The Times - UK (2020-07-27)

36 2GM Monday July 27 2020 | the times

Wo r l d

In an outstanding example of the law of
unintended consequences, anti-
corruption campaigns costing millions
of pounds are making people more like-
ly to offer bribes, studies in Nigeria have
shown.
Research carried out in Lagos, the
west African state’s most crowded city,
found that promotions encouraging
people to reject corrupt acts often
inspired them to go along with sleaze.
Informing the public that corruption
is a huge problem makes them believe it
is too big an issue to be resolved, Nic
Cheeseman, one of the researchers,
said. “That makes people more likely to
go with the flow than stand up to the
system — the exact opposite of what
anti-corruption messages are trying to
achieve.”
President Buhari, 77, has won two
elections largely on an anti-corruption
platform. Yet his limited progress is re-
flected in Transparency International’s
latest annual corruption index, which
puts Nigeria 146 out of 180 countries, its
lowest ever ranking. Chatham House, a
British think tank, estimates that
$582 billion has been stolen from
Nigeria since independence in 1960.
Each year international aid agencies
and civil society groups funnel millions
of pounds into short films, advertise-
ments and social media campaigns that
warn of the dangers of corruption. Pro-
fessor Cheeseman, of the University of
Birmingham, and Caryn Peiffer, of the
University of Bristol, say that the cam-
paigns often make things worse.
To test the impact of anti-corruption
messages, the democracy and develop-
ment specialists developed five short
narratives that were read to 2,400
people in Lagos. One message ex-

the US embassy in Harare said he had

“answered” Mr Mnangagwa’s call to end

corruption after the ousting of Robert

Mugabe. “Yet, the govt prosecutes him

instead of the culprits,” it tweeted.

Using anti-west language that

echoed the late dictator, the informa-

tion minister, Monica Mutsvangwa,

said Chin’ono, 49, and the opposition

figure Jacob Ngarivhume had tried to

“violently destabilise the country” and

“unconstitutionally seize power”.

Ms Mutsvangwa blamed “foreign

powers”, noting that the US embassy

had tweeted “within minutes” of the

arrest. “Other western embassies who

usually take the USA’s lead joined in

this irregular interference by tweeting

and releasing statements which were

calculated to obstruct the course of jus-

tice in a hosting country,” she said.

Transparency International Zim-

babwe estimates that corruption costs

the country more than $2 billion a year.

Appearing in court last week where

they were denied bail, the two men

were accused of promoting illegal pro-

tests against corruption planned for

this Friday. They deny the charges but

could face up to ten years in prison.

FROM OUR

CORRESPONDENT

The old man and the weedy lake... a

tale of desperation in upstate New York

with three children but no lime daiquiri

W

e are a party of four

at the water’s edge,

loading up a boat.

None of us knows

much about fishing

but we have read Hemingway. At

least, I have read Hemingway and

we have the general idea. You need

a captain who can read the current

and a man who will work the line

and douse you with buckets of

water when you are fighting the

fish. You also need someone to mix

you a lime daiquiri.

We are in upstate New York on

the southern shore of Lake Ontario

and the day is hot and blustery. The

boat is a trim, green and yellow

vessel that reminds me of a work by

Jeff Koons, one of his painted

aluminium sculptures of inflatable

pool toys that look so rubbery it is

almost an optical illusion. In our

case there is no illusion: it is a

rubber dingy. Sea Hawk III has

plastic slots into which we slide the

fishing rods.

Then the fishermen come aboard.

The last stands at the edge of the

stony beach, staring at the foot of

water he must step through. “No!”

he shouts. “It’s too weedy.”

He is five. I fear he has not read

Hemingway. I lift him into the boat,

squashing him between the two

other anglers, who are seven and

four. Two of the party are my

children, the four-year-old is my

niece, a bright-eyed girl who suffers

from a terrible fear of missing out.

I’ve got our refreshments and the

bait in a black pouch designed to

store breast milk. “I want to hold it,”

my niece says. I hand it to her.

The area is so awash with anglers

that the bait was sold to me at a

nearby petrol station. The proprietor

handed me what looked like a tub of

hummus. On the lid it said:

“Canadian Night Crawlers.”

“They’re worms,” she said. She

also sells nets and lines and tackle.

Her husband started the business

but he died 27 years ago. She wants

to sell up but the market has been

badly damaged by the coronavirus

pandemic. “Maybe you should wait a

year?” I said.

“I don’t think I’ve got a year,” she

replied. I took the worms back to my

father-in-law’s cabin by the lake and

stashed them in the fridge, where he

came across them while making a

sandwich. He noted that they were

Canadian, and looked at me sadly

with an expression that said:

“Nobody buys American any more.”

“You won’t catch anything,” he

said as we set out. He has talked to a

man on the shore who told him that

the only fish at this time of year

were carp seeking a mate. “Food is

the last thing on their minds,” he

added.

The fish are here for the sex. I am

here for the daiquiris. I am actually

rather worried that we will catch a

fish. What will we do then? I’ve

watched videos, it looks fiddly. Plus,

it seems to require that you touch a

live sloppy fish. The worms are bad

enough. Rowing out into the

current, I open the tub and they

The fish weren’t biting on Lake Ontario

though that came as quite a relief

Will Pavia

NEW YORK

begin to twitch. “I want to touch

one,” my niece says. I place one

beside her. When I press in the

hook it convulses and swells. I

hand the rod to the five-year-old

and lean for the other, forgetting

the open tub of worms in my lap

which falls on to the cramped

rubber deck, unleashing the night

crawlers in a mound of dark

Canadian soil.

There’s a lot of shouting and a

lot of unseemly wriggling. The

worms handle it pretty well. I get

them back into the tub.

Some time later that afternoon,

when all are set up and drifting in

the current, the five-year-old

screams. It reminds me of the cry

of a fisherman in a Hemingway

story.

“The reel handle,” he says at

last. “It’s come off.” It’s in the lake.

Maybe it floats? “It doesn’t,” he

says. He watched it sink.

“Can I hold a rod?” my niece

asks. But the lines are tangled and

catch on the rope of a buoy. I have

to get into the water to pull them

out. It’s very weedy. It’s also clear

that no one will make me a lime

daiquiri.

There’s a can of fizzy water, we

drink that instead. “Can I have the

first drink?” my niece says, her

eyes full of hope once more.

Journalist seized over critical reports

Zimbabwe

Jane Flanagan

One of Zimbabwe’s best-known jour-

nalists is being held over claims that he

plotted with America and other coun-

tries to overthrow the government.

Hopewell Chin’ono’s investigations

have embarrassed President Mnangag-

wa’s regime and triggered the arrest of

the health minister on corruption char-

ges relating to PPE contracts. The

reporter’s plight has drawn condemna-

tion from the UN, Britain and the US.

Shortly after his arrest last Monday

Bribery fuelled

by drive to stamp

out corruption

plained that corruption was wide-

spread and damaging. Others empha-

sised its local impact and that it wasted

citizens’ taxes.

To test the effect of more positive

messages, one narrative talked about

recent successes that political leaders

had had in curbing corruption. Another

detailed the role that religious leaders

played in promoting clean government.

Those subjects were randomly selec-

ted for 1,200 participants to play a game

with a chance to win money, allowing

researchers to see how anti-corruption

messages shaped behaviour. Players

could take away more cash if they were

willing to pay a small bribe to the

“banker” who determined the payout.

Positive or negative, the effect of the

messages was the same. “None of the

narratives we used had a positive effect

overall,” Professor Cheeseman said.

“Many of them actually made Lagosi-

ans more likely to pay a bribe.”

Studies in Costa Rica, Indonesia and

Papua New Guinea have come up with

similar conclusions.

Decades of corrupt governance and

economic mismanagement have left

Nigeria’s economy failing to keep pace

with its growing population. It is on

track to overtake America as the

world’s third most populous country by

2050, with 400 million people, so the

need to tackle corruption is urgent.

Professor Cheeseman said that La-

gos State had made some progress to-

wards reducing government waste and

ensuring that everybody pays tax. He

said: “If messages can persuade citizens

that people like them are standing up to

corruption, and leaders are taking it

seriously, perhaps they can be nudged

into believing it is a problem that can be

overcome — especially if these messa-

ges go hand-in-hand with high profile

prosecutions and falling graft.”

Nigeria
Jane Flanagan

High jinks A diver plunges from the Old Bridge in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, into the Neretva river below. The

annual diving competition from the 16th-century Ottoman bridge, a Unesco World Heritage site, was the 454th such event

DADO RUVIC/REUTERS