USING CULTURE AS A PARADIGM FOR ERADICATING CORRUPTION IN NIGERIA, YORUBA CULTURE IN THE CONTEXT
Authors: muhammed Siyaka , Adebayo Enikanselu , Mayokun Fatoyinbo 
Published: October 2024

Culture serves as a social tool for maintaining historical knowledge and maintaining order in all premodern societies. One way to look at it is as teaching one the fundamentals of what constitutes right and wrong behaviour, moral versus immoral behaviour or acceptable versus unacceptable behaviour in the society. Comparatively, development is most likely to emerge in acceptable behaviour valued and upheld. The incorrect, immoral or unacceptable behaviour could hinder development in the society. The unacceptable behaviour contradict the culture of respect, honesty, transparency, openness, accountability, probity, belief systems and way of life valued in the same society (Baecker, 1997). Corrupt practices are by all standards unacceptable behaviours and according to International Transparency (IT, 2021), corruption takes place in many forms, including behaviors such as: Public employees requesting or accepting money or favors in return for services, politicians squandering public funds or providing public positions or contracts to their sponsors, friends, or families, and companies bribing authorities to get lucrative business agreements. Corruption exists in every facet of society, from business to government to the judicial system to the news media to the nonprofit sector to even the sports world. Professional enablers including bankers, attorneys, accountants, and real estate agents, as well as opaque financial systems and faceless companies, facilitate corruption by making it easier for corrupt individuals to engage in corrupt schemes and launder and conceal their unlawful money. Adamolekun (2015) argued that corruption has eaten deep into the fabric of the society that civilize society or country become curious about how to eradicate it. David Cameron, the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, supported such idea in 2016 "Corruption is the cancer that eats away at the foundation of so many of today's issues. It has an annual cost to the global economy of billions of pounds and is responsible for the destruction of employment and slow growth. Because of this, the world's impoverished are kept in abject poverty when governments are corrupt, they steal money from their citizens and keep them from enjoying the progress that is rightfully theirs. When corrupt people and businesses do not pay the taxes they should, it deprives public institutions like schools and hospitals of much-needed funding (Cameron, 2016). IT (2021) warns that corruption damages confidence, undermines democracy, slows economic growth, and deepens social and environmental divisions. As Paul Collier cited in Cameron (2016) explained, there are hotspots where corruption is more prevalent than others; these might be specific companies, countries, or historical periods. The extraction of natural resources and the construction industry have a special negative reputation for corruption. Therefore, this study interrogates how the efficacy of Yoruba traditional cultural values can be harnessed as paradigm for eradicating corruption in contemporary Nigeria state.