In 2023, 5.1 bribes were paid on average by each bribe payer in Nigeria in the 12 months prior to the survey, says the UNODC report. This represents a modest and statistically insignificant decrease in the frequency of bribe-paying from 2019, when on average 5.4 bribes were paid by each bribe payer.
It is estimated that some 87 million bribes were paid in 2023 (compared with 117 million estimated in 2019) – the equivalent of an average of 0.8 bribes per each adult.
The frequency of bribery is, on average, higher in rural areas than in urban areas. In 2023, bribe-payers living in urban areas paid on average 4.5 bribes, while those living in rural areas paid on average 5.8 bribes.
Out of all Nigerian citizens who had at least one contact with a public official in the 12 months prior to the 2023 survey, 27 per cent paid a bribe to a public official. In the context of comparable past estimates, this means that the prevalence of bribe payments in Nigeria has undergone a minor but statistically significant decrease since 2019, when it stood at 29 per cent.
When also accounting for instances where bribes were requested but citizens refused, more than one in every three interactions (34 per cent) between citizens and public officials in 2023 involved bribery.
Seventy per cent of Nigerians who were asked to pay a bribe in 2023, refused to do so on at least one occasion. The bribery refusal rate was found to be highest in the North-West (at 76 per cent), although all zones recorded refusal rates above 60 per cent.
Bribery is becoming less accepted in Nigeria. The share of citizens who think that bribery requests are acceptable in order to speed up administrative procedures decreased from 29 per cent in 2019 to 23 per cent in 2023. Fewer citizens report suffering negative consequences after refusing bribe requests in 2023 (38 per cent) compared with 2019 (49 per cent). This suggests that Nigerians feel increasingly empowered to confront corrupt officials without fear of repercussions.
In 2023, a sizeable share of all bribe-refusers (21 per cent) indicated that their main reason for refusing a bribe request was because they had other options of getting what they wanted. The data also show that normative concerns (42 per cent) as well as cost of living pressures (23 per cent) play an important role in
explaining why Nigerians refuse to pay bribes.
