This thesis explores the discourses and practices of national Non-governmental
Organisations (NGOs) in Enugu, Eastern Nigeria, as they relate to corruption. It examines
how these discourses and practices reflect hybrid normative understandings of the state and
politics. My research draws on nine months of participant observation with three Nigerian
national NGOs (NGOs that are founded and run by Nigerians) based in Enugu, and on
interviews conducted with the NGO workers. I examine how these NGOs are involved in
grey practices; practices which can be seen to have certain attributes associated with corruption,
but are not understood by NGO workers as such. I argue that the relationship of these
organisations to corruption is highly ambiguous by showing that these practices are
undertaken not for the benefit of NGOs or their workers, but in order to better assist their
clients. My research findings imply that the „international? norms put forward by advocates
of good governance of a „proper functioning state? are central to the norms surrounding
these grey practices, albeit in a translated hybrid form. This translation is significant, for whilst
the concepts of local and international norms and standards are discursively important for
the production of the national NGOs legitimacy, their practices and discourses are radically
hybrid. In examining this hybridity I contribute to the development of a more complex
understanding of the translation of norms, arguing against those who conceptualise the role
of national NGOs solely as extensions of the apparatus of global governmentality. I utilise
Homi Bhabha?s concept of hybridity to argue that the hybrid discourses and practices of these
national NGOs are produced by radically hybrid norms of politics and modes of
governmentality. These practices are not a collage of pieces that can be traced back to either
„local? or imported conceptions, rather, they are „new?.