Agbiboa, Daniel E.They eat our sweat: transport labor, corruption, and everyday survival in urban Nigeria. 280 pp., illus., bibliogr. Oxford: University Press, 2022. £97.00 (hardback)

In this ambitious and insightful book, Daniel Agbiboa examines corruption through a rich and vivid ethnographic account of the transportation sector in Lagos, a megacity of upwards of 20 million people, and the commercial capital of Nigeria. The book draws on an innovative mode of participant observation, a thorough and erudite reading of relevant literatures, an ability to think creatively about long-standing theoretical conundrums, and a fundamental commitment to the benefits of an anthropological approach to studying and understanding the complex processes and practices that are too frequently and too easily glossed simply as corruption. Agbiboa's sophisticated, careful, and nuanced examination of corruption as seen through the prism of everyday transportation in Lagos defies rendering as a simple argument. But to the extent that I can encapsulate the main point, it is something like this: the widespread corruption that ordinary Nigerians must navigate – and in so doing help reproduce – is not the result of some kind of deep cultural trait; rather, it is a response to a system and a set of conditions that compel citizens to participate in order to survive. But what makes They eat our sweat such an illuminating read is not just Agbiboa's explanation for the ubiquity and durability of corruption in Nigeria; it is equally his attention to the lives and livelihoods of his interlocutors, which enables him to convey the violence and the humour, the anger and the conviviality, the ambivalences and ambiguities, and the paradoxes and contradictions that Nigerians are all too aware of when it comes to corruption in their society. Along the way, Agbiboa also builds a theory of the state. For him, it is imperative to understand the state as constituted through practice. He argues – and shows persuasively – that many of the social relations that create and reproduce the state in Nigeria are manifested in the interdependence of petty and grand corruption. Agbiboa does not contend that petty corruption is caused by grand corruption, or vice versa. Nor does he suggest that average Nigerians are to blame for the corrupt leaders they have. But he demonstrates that the grand corruption of political elites cannot be fully understood, including its apparent intractability, without seeing how it is protected and enabled through the intersecting practices of everyday corruption on the part of ordinary citizens. Further, he insists on the important point that corruption among politicians and government officials is not necessarily evidence of a ‘weak state’, as is commonly assumed in scholarly literature. Instead, Agbiboa recognizes that corruption can be a sign of a strong state, at least for those who control it. While I do not have space to outline or summarize each of the chapters, I want to point out a few highlights that I especially appreciated. Though the book's introduction is long and at times seems to meander across a wide range of themes, it constitutes essential reading for anyone interested in understanding corruption generally, and of course in Nigeria in particular. The ground that Agbiboa covers is impressive, not only unpacking the concept of corruption and developing a bottom-up theory of the state but also offering trenchant criticism of taken-for-granted ideas about the distinction between formality and informality. The author further parses the meanings and analytical utility of concepts like moral economy and social norms. Even where Agbiboa cannot offer any final resolutions, his thinking is creative and smart, and his writing is lucid. For anyone who has spent time in Africa and observed the plethora of sayings painted on all manner of vehicles, especially public transportation buses, chapter 4, ‘The art of urban survival’, will prove a fun and illuminating read. Agbiboa collected hundreds of examples and analyses them to reveal everything from biographical details of drivers and owners to astute popular understandings of Nigeria's political economy. But for me, the most intriguing feature of Agbiboa's fieldwork was the two months he worked as a conductor on a danfo, one of the ubiquitous minibuses transporting passengers through Lagos's notorious ‘go slows’. The resulting observations, experiences, and insights are scattered across the book. As a reader, I wished for a whole chapter describing the life of a danfo conductor in intimate detail. But it is the quality of the book as is that makes me wish for even more. Readers will be richly rewarded by this outstanding ethnography.