An assessment of assets declaration by public officers as an anti-corruption measure in Nigeria

Magister Legum - LLMAlthough corruption is a global problem, its nature, extent and consequences in Nigeria are alarming. Nigeria has a plethora of laws, policies and institutions that have been put in place by the government to keep corruption at bay. One such law is the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act of 1989 (CCBT Act) which regulates, inter alia, the declaration of assets by public officers. However, corruption has defiled all these initiatives. Eloquent evidence of unsuccessful attempts at curbing corruption in Nigeria is the fact that the country consistently has been rated by Transparency International as one of the most corrupt countries in world. For example, in the 2017 Corruption Perceptions Index, Nigeria was ranked 148 out of 180 countries that were assessed. The Corruption Perceptions Index is based on a scale of 0 to 100: any score above 50 denotes low levels of corruption in the public sector and any score below 50 denotes high levels of corruption in the public sector. Nigeria scored 27. This indicates that the public sector in Nigeria is perceived to be significantly corrupt