The Nigerian government on Thursday discredited the country’s latest position on the 2019 global corruption index. Nigeria dropped farther on the 2019 Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI).
In the 2018 report, Nigeria ranked 144 out of 180 countries surveyed by the organisation. The country has now dropped two steps below in the 2019 report released on Thursday. Nigeria also scored 27 out of 100 points in the 2018 CPI, maintaining the same score as in the 2017 CPI, the same as it did in 2018. The score is below the global average of 43. According to the 2019 CPI, two-thirds, which is 120 countries, scored below 50.
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”. Countries within Sub-Saharan Africa also have the lowest average with 32 over 100 points while countries in Western Europe and the European Union came out as the highest region with 66 over 100 points. Somalia ranked lowest with points while Denmark scored the highest with 87 points.
The report suggested that countries where elections and political party financing are open to unwarranted influence from vested interests are less able to combat corruption, analysis of the results revealed.
Meanwhile the Attorney-General of the federation and Justice Minister, Abubakar Malami said there are no proofs by Transparency International to rank Nigeria 146 out of the 180 countries on the 2019 corruption perception index.
“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.
