Nigeria Move Up On TI’s Corruption Perception Index

Transparency International (TI) has announced that Nigeria has moved up four places on its Corruption Perception Index (CPI) for 2018.

In the latest report unveiled on Tuesday, Nigeria was ranked 144 out of the 180 countries that were surveyed last year.

It is understood that this translates to an upward movement compared to the 148 the nation was ranked in 2017.

Despite the improvement, Nigeria’s score remained the same for the two years at 27/100. It scored 28/100 and was ranked 136th in 2016.

Nigeria shares its new position with four other countries – Kenya, Mauritania, Guatemala, and Comoros.

These countries also scored 27/100 each in 2018.

In a statement released along with the 2018 report on Tuesday morning, Patricia Moreira, managing director of Transparency International, emphasised the need “to do more to strengthen checks and balances and protect citizens’ rights” with many democratic institutions “under threat across the globe”.

Moreira added that the continued failure of most countries to significantly control corruption contributed to a crisis of democracy around the world.

“With many democratic institutions under threat across the globe – often by leaders with authoritarian or populist tendencies – we need to do more to strengthen checks and balances and protect citizens’ rights,” she said.

Moreira added, “Corruption chips away at democracy to produce a vicious cycle, where corruption undermines democratic institutions and, in turn, weak institutions are less able to control corruption.”

The 2018 CPI draws on 13 surveys and expert assessments to measure public sector corruption in 180 countries and territories, giving each a score from zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).

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, according to TI.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who came to power on the strength of his anti-corruption credential in 2015, is facing another election next month.

The administration has arrested many politicians and government officials and seized their assets, but it has also been accused of protecting members of the ruling party.

Even though Nigeria’s score of 27 out of 100 remains the same as it was the previous year, many will celebrate the movement in ranking from No. 148 to No. 144 as some measure of success.

That means the country is now perceived to be the 32nd most corrupt country in the world in 2018 — instead of 36th in 2017.





Disclaimer: Stories culled and pictures posted on this blog will be given due credit and is not the fault of drifternews.blogspot.com if website culled from misrepresents source of story.