Nigeria has moved up five places in the latest 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index ranking released by Transparency International, Nigeria, and the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) on Tuesday in Abuja.
The index revealed that Nigeria scored 25 out of 100 points in the 2023 corruption perception index (CPI) compared to 24 points in the 2022 CPI, and the country also ranked 145 out of 180 countries compared to 150 in the 2022 CPI results.
The Nigerian Tribune reports that Nigeria’s score is below the sub-Saharan African average of 33 points. While most African countries showed stagnation, 90 per cent of countries in sub-Saharan Africa scored under 50.
Briefing the press in Abuja, the Executive Director, CISLAC, and head of Transparency International Nigeria, Auwal Ibrahim Musa Rafsanjani, said the CPI for Nigeria aggregates data from eight different sources that provide perceptions by country experts and business people on the level of corruption in the public sector.
The sources, according to him, are the Bertelsmann Foundation Transformation Index, Economist Intelligence Unit Country Ratings, Global Insights Country Risk Ratings, PRS International Country Risk Guide, and Varieties of Democracy Project. Others are the World Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA), the World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey (EOS), and the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index.
He said that while the index does not show specific incidences of corruption in Nigeria, it indicates the perception of corruption in the country. He added, however, that the index is impartial, objective, and globally acknowledged as the most widely used cross-country parameter for measuring corruption.
While stating that the CPI release is not an assessment of Nigeria’s anti-corruption agencies, which he said are making commendable efforts in the fight against corruption in the country, he said the data used for the CPI was not collected by CISLAC/TI-Nigeria but by independent and reputable organisations with rigorous research methodologies.
“This is a very important corruption perception index (CPI) launched and released by Transparency International (TI) and exclusively published and released in Nigeria by CISLAC, which is the national chapter of Transparency International. As we all know, TI tries to draw the attention of various governments across the world to the need to block leakages and to ensure that we have a transparent and accountable system of governance. This is because corruption undermines development; it deepens inequality; it ensures insecurity; it increases poverty; and it creates unnecessary hate among people.
“Therefore, it’s important that the government take the necessary steps to block leakages to ensure that people who are given trust in leadership do not abuse office and also do not turn their offices into commercial or business ventures in the name of public service for their personal interests. That is why every year, Transparency International makes an effort to show gaps in each country’s efforts to deal with corruption. Here in Nigeria, we have a number of issues that we believe are responsible for undermining even the efforts of the government to fight corruption. And therefore, Transparency International Nigeria, which is CISLAC, always wants to support the effort of the good in making sure that we block leakages. Transparency International Nigeria, or CISLAC, is not in any way competing with or undermining the efforts of the government; rather, we are actually supporting our government to succeed in blocking leakages.
“So, it’s important that government officials understand that civil societies are partners-in-progress, civil societies want to support our government to succeed, and civil societies provide all the necessary, technical, and well-researched evidence to show gaps in the effort to block leakages in the fight against corruption. It is important to make this statement because we are not politicians and we are not opposition people. We are interested in seeing our country progress because corruption has done incredible damage to our reputation and to our country. The level of insecurity we see is also associated with corruption. You will see that just last week we worked with our colleagues at Transparency International, London, to ensure that we mobilised the British government to return money that was meant to buy arms and ammunition, but some wicked public officials in Nigeria syphoned that money and shared the money.
“And you see that in the Auditor General’s last report, he showed how some arms and ammunition that Nigeria purchased were supposed to be brought to the country, but nobody can account for them. So the nation continues to suffer incredible insecurity and attack, and this is simply because people who have been entrusted with public funds to deal with issues of insecurity are not bothering to do that because they believe they have the relevant protection; they believe that once they find themselves in power, they do not need to work on a system that will protect and secure the nation.”
While commending the areas in which Nigeria has shown some improvements, such as the launch of the Beneficial Ownership Register, also known as the Persons with Significant Control (PSC) register, the role of media and CSOs in demanding transparency and accountability, and arrests and recoveries by anti-corruption agencies, he said key areas such as electoral corruption, judicial corruption, corruption in the security sector, failure to prosecute high-profile cases, opaqueness of public institutions, and wasteful expenditures need to be improved upon if Nigeria wants to make any headway in its fight against corruption.
