Leadership, Institutional Trust, and Anti-Corruption Governance in Nigeria

Authors: Ikwuoma Sunday Udochukwu & Nwohu Jerry Uchenna

Volume: 6 | Issue: 1 | Year: 2025

Abstract

Corruption remains one of Nigeria’s most pressing governance challenges, eroding state legitimacy, weakening institutional trust, and obstructing socio-economic development. Despite repeated reform efforts, anti-corruption campaigns have often produced short-lived gains followed by stagnation, largely due to selective enforcement and institutional fragility. The paper adopted documentary method; data were collected from secondary sources. This article applies Institutional Theory to examine the role of leadership in shaping anti-corruption governance in Nigeria. Institutional Theory highlights how formal rules, informal norms, and cultural-cognitive frameworks interact to sustain or undermine governance structures. The paper found that Nigeria’s historical and contemporary anti-corruption initiatives from the establishment of the EFCC and ICPC to recent transparency reforms has been challenged by leadership failure. Thus, it stressed that leadership is crucial in cultivating institutional trust and legitimacy. The recurrent leadership failures, politicization of enforcement, and weak institutionalization have perpetuated cycles of corruption. It recommends that sustainable anti-corruption reform requires both insulating institutions from partisan manipulation and embedding practices that encourage citizen cooperation and compliance. And concludes that; Nigeria’s pathway to sustainable reform lies in leadership, that prioritizes institutional resilience, embeds transparency mechanisms, and enhances public trust in state institutions.

Keywords: Corruption, Anti-corruption governance, Institutional Theory, leadership, institutional trust, legitimacy, transparency