Nigeria’s decline on the corruption index

This week, Transparency International’s 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranked Nigeria 144 out of 177 countries and territories surveyed. The CPI is an index that measures perception of how corrupt public sectors are in countries surveyed.  It is a composite index – a combination of polls that reflects the views of informed observers including experts living and working in the countries and territories evaluated.

 Since 1995, when the first CPI was released by Transparency International, it has been an authoritative and influential tool that raises considerable awareness of the threat of corruption across the globe. It encourages governments to fight corruption by providing a basis of measurement that can be relied upon.

 Denmark and New Zealand were declared the most corruption-free countries as they were top most out of 177 countries with a score of 91 out of 100; the most corrupt country/territory is Somalia, with a ranking of 175 and an overall score of 8 out of 100.

 Nigeria’s ranking of 144 out of 177 in the CPI of 2013 is clearly a poor rank. In 2012 she ranked 139 out of 177.  Instead of showing some improvement in her CPI, Nigeria plummeted by 5 points. It is clearly not surprising. Management of public funds and resources in this country has been bedeviled by massive fraud and embezzlement which largely goes on with outright impunity. Nigeria’s rank on the corruption perception index reaffirms government indifference to corruption, particularly in the public sector.

We note that the CPI is not an absolute index of corruption in countries/territories surveyed – it is difficult to have absolute measures because of the hidden nature of corrupt transactions. Still, the focus of CPI on perception of public sector corruption, drawing from assessments of public sector corruption by those in a better position to do so in the surveyed countries, makes the index a reliable basis for measuring corruption.

With an overall CPI score of 25 out of 100, Nigeria is one of the many countries surveyed that are perceived to have a serious corruption problem. In fact,  the 2013 CPI reveals that 70 per cent of the 177 countries surveyed scored less than 50 out of 100.This is an indication that corruption has increasingly become a serious threat to governance and the orderly growth of societies globally.

The 2013 CPI further showed that Sub-Saharan Africa is the most corrupt region as 90 per cent of the countries/territories in the region scored below 50. Somalia, an African country, had the worst global record.

It is apparent that the growth of corruption in Nigeria and in many countries of the world is remarkable. Countries have to tackle this ugly trend with renewed zeal and transparent effort. A double-tongued approach, now the preferred attitude of Nigeria’s leaders to this debilitating scourge, won’t do. Corruption in Nigeria cannot be tackled when leaders are not courageous enough to denounce the phenomenon and prosecute those who guilty of corrupt acts. The increasing open confession by our leaders that certain corrupt acts are perpetrated by “powerful persons” is an acceptance of defeat, a most uncommon trait of leadership.

For Nigeria to rise above corruption, leaders must show and be seen to lead by example in all ramifications. They must walk the talk and take the bull by the horn.