Sallust’s Political Thought and Anti-Corruption Rhetoric in Contemporary Nigerian Political Discourse

Sallust, the Roman historian and former senator, wrote his major works, the Bellum Catilinae (Conspiracy of Catiline) and Bellum Iugurthinum (War against Jugurtha), as devastating analyses of political corruption, moral decline, and the collapse of civic virtue in late Republican Rome. This study examines the resonance of Sallustian political thought and anti-corruption rhetoric with contemporary political discourse in Nigeria, particularly in relation to anti-corruption institutional efforts and public narratives of political decline. A comparative hermeneutical methodology was adopted, drawing on close reading of Sallust's texts alongside analysis of selected Nigerian presidential and anti-corruption speeches, National Assembly debates, and EFCC institutional communications from 2019 to 2023. The analysis identifies rhetorical and analytical parallels in the construction of corruption as a form of moral decline threatening national survival, the identification of an earlier golden age of civic virtue, and the use of exemplary historical figures to shame contemporary political actors. Findings reveal that Sallust's diagnosis of corruption as rooted in the moral failure of elites who abandon virtuous restraint in pursuit of personal gain maps closely onto dominant Nigerian anti-corruption narratives. The study concludes that classical anti-corruption rhetoric offers a durable and analytically rich framework for understanding contemporary political discourse on corruption and recommends Sallust as a curriculum resource in Nigerian political science and public administration programmes.

Keywords: Sallust, anti-corruption rhetoric, political discourse, Nigeria, Roman historiography