Photo file EFCC Chairman, Mrs. Farida Waziri

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A pessimist will probably see mostly reason for despair and an optimist mostly reason for hope. My bet is with the optimist. But first the reasons for despair.

After hundreds of years of potent and unsparing anti-corruption campaigns in the United States, it is remarkable that corruption remains widespread.

Nigeria's anti-corruption agencies are dilettantes relative to their American counterparts. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's machinery of surveillance is ubiquitous, the prosecutors are tenacious, and juries would sooner send murderers free than spare corrupt politicians. Yet corruption is rife.

Nigerians who wonder why our politicians continue to embezzle government funds despite their colleagues' woes in the hands of the EFCC should consider just three current cases in the United States.

The arrests of a governor and a mayor and the conviction of a senator all had one thing in common: the audacity of corruption.

The most befuddling is the case of Governor Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois. He had the privilege of appointing someone to replace Barak Obama in the U.S. Senate. Rather than make a conscientious appointment, he brazenly put up the position for bidding.

In conversations recorded by the FBI, Blagojevich made it clear that he would offer the position to the prospective candidate who gave him the most money or other considerations.

Such practice of "pay to play" is quite common in the United States. Usually, the quid pro quo is executed with subtlety and finesse. Yet, the crime most likely accounts for the highest proportion of American politicians' fall from grace.

What makes the Illinois governor's case so brazen and foolhardy is that the fellow was already under investigation for similar offences. Even if he were a nitwit, he should have known that he was being wiretapped.

Yet there he was speaking impetuously over the phone and berating Obama's aides for offering nothing but gratitude if he appointed their preferred candidate to replace him.

Actually, the governor's brazenness should not be that surprising. His state, which was home to the revered Abraham Lincoln and now the adulated Obama, also produced Mayor Richard J. Daley.

During Daley's long tenure as the mayor of Chicago - Illinois' only metropolis - his political machine epitomised the brazenness of power and corruption. From 1955 to 1976, he bestrode Chicago's politics like a czar. Though he was never formally indicted, several of his subordinates were imprisoned for various charges of corruption.

Daley even left a dubious legacy of electoral engineering, as he is credited with the directive, "Vote early and vote often."

By the time, his son, Richard M. Daley, became the mayor of Chicago in 1989, things had changed considerably in Chicago's and Illinois' politics. But even by 2008, it is evident that the politics of the elder Daley's machine still inspires some officials.

Remarkably, Blagojevich became the governor of Illinois because his predecessor, George Ryan, was caught in a web of corruption and subsequently convicted.

And such corruption is not unique to Illinois. The mayor of Alabama's largest city, Birmingham, was recently arrested because of a long list of "pay-to-play" charges. Larry Langford's indictment pertains largely to his activities as the president of the Jefferson County Commission.

In his short term as Birmingham's mayor, Langford has been a political dynamo. He has pushed one initiative after another, often abrasively, but always with the city's progress in mind.

So, for residents of the infamously storied city, Langford's likely incarceration will be a sad reminder of how the intoxication of power leads even gifted leaders to their downfall.

The residents of Hawaii can relate to that as well. Ted Stevens, their senator for about 40 years, was just recently convicted of accepting thousands of dollars of favours from businesses he helped to obtain government contracts. Despite his conviction, Stevens only narrowly lost his bid for re-election.

This sampling of American cases raises the question, why should one be hopeful about Nigeria's battle against corruption?

Well, there are some pertinent differences. First, as already noted, corruption by U.S. government officials typically involves receiving favours, not stealing government funds. If Nigeria ever gets to that point in its corruption problems, there should be national commemoration.

Then there are matters of scope and proportion. Widespread as corruption is in the United States, it is not nearly as pervasive as in Nigeria. Americans don't have to bribe someone just to get government forms.

Moreover, Nigeria's corruption takes a much larger bite out of the national cake. For instance, according to a United Nations official quoted in the press, Gen. Sani Abacha alone embezzled two to three per cent of Nigeria's Gross Domestic Product during each of his four and half years in power. That's a chunk of money!

If that percentage is weighted and multiplied by the thousands (that is, of other officials who also had their hands in the national coffers), the magnitude of the theft becomes mind-boggling.

So while continuing corruption in the United States is reason to despair, it also provides the basis for hope. Sure, the most potent crusade cannot wipe out corruption in any country. There are the incorrigible, audacious and foolhardy everywhere.

What an earnest campaign against corruption can do is make it an exception rather than the rule. It can reduce its bite. In Nigeria, the EFCC and related agencies cannot wipe out corruption, but they can pry open its chokehold on national development.

-Minabere Ibelema is an associate professor of mass communication at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the author of The African Press, Civic Cynicism, and Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan 2008).