• Report weighed corruption levels, business environment, flow of information
• Ghana, Benin, Senegal, S’Africa among Africa’s top 10

The 2022 Positive Peace Index (PPI) released at the weekend has ranked Nigeria 135 among 163 independent nations and territories, according to level of peacefulness.

Nigeria dropped three places from 132 in 2020 and finished at 31 on the index in Africa, coming before Somalia, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Sudan, Libya, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea and Cameroun.

In the report released during a webinar on Saturday by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), Nigeria finished with 3.836 points and was graded low on a scale highlighting: very high, high, medium, low and very low.
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The report showcases the findings of IEP’s research, including its latest results on Positive Peace and systems thinking.

The PPI measures the level of societal resilience of 163 countries, covering 99.7 per cent of the world’s population. It is the most comprehensive global, quantitative approach to defining and measuring the positive qualities of peace.

It provides an actionable platform for development and improvements in peace. It can also help improve social factors, including governance and economic development as well as peace. It stands as one of the few holistic and empirical studies to identify the positive factors that create and sustain peaceful societies.

For example, countries with higher levels of Positive Peace are: more resilient; are associated with robust and thriving economies; have better performance on ecological measures; higher levels of wellbeing and happiness; stronger measures of social cohesion; greater satisfaction with living standards and more.

All these qualities are systemically linked and are a by-product of the quality of the system. Such societies are less encumbered by costs and wastage of violence or political instability, have higher productivity, better access to information and are not heavily weighed down by corruption or ineffective governments.

The report also measures the state of peace in countries. It assesses countries in three domains, including level of societal safety and security, extent of ongoing domestic and international conflict and the degree of militarisation.
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Describing the situation, the report said Nigeria continues to face challenges on both safety and security and ongoing conflict domains.

Countries that made the top 10 Positive Peace index include: Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Germany and Ireland.

In Africa, the top 10 countries are: Mauritius, Botswana, Tunisia, South Africa, Ghana, Namibia, Senegal, Morocco, Benin Republic and Algeria.

The identified eight key factors, or pillars that comprise Positive Peace are: Well-functioning government, sound business environment, equitable distribution of resources, acceptance of the rights of others, good relations with neighbours, free flow of information, high levels of human capital and low levels of corruption.

Seven of the eight pillars of Positive Peace posted improvements. The only pillar of Positive Peace to record deterioration was low level of corruption. This pillar deteriorated in 99 countries, or 61 per cent of the nations assessed in the PPI and improved in only 64 countries.
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