Aerial view of Lagos island and Lagos harbour, Nigeria, on 17 March 2016. Photo: Getty Images.
2. A New Approach to Anti-corruption
This report is based on an analysis that examined social norms messaging and interventions as potential policy tools for increasing collective action and desired behaviour towards corruption in Nigeria. It aims to diagnose what drives corrupt behaviour and the types of beliefs that support practices understood to be corrupt. The findings, resulting from an innovative behavioural approach, present new evidence of the social beliefs and expectations that influence some day-to-day forms of corruption in Nigeria.
The social norms approach used measures directly the underlying causes of social practices such as corruption, and offers specificity to policymakers, anti-corruption advocates, NGOs, civil society and other stakeholders to support the formulation of effective, context-specific interventions against the phenomenon.
Methodology
The findings of the report are based largely on a national household survey jointly developed by the Chatham House Africa Programme and the University of Pennsylvania’s Social Norms Group (PennSONG), in collaboration with Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) as well as a network of academics and practitioners from seven Nigerian universities and NGOs.
The survey lays the foundation for using behavioural insights in policymaking in Nigeria, and provides evidence of how collective practices such as corruption can be systematically investigated and explained for the purposes of designing or fine-tuning policy interventions and messaging.
The project’s ‘Local Understandings, Experiences and Expectations Survey’ was designed to measure if social norms of corruption exist in Nigeria, and whether these are a driver of or disincentive to certain corrupt behaviours.21 The survey was conducted in urban and rural areas in six states: Adamawa, Benue, Enugu, Lagos, Rivers and Sokoto; and in the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja (FCT).
The report is also based on field research undertaken in Nigeria from October to November 2015, and in July, August, September and December 2016. Researchers from the Chatham House Africa Programme and the University of Pennsylvania’s Social Norms Group (PennSONG), conducted research in five states: Benue, Cross River, Enugu, Lagos and Sokoto – representing five of the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria – as well as in the capital, Abuja. Virtual and telephone interviews were conducted in Adamawa and Rivers states. A roundtable discussion was also organized by the Chatham House Africa Programme in November 2015 with anti-corruption advocates and civil society leaders. Survey supervisors and implementers participated in a two-day training workshop on diagnosing and measuring social norms, organized in Abuja in September 2016 by the Chatham House Africa Programme and PennSONG.
Over the course of the project, wide-ranging interviews were conducted with experts, academics, anti-corruption practitioners, civil society representatives, federal government officials, and anti-corruption officials at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, and the Code of Conduct Bureau, as well as researchers at the Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria and members of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption. Most interviews were conducted under the Chatham House Rule22 and included interviewees’ experiences as victims, witnesses or participants in acts of corruption.
More than 120 interviews were conducted by the Chatham House Africa Programme and the University of Pennsylvania’s Social Norms Group (PennSONG) research team.
Fuller details of the survey are included in the annex at the end of this report.
Survey instrument
For a diagnostic tool to measure adequately the presence of social norms, it must include the following components:
- Behaviour – What did you do?
- Prudential reason – What are the advantages and/or disadvantages of the behaviour?
- Empirical expectations – What do you think other people do?
- Personal normative belief – What do you think about the practice?
- Normative expectation – What do you think other people think should be done?
When tackling a problem like corruption, it helps to delineate the different kinds of motives for behaviour, and it is important to note that several motives can be present at the same time. So, practical and moral reasons as well as social expectations can drive a single behaviour.
Using a social norms approach that relies on survey questions and vignettes (i.e. relatable short scenarios), the survey explored respondents’ expectations in order to uncover and then measure the behavioural causes of four common corrupt practices: bribery, extortion, embezzlement and nepotism.
Map: Chatham House Africa Programme and PennSONG Local Understandings, Experiences and Expectations Survey, by state, 2016
— Note: Field research was conducted in Cross River State, although the formal survey was not undertaken there.
Source: Chatham House. Note that the boundaries and names shown and designations used on this map do not imply endorsement or acceptance by Chatham House or the authors.
Source: Chatham House. Note that the boundaries and names shown and designations used on this map do not imply endorsement or acceptance by Chatham House or the authors.
Map: Chatham House Africa Programme and PennSONG Local Understandings, Experiences and Expectations Survey, by state, 2016
Source: Chatham House. Note that the boundaries and names shown and designations used on this map do not imply endorsement or acceptance by Chatham House or the authors.
21 It should be noted that care was taken during the survey process to avoid explicit use of words such as ‘bribe’, ‘bribery’ or ‘corruption’, or any local variants of these terms. Survey questions and vignettes referred to ‘direct payment’, and similar phrasing. Survey implementers made it clear to respondents that the questions and vignettes concerned an illegitimate informal payment.
22 When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.