FG reacts to Nigeria’s position on global corruption index

The Nigerian government on Thursday discredited the country’s latest position on the 2019 global corruption index.

Nigeria is currently ranked 146 out of the 180 countries on the 2019 corruption perception index, according to Transparency International.

The index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption in the opinion of experts and business people, using a scale of 0 to 100, where zero means “highly corrupt” and 100 means very clean.

The report released on Thursday said Nigeria scored 26 out of 100 points, dropping from the 27 points that it has maintained since 2017. In the 2018 index, Nigeria rose by four places from 148 to 144.

However, Nigeria’s attorney-general and justice minister Abubakar Malami said there are no proofs by Transparency International to rank Nigeria 146 out of the 180 countries on the 2019 corruption perception index.

In an interview on Channels Television’s LunchTime Politics, Malami said the “facts on the ground do not correlate with the information dished out” by Transparency International.

“In terms of the fight against corruption, we have been doing more, we have done more and we will continue to do more out of inherent conviction and desire on our part to fight against corruption devoid of any extraneous considerations relating to the rating by Amnesty International,” Malami said.

In the report, Nigeria also ranked the fourth most corrupt country out of the 19 countries in the West African region.

Transparency International said the position of all countries in the report is based cases of corruption “from fraud that occurs at the highest levels of government to petty bribery that blocks access to basic public services like healthcare and education, citizens are fed up with corrupt leaders and institutions.”

Transparency International’s chair Delia Ferreira Rubio asked the government to urgently address what she describes as the corrupting role of big money in political party financing and the undue influence it exerts on political systems.