Everyday Corruption and the State: Citizens and Public Officials in Africa (review)

As Smith notes in his preface, his research is centred on the Igbo east of Nigeria, and thus many aspects of his description can be applied to the whole country only with great caution. At times there is some slippage in the narrative between the ‘east’ and ‘Nigeria’, but the more serious problem is that corruption takes on meaning largely in relation to national-level processes of governance and patron–clientage. Smith notes that ‘corruption’ is also a category of local knowledge, designating everything from flamboyant national corruption down to everyday practices of local deception. This is true elsewhere in the federation. Examining the relationship of the national to the local would have been useful: Smith’s work is potentially of great comparative interest, and such an account would have underlined his book’s broader applicability. It might also have allowed one to appreciate how the contemporary culture of (eastern Nigerian) corruption came into being. Such an account would make it easier to read Smith alongside books like Richard Joseph’s Democracy and Prebendal Politics and the classic essays on Nigerian corruption by M. G. Smith and Peter Ekeh. More generally, important recent work on related topics, by scholars like Bayart, Ellis, Hibou, Chabal, Daloz and Mbembe is cited but not really discussed. This is in part because these authors all focus centrally on the state. Nonetheless, Smith’s contribution could be even greater if it were systematically related to this literature. Although I fear that Smith’s important contribution will not be as easily appreciated given his lack of extended discussion of the secondary literature, this remains an important work. It should be read by anyone with an interest in crime or corruption.