Nigeria has been ranked the 136th most corrupt nation out of the 174 countries surveyed by Transparency International in its latest report released on Wednesday.
The good governance body, which mission is to stop corruption and promote transparency, accountability and integrity at all levels and across all sectors of society, ranked Nigeria below African countries like Botswana, Cape Verde, Mauritius, Namibia, Rwanda, Ghana and Tunisia among others.
The TI’s Corruption Perceptions Index ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be.
According to the organisation, a country or territory’s score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).
A country or territory’s rank indicates its position relative to the other countries and territories in the index.
In statement by TI’s spokesperson, Chris Sanders, the 20th edition of the CPI, scores for China (with a score of 36 out of 100), Turkey (45) and Angola (19) were among the biggest fallers with a drop of four or five points, despite average economic growth of more than four per cent over the last four years.
“The 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index shows that economic growth is undermined and efforts to stop corruption fade when leaders and high level officials abuse power to appropriate public funds for personal gain,” said José Ugaz, the chair of the global anti-corruption body.
“Corrupt officials smuggle ill-gotten assets into safe havens through offshore companies with absolute impunity. Countries at the bottom need to adopt radical anti-corruption measures in favour of their people.
“Countries at the top of the index should make sure they don’t export corrupt practices to underdeveloped countries.”
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