No abstract

No abstract

The Civil Society Working Paper (CSWP) series provides a vehicle for disseminating recent and ongoing research of researchers based at, or linked to The Centre for Civil Society (CCS). It aims to reflect the range and diversity of theoretical and empirical work undertaken on non-governmental, voluntary, non-profit, or third sector organisations, foundations and social enterprises-as part of wider civil society. The CCS is a leading, international organisation for research, analysis, debate and learning about civil society.

This essay analyses the construction of the anti-corruption war under the civilian government in Nigeria between 1999 and 2008. We consolidate existing insights in the literature in three key ways. First, we show that in democratising contexts like Nigeria, the gravest threats to anti-corruption campaigns often emanate from a combination of intra-elite rancour and political intrigue. Second, we provide an explanation of what happens when, literally, corruption fights back. Finally, we suggest that where anti-corruption efforts are not backed by other radical institutional reforms, they fall prey to the overall endemic (systemic) crisis, a part of which,ab initio, necessitated the anti-corruption war.

This paper analyses the politics of regime legitimacy through the instrumentality of religious discourse purveyed through a putative Christian ‘theocratic class’ surrounding the Obasanjo presidency in Nigeria. Though the emphasis is on Western Nigerian Christian discourse because of its undeniable influence in the polity since 1999, it incorporates Muslim and northern Nigerian religious discourse in so far as it is seen as constituting the significant discursive ‘Other’ with which the predominantly Christian geopolitical south has historically been in contention. The paper contends that the ‘Pentecostalisation’ of governance has raised the stakes as far as the struggle to define the Nigerian public sphere is concerned, further politicising religion, even as lip service continues to be paid to the secularity of the Nigerian state.