Corruption has become the real stuff of public discourse and everyday practice in many African societies, implicating both citizens and subjects, both public and private life. During the course of a recent fieldwork in my native Nigeria, I was repeatedly struck by the extent to which corruption was the subject of so many rumours, stories and discursive production. The ubiquitous nature of corruption, arguably, makes it a ‘culture’ of some sort, and as such it is easily taken