skill and opportunities.
But in Nigeria, for instance, corruption has pushed the so-called
private sector to seek to maximize its own value at the expense of the
economic empowerment and integrity of the common man. An example is the
modus operandi of large scale corruption by the government in Nigeria.
The government would announce the importation of fuel, say, at three
trillion naira, when in actual fact; the barrels of fuel were imported
at two trillion, ripping off one trillion naira. In selling the fuel to
the independent marketers, the government increases its fraudulent three
trillion naira. The independent marketers then turn round to distribute
the cost at three trillion naira plus their profit and that of value
added tax tot eh public and effective users of petrol. With these
fraudulent chains by which the corrupt government gets the essential
commodity [fuel] down to the ordinary man in the street, she rips off
the public hundred percent of the cost price of the good [petroleum
commodity] before the independent marketers rip off the public again
some fifty percent of the government’s fraud. In this cyclic corrupt
chain, the individual as a motorist or a commuter suffers various
disabilities depending on social location within the society. The
system, as we have graphically seen, is a situation where the sovereign
[or the state] sends corruption instead of good life down to the public.
Hence, the state, in the case of Nigeria, has contradicted its
existence and could justifiably relinquish its existence in business and
service to the public to the private sector participation that would be
more corrupt.
• Hypotheses For the purpose of guidance and in order
to achieve the statements of problems and the objectives of this study,
the researcher has proposed the following hypotheses:
• Corruption is responsible for Nigeria’s underdevelopment
• There is a close link between external factors and the persistence of corruption in Nigeria.
• Deregulation is capable of curbing the menace of corruption and engendering development in Nigeria.
• Methods of Data Collection and Analysis
In
this study, we adopted the use of secondary sources of data as the main
method of data collection. The use of the secondary sources of data is
justified due to its intrinsic values. For any research to be
meaningful, reliable and scientific facts and ideas, must be
supplemented with empiricism. Secondary materials like text books,
newspapers, magazines, government publications, research papers, journal
etc., were seriously put into use.
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