A Culture of Corruption

"By all measurements Nigeria, richly endowed with natural and human resources and the United States' fifth largest source of imported oil, should be one of the most prosperous of the world's developing countries. Instead it is one of the poorest. No one has done a better job than Daniel Jordan Smith of showing how and why the cancer of corruption has hobbled the giant of Africa. A Culture of Corruption is an absorbing cultural study by an anthropologist who deeply cares about the society into which he has married."--Walter Carrington, former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria

"This is a path-breaking study of a challenging topic for African studies, anthropology, development economics, and social sciences in general. If any country in Africa should be able to join the world's newly industrialized countries, it should be Nigeria in view of its size and its oil wealth. The common explanation of its constant failure to do so is corruption. The great merit of this book is to show that corruption has many faces in everyday life. The term is all too often used as a blanket notion. Smith shows how misleading this is by studying it as a daily reality with manifold expressions. The book fills an urgent need. We must better understand the reasons why Africa's giant is stagnating if we want to be able to say something about the continent's present-day crisis."--Peter Geschiere, University of Amsterdam

"Nigeria is known globally as a center for scams of a variety and audacity that are astounding to those who trust that their own societies and economies run according to 'the rules.' In "A Culture of Corruption," Daniel Jordan Smith draws on many years of living in Nigeria as an NGO representative andanthropologist to cast a very wide net around Nigerian corruption, to include contemporary official and unofficial malfeasance of all kinds. His exposition is graphic, detailed, and broadly supported. He doesn't flinch before quite terrifying case material. There is no other work that covers the same ground so clearly and in such a nuanced and observant manner."--Jane I. Guyer, Johns Hopkins University