Consequently, Nigeria has dropped three places on the 2019 corruption perception index published by Transparency International, the worst ranking received by Africa’s largest country in recent time.
According to the report which was released on Thursday, Nigeria is now ranked 149th out of the 180 countries considered. The country was ranked 146th in TI’s 2019 report.
The country scored 25 out of 100 points, a drop from the 26 points that it had in 2019.
The index, which ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption in the opinion of experts and business people, uses a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
With the latest ranking, Nigeria is now the second most corrupt country in West Africa with Guinea-Bissau the only country more corrupt than Nigeria in the sub-region.
In Africa, only 12 countries are perceived to be more corrupt than Nigeria. They are Zimbabwe, Chad, Eritrea, Burundi, Congo, Guinea Bissau, Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Equatorial Guinea, Sudan, Somalia and South Sudan. Both Somalia and South Sudan were ranked as the most corrupt nations on earth.
The least corrupt countries in the world are Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, Singapore, Sweden Switzerland, Norway, The Netherlands, Germany and Luxembourg.
The United Kingdom, Canada and Hong Kong were all ranked at 11 while the United States received one of its lowest ever rankings at 25.
President Muhammadu Buhari was elected into office in 2015 on the strength of his anti-corruption campaign.
On Wednesday, Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate said the Buhari’s administration lacks the steam to fight corruption.
According to the playwright, so many people ought to be in prison if the government is serious about the fight against corruption.
He said, “There are so many people who should be in prison if this government had not run out of steam, and so the system is being manipulated.
“There are cases where the prosecution had reached the level where evidence had been given on governors who had been stealing and depositing in bits and pieces so as not to flout a certain regulation.
“I mean cases have been taken to that level and suddenly, silence. The EFCC, which I back solidly ever since the days of Nuhu Ribadu, in all kinds of ways, we no longer know the distinguishing from rights and left.”
