Corruption as a Word Class in the Nigerian State: A Synchronic Linguistic Perspective

Abstract

Corruption as a linguistic item belongs to the noun word class. In the Nigerian state, corruption is a daily occurrence in its different forms ranging from police collecting bribe from motorists to heads of government ‘looting' the nation's treasury. This study lays emphasis on financial corruption and so came up with the following findings: (i) the lexical items on corruption do not occur alone but in syntactic structures, particularly, phrases and clauses; (ii) financial corruption has no regard for figures as the money corruptly acquired can be as low as N100 (one hundred naira) and as high as ϵ929,589 (nine hundred and twenty nine thousand, five hundred and eighty nine pounds); (iii) corruption always has locations and time (dates). This is because corrupt practitioners struggle to get the best opportunities in places and dates to act. As Nigeria is getting older (1914-2014), it is expected that corruption should be minimal, if not completely eradicated, however, it sadly makes top among issues featured in our national dailies; an evidence for high cases of its occurrence in the Nigerian state.