NIGERIAN MILITARY NARRATIVES AND PERFORMANCE ON CORRUPTION CONTROL (1966-1999): IMPLICATION FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The thrust of this paper is to interrogate corruption in Nigerian military coup speeches and to evaluate their actual contribution to corruption control from 1966-1999. The study was anchored on correspondence theory of truth and employed content analysis and historical (output) analysis methods. The data were collected from the six coup speeches using coding sheet and were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic/historical (output) analysis. The study found that Nigerian military leaders set relatively minimal agenda on corruption in their coup speeches and emphasized the depth of corruption in Nigeria; explained the negative impact of corruption; and promised to eliminate corruption. Rhetoric and performance evaluation analysis result also suggests that Nigerian Military leaders instituted relatively sufficient outputs to curb corruption within the period, even though corruption grew all through the military regimes. The paper concludes that there was hardly satisfactory corresponding practical evidence in corruption reduction among Nigerian military leaders within the period thereby undermining the nation’s development and interest. To this end, the paper recommends that the military should be kept out of the nation’s politics if the country must significantly reduce corruption to pave way for the nation’s development.