Nigeria has ranked among the 40 most corrupt countries on the 2023 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) produced by Transparency International (TI), a Berlin-based global anti-corruption alliance.

According to the index, Nigeria scored 25 out of 100 points. This score, by implication, suggests that the Nigerian public sector is very corrupt, according to data from reputable organisations like the World Bank and the World Economic Forum.

“A country’s score is the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0-100, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means very clean,” said TI.

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“A country’s rank is its position relative to the other countries in the index. Ranks can change merely if the number of countries included in the index changes.”

FIJ gathered that compared to 2022, Nigeria moved up five places on the corruption perception index. However, the country’s corruption score only improved by one – from 24 in 2022 to 25 in 2023.

FIJ also gathered that Nigeria’s corruption perception score has been on a steady decline since 2016, during Mohammadu Buhari’s administration. Nigeria scored 28 in 2016, and the score consistently decreased every year until 2023.

Countries like Liberia, Madagascar and Mozambique are also among the 40 at the bottom of the index.

The fight against corruption appears to have taken a hit in 2023, according to the index. More than 70 percent of the countries on the index have corruption scores below 50. The civil society also suggested that weakening justice systems were responsible for the falter in the fight against corruption in 2023.

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“Over two-thirds of countries score below 50 out of 100, which strongly indicates that they have serious corruption problems. The global average is stuck at only 43, while the vast majority of countries have made no progress or declined in the last decade. What is more, 23 countries fell to their lowest scores to date this year,” said TI.