• Report inaccurate – Presidency

Nigeria is now the second most corrupt country in West Africa, behind Guinea-Bissau declared as the country with the worst corruption perception level in the region, the latest report of the Transparency International has indicated.

But the presidency said that the report was not an accurate portrayal of the facts on the ground.

The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2020 report published by Transparency International ranked Nigeria as the 149th position out of the 180 countries surveyed, having scored 25 out of 100 points.

In the 2019 report, Nigeria was ranked 146th out of the 180 countries surveyed, scoring 26 points out of 100 points.

The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) is an annual survey report published by Berlin-based Transparency International since 1995, which ranks countries by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys.

The CPI scales zero (0) to 100, zero means “Highly Corrupt,” while 100 stands for “Very Clean”.

Nigeria’s ranking on the corruption perception index has continued to drop in the last four years.

With the current ranking, Nigeria is two steps worse off than its position in 2018 when it scored 27 points to place 144th out of 180 countries.

Only 12 countries are perceived to be more corrupt than Nigeria in the whole of Africa.

The countries are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Equatorial Guinea, Sudan, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Chad, Eritrea, Burundi, Congo, Guinea Bissau and South Sudan.

Somalia and South Sudan remain the most corrupt nations on earth, according to the CPI 2020 ranking.

Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, Singapore, Germany, Sweden Switzerland, Norway, The Netherlands and Luxembourg are the least corrupt countries in the world.

But a statement issued by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, said that the report was not an accurate portrayal of the facts on the ground.

The Presidency also claimed that some persons at the Transparency International in Nigeria were against President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.

Part of the statement read, “The Buhari administration deserves credit for diminishing corruption in the public service and will continue to vigorously support prevention, enforcement, public education and enlightenment activities of anti-corruption agencies.

“We are currently analyzing the sources of data used in arriving at the latest Transparency International (TI) report on Corruption Perceptions Index in Nigeria since by their own admission, they don’t gather their own data.

“This report is not an accurate portrayal of the facts on ground.”

Even as it noted that the Government’s Technical Unit on Governance Research (TUGAR) would be providing more detailed information on the sources of the TI data, it stated the examination carried out on their 2019 report showed that 60 per cent of their data was collected from businesses and other entities with issues bordering on transparency and the ease of doing business at the ports.

It also said, “Although this is a government ready to learn from mistakes and make corrections, the economy of this country, in its fullness, is bigger than the seaports we have. We are also not unaware of the characters behind the TI in Nigeria whose opposition to the Buhari administration is not hidden.

“We have repeatedly challenged the TI to provide indices and statistics of its own to justify its sensational and baseless rating on Nigeria and the fight against corruption. We expect them to come clean and desist from further rehashing of old tales.”

The Presidency noted that the naira-denominated review excluded the FG’s recoveries in dollars, pounds, euro showing that a sum of N1.2tn was recovered by the EFCC between 2009 and 2019; N939bn of that total recovered between 2015 and 2019 with less than N300bn recovered in the first six years.

It said, “Additionally, preventative instruments deployed by this administration such as Treasury Single Account (TSA), Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) coverage expansion and the removal of 54,000 ghost workers from federal civil service saving us N200bn annually serve as evidence that perception is not reality.

“Reality is based on verifiable facts and data. And any evidence-based analysis would prove that whether it is by prevention or punitive measures in recoveries and prosecution, this administration would be rising fast up these rankings rather than standing still.”

It also stated, “Organizations should be factual in their analysis and be prepared to rely on inputs outside of sensational media reports and age-old narratives which have not been updated to reflect today’s reality in Nigeria concerning its globally-respected war on corruption.

“In the existential fight against this multi-pronged malice and manifestations of corruption, President Muhammadu Buhari has avowed that he would take-no-prisoners, guided by respect for the rule of law.”