TI to FG: Don’t Celebrate Your One-point Improvement in Corruption Perception Index

•Nigeria records below sub-saharan Africa average of 33 points

Kasim Sumaina in Abuja

Transparency International (TI), yesterday in Abuja told the Nigerian government not to celebrate the latest 2023 Corruption Perception Index (CPI), results where it gained one point, scoring 25 points out of the 100 maximum points.

The slight improvement in points TI noted, was below the Sub-Saharan African average of 33 points, noting that Nigeria had not made any progress.

The country recorded a slight improvement in the CPI ranking, by moving five places up to rank 145 out of 180 countries assessed.

The Executive Director, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy/Head, TI Nigeria, Auwal Rafsanjani, while speaking shortly after announcing the results, said: “When you look at the benchmark, you would have seen that we are still below the sub-ratings.

“We have not made any progress and other countries like Senegal and Ghana have made progress even more than Nigeria. Nigeria’s one-point shift came as a result of countries stagnation in the rankings.

“We cannot use that as a basis to go about celebrating because the issues are still there. The issues of electoral, judicial, security sector and service delivery corruption are still imbedded in the country.

“If we do not defeat those things and bring  about ways they can be prevented, there is no way we can celebrate because of one point shift,” he added.

He added: “We also saw efforts to arrest or recover assets, efforts by the anti-corruption agencies to continue to do their work despite the challenges and difficulties.

“These are some of the reasons why Nigeria was even able to improve by one point. This means Nigeria needs to do more and better its ratings.”

The CPI, arguably the most widely used global corruption ranking in the world, measures how corrupt each country’s public sector is perceived. It uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero means “highly corrupt”, and 100 means very clean.

Seychelles’ CPI score of 71 remained the top scorer in the region, followed by Cabo Verde (64) and Botswana (59). Equatorial Guinea (17), South Sudan (13) and Somalia (11) performed the lowest with no sign of improvement.

Nigeria, however shared its 145th position in the 2023 CPI with Liberia, Madagascar and Mozambique.