I first came upon Daniel Jordan Smith's remarkable book as I was close to finishing my own book on corruption (Corruption, Inequality, and the Rule of Law, 2008). I had decided that I needed to include an analysis of Africa and especially Nigeria. At the publisher's booth at one or another political science convention, I was able to secure page proofs of his book and realized that I had come upon a kindred spirit. Smith's argument on Nigeria was remarkably similar to my general framework for analyzing corruption, despite our coming from different disciplines and using very different methodologies.

Smith's basic argument is that corruption is part of Nigerian culture: “The very expression ‘the Nigerian factor’ suggests that Nigerians have concluded that corruption is so endemic that it defines the nation” (p. 8). Yet he is careful to argue that this does not mean that Nigerians are an amoral people. To the contrary, corruption stems from the pervasive inequality in Nigeria, marked by the pillaging of the country by successive leaders and other members of the elite. For ordinary people, corruption is a necessary evil—something they know is wrong, that they resent, but that is beyond the control of any individual or group. Leader after leader, under both military and democratic rule, have looted the treasury of a country that should be prosperous because of its oil wealth. The “Big Men” of a community, the patrons in this system of clientelism, are expected to be prosperous (p. 105), but they are also expected to spread their wealth around (p. 141). When they do not and when the press reports case after case of high-level corruption, poor people become envious. So they get by “by any means available” (p. 30).

Smith's book is an examination of those “means,” from Nigeria's famed e-mail scams to corruption in education, pharmaceuticals, love (fraudulent marriages of Western women to Nigerians abroad), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), electoral politics, anticorruption commissions, and even religion. If it can be bought, sold, bartered, or even consummated, an exchange in Nigeria is likely to involve corruption. Even presumably “honest” NGOs and evangelical churches are lured into corrupt activities.

Corruption represents a world where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Ordinary people must pay for virtually every conceivable service, and the police are seen as among the worst perpetrators (pp. 149–50). Many Nigerians hoped that the restoration of democracy would curb corruption, but electoral politics has been flush with money—much of it under the table—and democratically elected leaders have proven to be just as adept at amassing large fortunes as military chiefs of state. Anticorruption commissions are widely seen as tools of corruption, rather than as safeguards (p. 227). The press often reports on corruption, but the media have not been a safeguard against misdeeds—because the press accounts rarely provide sufficient details for action and because the press itself has a credibility problem stemming from “the fluid lines between fact and fiction” (p. 228). Corruption is so pervasive that such institutional fixes just will not work, as I have also argued in my book.

Corruption is known throughout Nigeria as “419” (four-one-nine), the section of the Nigerian criminal code dealing with fraud. It is everywhere—and people have to be vigilant about it. They take action to ensure that their houses are not subject to 419—being sold by people who claim to have title to it—by painting “This house not for sale” on the side. They know that all institutions, and especially the police, are corrupt. The e-mail frauds are largely the work of young men, and the stories in these e-mails are more than fantasies about some imagined world. They reflect the larger story of Nigerian corruption; they purportedly come from the widows of former presidents (notably Olusegun Obasanjo and Sani Abacha) and the poor, often unemployed young men likely see corruption at the top as involving the huge sums promised.

Smith details these patterns of corruption as anthropologists do, through stories rather than data. His stories are fascinating, even compelling, reflecting more than two decades of living in Nigeria. He is particularly well suited to see corruption first-hand, since he has lived for many years in Nigeria. He is married to a Nigerian woman and thus has an extensive set of in-laws and other relatives by marriage in both big cities and small villages throughout the country. He has seen and experienced corruption firsthand, as when he registered a car and faced escalating demands for bribes on his repeated visits to the office; his assistant was able to negotiate downward the excessive demands for extra payments. Some years later, he was pressured to contribute to his brother-in-law's doomed campaign for Nigeria's lower house in a village where he had never lived. The money was used to pay off local chiefs to arrange political meetings, but ultimately the brother-in-law gathered fewer than a hundred votes. Smith himself worked for several years for a Western NGO and tried desperately to avoid entanglements with corruption. He witnessed an employee stealing $4,000 from the NGO and did his best to make sure that money was not expropriated. Yet he was not in control of his colleagues' contracts.

Smith's stories are beautifully told and they illustrate his points well. He has done a terrific job in amassing tales from many different domains of corruption. His “almost insider” status, as well as the many years he spent living and working in Nigeria—from Lagos to small villages—give him an insight that few “outsiders” (especially non-natives) have. Yet from the standpoint of political science, this very strength is also a limitation of the study. Many of his stories come from personal experiences, directly and through his family and friends, but are they representative of the larger picture in Nigeria? We know that his family is not typical—it is well above average in education and resources generally. Smith's telling of the stories makes for compelling reading, and anthropologists have recognized this quality with a major award for the book. His theory is also convincing. Nevertheless, stories from a wider range of sources would have made his narrative stronger.

My only other reservation is that Smith is too much of an anthropologist on a subject that he admits has escaped attention from his disciplinary colleagues (p. 10). There is a huge literature on corruption by political scientists and economists and Smith barely touches upon it. He considers definitions of corruption by two political scientists—Joseph Nye and Arnold Heidenheimer (p. 12). The only nonanthropologist cited on corruption is the sociologist Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, who has written extensively (and persuasively) on the roots of corruption in Africa and in Nigeria in particular. Smith would have found much to contest in this literature, as I did, especially the arguments regarding democracy, anticorruption commissions, and a free media. Smith rightly dismisses them as solutions for Nigeria.

More than that, Smith might focus on what makes Nigeria similar to other countries and what makes it distinctive. He writes (p. 230; italics in original): “The Nigerian factor is corruption.” He also recognizes that corruption is a problem elsewhere, noting the Enron and Halliburton scandals in the United States (p. xiii), and then compares Nigeria's problems with “the struggles that unfold … in postcolonial societies” on the last page (p. 231). The comparison with the United States does not help, since the United States ranked 17th of 180 nations in the 2009 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index and Nigeria was tied for 130th place. Petty corruption is virtually unknown in the United States; it is a way of life in Nigeria. One apt comparison not made is how “corrupt” Nigerian evangelical churches that preach the doctrine of prosperity as the key to salvation have counterparts in the United States, both in the past (as fictionalized by Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry, 1927) and more recently (the late “Reverend Ike”).

While Smith is certainly correct that many of the problems of corruption are endemic to countries that were colonies and are now struggling to develop, dishonesty is hardly limited to such societies. While Nigerians boast (with some shame) about corruption as a national way of life, Romanians also say La no cal la nimeni, or “No one has it the way we do.” What makes Nigeria distinctive, as I see it, is the violence and vigilantism that accompanies grand and especially petty corruption—as well as the huge amounts of money plundered by the leaders at the top.

These are small reservations. Smith has written a terrific book. Perhaps we should read more anthropology, and more anthropologists should study corruption.