War Against corruption and the Political Will to Wage it: A Case Study of President Muhammadu Buhari's Two Years in Office

Abstract

The menace of corruption in Nigeria is systemic. No Nigerian with the least level of education can feign ignorance of what corruption connotes and how pervasive it is in the socio-political and economic milieu of the Nigerian state. It has practically stationed Nigeria’s economy in the doldrums and seems irrecoverable. The author assessed the political will of President Muhammadu Buhari to fight corruption in Nigeria. He utilised the secondary source of data collection and adopted the framework of the Clashing Moral Values theory. He observed in the study that selectivity in dealing with corruption, double standards in fighting corruption and corruption fighting were major factors militating against winning the war against corruption. With all the hoopla of the high-ranking pending cases of corruption under prosecution, corruption cannot be wiped out of Nigeria’s soil if corruption cases were selectively prosecuted. The author concluded that President Buhari had not been able to win the war against corruption and that a lot more needed to be done to check the factors militating against that common enemy of the nation.