Tag Archives: West Africa

Security Sector Reform in West Africa Must Include Anticorruption Measures

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West Africa is beset by internal and external security crises. In addition to burgeoning levels of violence linked to Islamist extremism throughout the Sahel, there has been a string of military coups d’êtat in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Guinea, as well as failed coup attempts in Niger and Guinea-Bissau. The persistence of violence, instability, and military coups throughout the region has intensified calls for comprehensive security sector reform (SSR) throughout the region. (The term SSR, in this context, includes reforms to the policies, structures, and capacities of institutions and groups engaged in the security sector—defined broadly to include defense forces, law enforcement, corrections, intelligence services, border management, and customs agents, as well as certain non-state actors such as private security services—in order to make them more effective, efficient, and responsive to democratic control.) Indeed, many believe that a multilateral, region-wide initiative on SSR is essential during this tense political moment in West Africa.

It was therefore encouraging when, last November, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) met to announce its commitment to a new Policy Framework for Security Sector Reform and Governance (SSRG). Unfortunately, this Framework is deficient in a number of serious ways. One of the most significant problems is that the Framework focuses too narrowly on things like “resource mobilization and financing” and “professionalization and modernization” of the security sector, while paying insufficient attention to the central role of corruption in the security sector as a key impediment to genuine SSR. As a result, the Framework fails to clearly establish anticorruption as a core principle and a key element of SSR programming, and lacks sufficient guidance to member states on how to mitigate corruption risks in the security sector.

Read more: Security Sector Reform in West Africa Must Include Anticorruption Measures

That corruption in the security sector undermines national security and political stability is well established, both in general and in West Africa specifically. For one thing, corruption in the security sector hollows out defense and security forces, rendering them less effective, less professional, and less well-equipped. Corruption therefore can enable armed groups to gain power and influence—particularly in neglected and under-policed rural areas. Furthermore, when citizens experience or perceive corruption in a country’s security services, this can generate greater resentment and distrust of the central government, which in turn can undermine the state’s legitimacy and the ability of the security services to work effectively with the civilian population.

Yet as Transparency International (TI) correctly observed, SSR initiatives in West Africa—including the ECOWAS Framework—have neglected anticorruption in favor of more technical “train-and-equip” approaches to reform. Especially after the wave of military coups and coup attempts among ECOWAS member states since 2020, it is clear that this approach is insufficient. ECOWAS can and should revise the Framework to include provisions that require member states to implement strong anticorruption measures into their national SSRG programs. Three such revisions are particularly important: Continue reading →

Nigeria’s Whistleblowing Policy: A Good Start, But Not Enough

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On December 21, 2016, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Finance approved a whistleblowing program as part of the Nigerian government’s continued efforts to fight corruption. Key features of the program include the launch of an online portal for submission of tips and the establishment of a reward for “information that directly leads to the voluntary return of stolen or concealed public funds or assets” (the reward is 2.5 to 5% of the amount recovered, with the percentage decreasing as the amounts recovered increases). As over $176 million in stolen funds was recovered within the first two months of the program, the whistleblowing policy appears to be an overnight success story. Nevertheless, although stolen funds are indeed being recovered, the existing policy does not do enough to offset the risks that whistleblowers face when they come forward with information, and this deficiency may limit the long-term effectiveness of the program. In particular, there are three aspects of the program that the government ought to reform in order to encourage individuals to assume the risks associated with becoming a whistleblower, and consequently to ensure the policy’s continued success. Continue reading →

Is Corruption Partly Responsible for the Ebola Crisis?

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There’s been an interesting mini-debate over at the FCPA Blog about whether, or to what extent, corruption is partly responsible for the severity of the Ebola crisis in West Africa. Richard Cassin, the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog, argued that it is. He made this argument initially in a post from this past August entitled “Ebola tragedy is also a story of graft.” He offered as evidence the following observations: (1) the WHO and other observers estimate that a very high percentage–perhaps up to 25%–of global spending on public health is lost to corruption; (2) the very high Ebola fatality rates in West Africa have been attributed in part to the lack of adequate intensive care facilities to administer the treatments; and (3) the countries hardest hit by the Ebola outbreak–Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria–are reputed to be highly corrupt, as indicated by their very poor scores on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.

Many critics who commented on Cassin’s initial post complained that the evidence offered did not in fact support the strong claim in the title that corruption has contributed significantly to the Ebola outbreak. In particular, the critics pointed out that: (1) the fact that a great deal of public health spending generally is lost to corruption does not actually tell us whether corruption was a major factor in the particular case of the Ebola outbreak, and (2) the low ranking of the affected countries on the CPI likewise–even if we concede that the CPI is a decent measure of actual corruption–does not indicate that corruption caused (in any significant way) the Ebola outbreak to be as lethal as it has been; at most it shows a correlation that might be explained by any number of other factors.

Cassin responded with a second post last month in which he rebutted the critics. He acknowledged that while one can never establish with “scientific certainty” that corruption has a causal effect on the severity of the Ebola outbreak, there is powerful circumstantial evidence that corruption is a “gateway” to this and other public health crises (as well as other problems like terrorism and crime), because it siphons off public resources. Cassin cites to a couple of research papers that purport to show that corruption in general has adverse impacts on public health, in particular because it adversely affects access to clean water and sanitation.

While I’m generally sympathetic to Cassin’s larger point, I think that the criticisms are fair ones. Here’s my take. Continue reading →