Because corruption in the education sector of Nigeria is so deeply entrenched and reflective of wider society, tackling the phenomenon requires a holistic, systemic approach. Yet its pervasive nature makes determining priority areas and approaches rather difficult. Still, interventions which will simply target the specific behaviour of bribery for the purposes of ensuring a passing grade would amount to a piecemeal approach and would be inadequate for dealing with the root causes that sustain the systemic scale of corruption in the sector. Concrete measures that address the broader problems in terms of the political economy, power dynamics, decision-making processes, and the myriad of enabling factors that create strong incentives for corruption – as well as weak consequences – would result in more sustainable and less reactive solutions.
At the level of petty bribery in schools, it is critically important to broaden the scope of investigation to explore the motives of individuals and design measures that address these specific motivations. As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) observed in a 2012 report on corruption in education in Serbia:
The findings of this study strongly highlight the need for further studies into the motives of individuals and dynamics within Nigerian schooling environments which contribute to or enable corrupt practices in education. In terms of public engagement in educational settings, the increasing decentralization of primary-secondary education management to the subnational and local levels, through reform efforts such as UBEC and SUBEB, presents an opportunity for increased engagement, participation, and local oversight by community actors – especially parents – at the local level. Supporting parental and communal participation in schools – not just on paper – can create opportunities both for real and meaningful sanctions for disapproved behaviour and for promoting accountability. This is particularly important given that most respondents in the survey disapprove of the practice of pass-mark bribery. The approval or disapproval of a practice by important members of one’s reference network is a powerful incentive for behavioural change and sustains reasons for compliance with a behaviour. Compliance tends to be weak with practices which, although common, meet with disapproval, and can be stopped by informing people publicly what the majority think privately – if the approval or disapproval of others solely influenced behaviour.
Locally-owned forums for discussion and participation (political, supervisory and social) make it possible for parents and others in the community to discuss and formulate actions based on their personal beliefs on petty bribery in schools, which are shared by the majority in their community to a greater degree than might otherwise have been thought.
Leveraging positive shared beliefs and values which already exist in the community can be a very powerful driver for change. An equal impact can be wrought by using communication campaigns that address descriptive norms, uncover pluralistic ignorance (mistaken beliefs about what others do and approve) and popularize a community’s true beliefs.
Civil society organizations and other community groups can play an important role in supporting parents and local communities to act on their disapproval of bribery for grades.
Strengthening local ownership and participatory community engagement on schooling and educational outcomes is also a valuable part of smart and sustainable interventions: in particular, the type of feasible interventions that are incremental in nature and relatively less threatening to embedded informal networks of corruption. While the education sector is in serious need of comprehensive reform, sweeping changes, for example at the federal level, will ultimately have to be anchored and sustained through strong multi-stakeholder coalitions at the local level.
Civil society organizations and other community groups can also play an important role in supporting parents and local communities to act on their disapproval of bribery for grades: for example, by providing expertise in setting up community monitoring programmes at the state and local level, and using ‘scorecards’ to monitor specific forms of corruption. In relation to bribery solicitation and extortion, scorecards can be developed specifically to track the frequency of these demands, and comparisons made between various schools in a community. It should be noted, however, that as long as paying a bribe addresses needs such as obtaining a pass mark and topping up the poor and infrequent pay of teachers, the latter will remain strong incentives for this practice. Therefore, programming will have to also address these practical motivations, including the issues related to teacher recruitment and pay, to be effective. Furthermore, new social expectations – specifically, empirical expectations about what other people do – have to be induced. Thus, programming should be able to demonstrate that bribery is not necessary for guaranteeing success in examinations, rather that there is an enforceable meritocratic system in place, with consequences for violating the rules.
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been a game-changer in corruption monitoring and can facilitate citizen action in making complaints and giving feedback on bribery. Increasingly, SMS systems and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are being used as tools for reporting and for citizen activism. Complaint mechanisms – both internal and external – powered by digital technology can be a constructive means for parents/clients and other users to confidentially report and publicize the solicitation and payment of bribes (extortion demands), and thus can contribute to the creation of some social consequences – such as public shaming and loss of credibility – for education providers. It is also important that disciplinary action and legal sanctions follow substantiated complaints, in order to change the perception that there are no consequences for misconduct.
India’s ‘I Paid a Bribe’ website is a well-known example of a successful platform for crowdsourcing and publicizing complaints about corruption. It exemplifies a model that can be reimagined as a league table that ranks (and shames) schools in communities according to bribery solicitation behaviour and the school’s performance in addressing corruption. UBEC, which is mandated to formulate guidelines and minimum standards for basic education in Nigeria as well as to ensure effective monitoring and to improve transparency and accountability, can play a critical role in supporting such complaint mechanisms, as part of its corruption detection strategy. It is crucial, however, that complaint mechanisms and ‘corruption league tables’ are legitimate, accessible, equitable and transparent, and are designed to guarantee confidentiality in order to prevent the retaliatory targeting of users – parents, pupils and other citizens. Additionally, issues of limited internet access, high data costs and low ICT capabilities can constrain the effectiveness and equitability of ICTs for bribery reporting.
A lack of clarity on legitimate payments and the financial needs of schools is commonly used by education providers to demand fraudulent fees and other informal payments – which are, in reality, bribes. In contexts such as Sokoto state, where more than one-third of respondents did not know that it was illegal to pay a bribe for ensuring a pass mark, improvements in the quality of financial management and oversight, and, especially, in the clear communication of types of fees can help dispel this confusion.
Values, integrity and anti-corruption education is a growing area of anti-corruption work in Nigeria. There are ongoing efforts to integrate anti-corruption education into school curricula – where it adds value, inculcating ethical standards, minimizing the tolerance of corruption, and encouraging public-spirited behaviour in young citizens – and to provide age-appropriate learning materials that feature values-based content. Nigeria’s anti-corruption bodies (in particular the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission – ICPC) have been developing and implementing modules and ad hoc training on integrity and ethics for classrooms and after-school programmes, as well as establishing anti-corruption clubs in both public and private schools. The ICPC, in partnership with civil society and NGOs such as the UNODC, has also developed and implemented a National Values Curriculum (NVC) for school students, an NVC Teacher’s Guide, and other anti-corruption modules and resources. Other significant integrity promotion initiatives include the Catch Them Young Initiative developed in 2018 by the NGO Step Up Nigeria, which uses creative storytelling as a vehicle for anti-corruption education for young people.
As much as these efforts are vital for stimulating conversations about public integrity and teaching non-tolerance of corruption, they need to be combined with other intersectoral approaches that target the enabling environment, structural barriers and weak consequences for corruption in Nigerian schools. That said, a country’s school system is often a microcosm of the country itself, and the values and norms of a society – both positive and negative – can be embedded and deployed at scale in such environments.
