Corrupt Practices and Government Capital Projects in Nigeria

This study examined the effect of corrupt practices on government-funded capital project delivery outcomes in Nigeria. The study focused on key corruption-related variables including substandard project execution, project cost padding, complete project abandonment, and incomplete project execution. Government-funded project delivery outcome served as the dependent variable. The study was anchored on Rent-Seeking Theory and supported by Institutional Theory and Public Choice Theory. An ex post facto research design was adopted using secondary data obtained from project records and audit reports covering government-funded projects in Nigeria. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics, Shapiro–Wilk normality test, Spearman rank correlation, and robust least squares regression to account for heteroskedasticity. The regression results revealed that project cost padding, complete abandonment, incomplete execution, and extra-budgetary contracts have significant negative effects on government-funded project delivery outcomes. This indicates that these corrupt practices reduce project efficiency, quality, and completion rates. However, substandard project execution, project underperformance, non-existing projects, substandard contracts, and contract duration were found to have no statistically significant effect on delivery outcomes. The model was statistically significant with an R² value of 0.854, indicating that 85.4% of variations in project delivery outcomes were explained by the included variables. The study concludes that corrupt practices significantly undermine the performance of government-funded capital projects in Nigeria, with cost-related distortions and abandonment being the most influential factors. The study recommends strengthening procurement oversight, enhancing transparency in budgeting and expenditure tracking, and enforcing milestone-based project financing to improve accountability and ensure effective project delivery