Corruption: ICPC faults data sources as Nigeria’s ranking drops again

GLOBAL anti-corruption coalition, Transparency International, has rated Nigeria the second most corrupt country in West Africa, after Guinea.

In the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index released by TI on Tuesday, Nigeria dropped five places, scoring 24 out of 100 points in the 2021 index.

This is coming against the backdrop of the Federal Government’s avowed fight against graft.

Nigeria’s current 154 ranking out of 180 countries in the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index is a drop of 149 in the 2020 index.

“In the Corruption Perceptions Index 2021 Nigeria ranks 154 out of 180 countries and territories, falling back five places from the rank of 149 in 2020.

“The 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index released by Transparency International today shows corruption is on the increase in Nigeria.

“The country scored 24 out of 100 points in the #CPI2021, which is one point less compared to the score of 2020,” the organisation tweeted on its official Twitter handle @TransparencITng, on Tuesday.

It is Nigeria’s second consecutive year of a downward spiral on the TI’s CPI ranking.

The country’s score had dropped from 26 in 2019 to 25 in the 2020 assessment, and further to 24 in the latest 2021 record.

The CPI is TI’s tool for measuring the levels of corruption in the systems of various countries around the world.

The maximum points a country can score is 100 points, and the least is zero. Zero signifies the worst performing countries and 100, the best-ranked.

But the Chairman, Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, Dr Bolaji Owasanoye, said the nation should question TI’s assessment parameters which gave western countries receiving Illicit Financial Flows a clean bill while thumbing down countries that are victims of graft.

Speaking at a two-day training workshop for journalists organised by the ICPC at the Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria, Keffi, Nasarawa State, the commission boss observed that the data sources on which the ranking was based did not take into cognisance the advances against graft recorded by the country.

The Media Consultant to the ICPC chairman, Oluyinka Akintunde, in a presentation said the global anti-corruption coalition assessment of Nigeria was based on outdated data sources.

According to him, only five out of the 13 data sources used by TI were current while eight others were based on 2017, 2018 and 2019, which were also used in previous years without taking cognizance of the actions or new developments in the country.

“Nigeria performed better under the African Development Bank country assessment but TI has not explained why it stopped using the ADB assessment.

“Transparency International will need to explain why the ADB country policy and institutional assessment is no longer used for the country’s score in CPI. We must know that the fight against corruption is not about numbers but systems, “Akintunde submitted.