How To Really Fight Corruption In SA, Nigeria, And Beyond
Why expansive state power breeds expansive corruption
Corruption isn’t some exotic creature that appears only in certain countries; wherever people are, it shows up. Anyone who has spent time in a big organisation – public or private – has seen little hints of it. Favors. Side deals. Someone quietly “losing” paperwork. Humans are humans. The interesting part isn’t whether corruption happens, but how far it can reach.
If a retailer cheats its customers, the worst that usually follows is a lawsuit or a social-media roast. Annoying? Sure. Civilization-destroying? Not quite. But once the rot gets into political structures – into ministries, agencies, departments – the whole game changes. Suddenly the losses aren’t a few people losing money. It’s entire national grids flickering, budgets ballooning for no reason, trains refusing to run, millions paying the price for decisions they didn’t make.
I’ve watched this pattern across countries that have nothing in common culturally, yet their corruption stories sound eerily alike.
When a government runs half the economy
Imagine a giant state-owned enterprise. Picture endless corridors, procurement meetings that stretch into eternity, and a well-connected friend who always seems to land the “winning” bid. That’s not an imaginary scene; it happens constantly where the state owns big utilities or transportation hubs.
Here’s the maddening part – these entities don’t only affect themselves. If the power utility collapses under the weight of favours and overpriced contracts, the entire economy feels it. Businesses slow down, households panic, and every headline becomes a reminder of how fragile the system is.
The pattern repeats itself so predictably that it becomes boring. Big pot of public money + no real competition = a playground for anyone who understands how to pull the right strings.
When the State controls natural resources, the stakes get even higher
The moment a government sits on oil revenues or mineral wealth, the pressure intensifies. Billions – or in some places, tens of billions – move through a few offices. If you’re someone chasing illicit gain, where would you go? To a private company that might not survive next year, or to a ministry that handles national revenue?
That’s why resource-rich nations often become case studies in the same kind of disaster: licensing sold to the highest bidder, exports manipulated, revenue “redirected.” A private company might collapse under this sort of thing. A government department, in contrast, can keep limping along while an entire country absorbs the blow.
It’s not mystical. When that much power funnels through a tiny choke point, the temptation becomes overwhelming.
Political advantage: The silent currency
Money isn’t the only thing people chase. Sometimes the goal is influence, insulation from accountability, or the ability to weaponise state machinery. No private actor – no matter how shady – can order an official investigation into a rival. But someone with political power can. And sometimes does.
That’s the real gut-punch: when institutions that are supposed to protect everyone are bent into tools for a few, trust evaporates. The damage doesn’t stop when the scandal ends; it lingers, staining public life for years.
Lawmakers policing themselves? What could go wrong?
There’s also the bizarre tradition in many countries where the people who decide how public funds are spent also get to decide how much they themselves receive. Allowances. Perks. Reimbursements. You can already guess the rest.
Even when the numbers involved are small, the principle feels wrong to the public. It’s the old “fox guarding the henhouse” problem – and it always plays out the same way.
Do you see the shape of the beast yet?
Across all these examples – different languages, different histories, different leaders – the outline of the problem hardly changes. Where power is concentrated, corruption thrives.
Private-sector misconduct certainly exists, and some of it can be ugly, but markets often punish it. Customers walk away. Share prices fall. Companies fold. The consequences are immediate.
By contrast, government doesn’t go out of business. It can run deficits. It can compel taxes. Its mistakes spread across millions. A bad decision in a ministry today can haunt a country for a decade.
If you were to map the sequence, it looks something like this:
– Big budget pools.
– Central control.
– Discretion without competition.
– Weak feedback.
– Chaos waiting to happen.
No special psychology required. No “bad cultures.” Just systems that make wrongdoing easy and corrections painfully slow.
The hard truth for SA and Nigeria
South Africa and Nigeria – two countries full of talent, resilience, and ambition – keep hitting the same wall not because their citizens are uniquely flawed, but because their governments are simply too large and too involved in too many parts of economic life. When a state becomes the main employer, the biggest spender, the primary investor, and the gatekeeper for licenses and permits, it unintentionally creates a perfect storm.
Every extra department, every committee, every state-owned firm becomes another doorway someone can quietly slip through.
The solution is not more anti-corruption task forces, or longer codes of conduct, or fresh slogans about “transparency.” Those things sound nice, but they don’t change the underlying geometry of power.
If you truly want corruption to wither, you must shrink the landscape where it can grow. That means fewer state-owned companies. Fewer areas where you need political approval just to do business. Fewer massive budgets controlled by small groups. Fewer opportunities for officials to hand out privileges.
When the government occupies less space, there’s simply less loot to fight over.
SA and Nigeria have paid dearly for systems overloaded with political authority. The path to cleaner public life isn’t a mystery. It isn’t complicated. It’s uncomfortable, because it demands giving up power. But it works.
A smaller, leaner state leaves corruption with nowhere big enough to hide.
Econ Bro (@EconBreau and @EconBreau2 on Twitter/X) is a Nigerian Austrolibertarian economist and an apprentice at the Mises Institute. Under the organisation name “The Freedom Institute” he teaches individual liberty, personal responsibility, private property rights, free markets, and sound money to mostly young people across Nigeria. Econ Bro is an Associate of the Free Market Foundation.
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