Nigeria has dropped four places to 150th out of 180 countries and territories in Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index, which was released on Tuesday.
In 2022, the country maintained its previous score of 24 out of 100, but it fell to 150.
Even though the country maintained its previous year’s (2021) score of 24 out of 100 points, however, there was a change in rank from 154 to 150, because some other countries performed more poorly in 2022.
This was disclosed by the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, which compiled data from eight different sources.
The latest ranking on the level of corruption in the public sector shows that the country’s CPI index has remained consistently low over the last decade, while the lack of transparency in Nigeria’s security sector has weakened the country.
According to Auwal Rafsanjani, Executive Director of the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), the ranking, which comes less than a month before Nigeria’s general election, is not intended to make Nigeria look bad or unresponsive to the corruption challenge.
The group also urged the electoral body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), to play its part in ensuring that the elections are held in a free and fair manner in accordance with the Electoral Act.
Corruption pervades every level of the Nigerian government. Corruption within the state apparatus is estimated to cost the country billions of dollars each year, ranging from significant contract fraud at the top to petty bribery, money laundering schemes, embezzlement, and seizing salaries from phoney workers.
In 2012, Nigeria was estimated to have lost over $400 billion to corruption since its independence.