FG Kicks As TI Ranks Nigeria Most Corrupt Country In West Africa

The federal government has reacted to the report by Transparency International which revealed that Nigeria has slipped on the 2019 Corruption Perception Index, scoring 26 per cent.

Nigeria scored 27 out of 100 in TI’s 2018 report but dropped by a point in 2019, making Africa’s most populous country take the 146th position.

The country has also become the most corrupt nation in West Africa.

President Muhammadu Buhari came into power in 2015 on the strength of his anti-corruption stance.

Nigeria is currently ranked 146 out of the 180 countries on the 2019 corruption perception index, according to Transparency International.

The index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption in the opinion of experts and business people, using a scale of 0 to 100, where zero means “highly corrupt” and 100 means very clean.

The report released on Thursday said Nigeria scored 26 out of 100 points, dropping from the 27 points that it has maintained since 2017. In the 2018 index, Nigeria rose by four places from 148 to 144.

Nigeria’s Attorney-General and Justice Minister Abubakar Malami, however faulted TI’s report, noting that there are no proofs by the international organization to rank Nigeria 146 out of the 180 countries on the 2019 corruption perception index.

Malami, who stated this during an interview on Channels Television’s LunchTime Politics, said the “facts on the ground do not correlate with the information dished out” by Transparency International.

“In terms of the fight against corruption, we have been doing more, we have done more and we will continue to do more out of inherent conviction and desire on our part to fight against corruption devoid of any extraneous considerations relating to the rating by Amnesty International,” Malami said.

Transparency International said the position of all countries in the report is based cases of corruption “from fraud that occurs at the highest levels of government to petty bribery that blocks access to basic public services like healthcare and education, citizens are fed up with corrupt leaders and institutions.”

Transparency International’s chair Delia Ferreira Rubio asked the government to urgently address what she described as the corrupting role of big money in political party financing and the undue influence it exerts on political systems.

In the latest report, Nigeria scored the same as Iran, Honduras, Guatemala, Bangladesh, Mozambique and Angola.

Out of 180 countries surveyed, Nigeria scored better than only 28.

They include – Comoros, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Nicaragua, Cambodia, Chad, Iraq, Burundi, Congo, Turkmenistan, Haiti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Guinea-Bissau, North Korea, Venezuela, Equatorial Guinea, Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, South Sudan and Somalia.

The TI survey measures public sector corruption in 180 countries.

The countries with the highest score were New Zealand and Denmark which both scored 87 out of 100.

Others that were highly placed include- Finland (86), Switzerland (85), Singapore (85), Sweden (85), Norway (84), Netherlands (82), Luxembourg (80) and Germany (80).