White Collar Crime In Nigeria

The law is a cobweb; it’s made for flies and the smaller kinds of insects, so to speak, but lets the big bumblebees break through by using technicalities. Corporate wrongs or white collar crimes until recently was understood as the crime of persons of high respectability committed during the course of carrying out their legitimate duties. The above statements resonate the general perception and the enforcement of the law in respect of corporate wrongs by the majority of the society especially the middle and lower class. However, the events of the early 2000s heralded a change in perception and stirred public awareness to the harm caused by white collar crimes. The financial scandals in the United States between the year 2000 – 2002; the Irish banking crisis of 2008 that led to the collapse of

The reason for this is simple; the country has a long history and battle with corruption; so, the general perception of crime is broad enough to accommodate every form of deviant behaviours without any dichotomy. White-collar crime and corruption are systemic, it is naturally expected for an individual to be corrupt. Consequently, unlike Ireland and the United States where there was an evolution of public perspective on white collar crimes the Nigerian perspective offers an insight into how it has developed a legal framework to effectively punish white collar crimes through statutes and regulatory agencies.

Consequently, the general perception of crime has evolved over the years to include white-collar crimes. This is largely due to the advancement in technology and an increased interrelation between companies and/or their agents with the society coupled with a realisation that acts and inactions of companies and their agents can have adverse effects on the polity if not checked has piqued the desire of the society to react to punish and deter deviant