Merchants of Corruption: How Entrepreneurs Manufacture and Supply Bribes

SummaryWe wondered how corruption, endemic in Nigeria, is experienced by a specific and understudied set of actors—entrepreneurs. Semi-structured interviews with founders/CEOs of firms in three industries associated with high levels of corruption revealed entrepreneurs—rather than victims of bribe demanding government agents—are themselves active perpetrators of bribery, adopting a set of “bribery best practices” governed by a well-embedded set of social norms, rules, routines, and power relations to deliberately subvert formal state budgetary systems. While reforming institutions is a key focus of anti-corruption policies in many Sub-Saharan African countries, our results suggest a bottom-up approach to remediation based on understanding the practice from the perspective of those who actively engage in it.