Nigeria ranks lower on transparancy international corruption index

Nigerian anti corruption war has been dealt a deadly blow by the recently released transparency international corruption perception index. For the fourth consecutive time, the country has slipped in the rating from last year result The country scored 27/100 and was ranked 136th in 2016, but the latest CPI scores Nigeria 28/100 and ranked it   No. 148 out of 180 countries surveyed. This represents 12 places below it’s level the previous year.

Anti corruption is the major leg with which the current administration stands, but events tend to showcase the government as being hypocritical in the fight against corruption. The regime has made arrests of corrupt individuals but have not been able to get even one conviction, relying on media trial for public perception.

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The index, ranks about 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption. They assess this using the opinion of experts, investors and business owners, and it uses a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 being highly corrupt and 100 being very clean, according to TI.

Nigeria shares the same rank with Guinea and the Comoro Islands.

“On the African continent, Nigeria ranks 32nd position in Africa out of 52 assessed countries in 2017. While Botswana leads the continent with the record of competent and largely corruption-free public administration, Nigeria hopelessly falls behind with 27 points. In West Africa, Nigeria is the second worst country out of 17 countries leaving only Guinea Bissau behind,” the organization said in a statement.

“This fresh setback in the fight against corruption confirms that grand-corruption, political corruption, nepotism, favoritism and bribery persist in Nigeria at all levels. It is CISLAC’s view that the negative perception is mainly a consequence of the inability to combat grand corruption and astronomical plundering of public coffers costing the Nigerian tax payers around 25% of annual GDP. Since the current administration has come to power on the anti-corruption ticket, no significant politically exposed person has been duly sentenced on anti-corruption charges,” it added.