OSW

SIGNATURE WORK
CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 2022

‘Survivor Mentality’ and Corruption in Nigeria

Name

Christal Edem

Major

Political Economy, Political Science

Class

2022

About

Enobong Christal Edem is a senior studying Political Economy with a track in Political Science. She is originally from Nigeria and grew up in
Lesotho.

Signature Work Project Overview

My project primarily deals with why low-income countries have high levels of corruption. To study this, my research is based within the context of Nigeria, which is a low-income country in West Africa. I hypothesize that survivor mentality, which is the prioritization of one’s basic needs is a cause for the high levels of corruption in Nigeria. 50-70% of Nigerians live below the poverty line and constantly worry about their basic needs (CGD, 2018). This exists in tandem with the high levels of corruption that exist within the country. The framework I used to further substantiate my hypothesis is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow suggests that one cannot fulfill a higher level of need without first satisfying the level below it. This means that Nigerians do not have the time, resources and capability to worry about security and corruption without first fulfilling their basic needs. My data and results prove my hypothesis true. There is a strong presence of survivor mentality in Nigeria that also prevents Nigerians from having the capability to worry about corruption. Finally, I draw further interesting conclusions. Maslow intended for his Hierarchy of needs to be an overlapping curve. What this means is that Nigerians can worry about their basic needs while also worrying about the corrupt ways of their leaders. This is what you tend to see with the ordinary citizen. What then matters is the degree to which Nigerians care about corruption for any real change to be in effect. Further policies will be developed on this conclusion.

Signature Work Presentation Video

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