An Evaluation of Corruption Practices in Ministries, Departments, Agencies in Public Sector in Developing Nations

Abstract

Corruption practice in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in public sector has become a way of life and it is synonym with government official, a culture, phenomena, religion or pathological. Corruption is the misuse of entrusted power for private benefit and includes; bribes, cronyism and nepotism, political donations, kickbacks and artificial pricing and fraud of all kinds, theft or misuse of asset, improper use of influence in a transaction for own benefit and falsification of financial statement. While questions on fraud and corruption practices have received considerable attention in the wider international community especially on inter-country comparison; there is a considerable dearth of literatures on inter-country comparison between developing countries. This study evaluated the effect of corruption practices in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in public sector in developing economies; specifically it examined the impact of corruption practices on the stewardship role of a career civil servant in public sector. Stewardship theory is used as a motivation to explain the level of corruption practices in public sector. The research approach entails literature review that was carried out to identify the knowledge gap in previous studies and use survey research technique. Literature study is complemented with the use of nonparametric and descriptive statistics techniques and is applied on primary data obtained in a population of four (4) public MDAs in Cameroon and Nigeria. Finding in the study revealed that corruption practice is an obstacle to stewardship role of civil servant in MDAs. Also, the study revealed that in both countries bribe or kickback are offered before obtaining services from civil servant.