From the global anti-corruption coalition, Transparency International (TI) came the familiar depressing result about Nigeria’s place in the corruption index. The country, for the umpteenth time, is still among the laggards, with its 154th position among the 180 countries considered. TI made this known in its 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index released on Tuesday, last week. The country scored 24 out of 100 points. It was 149 in 2020, meaning that it dropped five places in the current rating. TI, on its official Twitter handle, @TransparencITng tweeted that “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 (CPI) 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.”
This is a bad feedback, especially for a government that said it has been battling corruption since its inception in 2015. The country’s rating dropped from 26 in 2019 to 25 in the 2020 assessment and further to 24 in the latest 2021 record.
We are afraid we have to agree with TI that corruption has become a cankerworm in Nigeria, and that rather than decrease, it is on the upswing. We can also understand the objection by the Chairman, Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Dr Bolaji Owasanoye, to the TI’s report. Owasanoye said the nation should question TI’s assessment parameters, which gave Western countries receiving illicit financial flows a pass mark whereas it failed the countries that are the unfortunate victims of the illegal transactions. The ICPC boss alleged that TI used outdated data that did not take into consideration the recent advances the Federal Government has made in its anti-corruption crusade. Indeed, his
media consultant, Oluyinka Akintunde, in a presentation at a two-day training workshop for journalists organised by the commission at the Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria, Keffi, Nasarawa State, said only five of the 13 data sources used by the TI were current, and that eight others were based on 2017, 2018 and 2019, which were also used in previous years. Akintunde wondered why Nigeria did well under the African Development Bank (ADB) country assessment, adding that TI has not explained why it stopped using the AfDB assessment.
Apparently, the ICPC boss is looking at the number of high-profile and other categories of Nigerians that have been arraigned for corruption under the present dispensation as a basis for the determination of the country’s rating in the index. While this is good and commendable, it is not enough to explain the entire ramifications of corruption.
TI’s Country Representative, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, gave some insight on how the organisation arrived at its conclusion at the presentation of the report in Abuja. According to him, the public sector is to blame for the high rate of corruption in the country. And this is palpable in several aspects of our national life, from acquisition of driving licence and national passport, to job placements, among others. Palms must be greased before any of these is obtained. This is despite paying the official fees for the acquisition of the vital documents.
As a matter of fact, the government seems to encourage this kickback culture through incompetence, lackadaisical attitude or even corruption by officials in charge who are not given adequate facilities to work with. What, for instance would any public official have as excuse not to give deserving Nigerians passports if government has provided adequate booklets? The same applies to driving licence and other documents, where, in some cases, applicants are first given temporary versions of the document while processing of the permanent one is in progress. All of these encourage corruption.
Rasanjani also attempted to answer some of the concerns raised by the ICPC chair. He said TI’s index is globally acknowledged as impartial and objective and that “The report is not an assessment of the Federal Government’s anti-corruption fight but a perception of corruption in the public sector. Everything that has to do with our public sector is embedded in corruption.” Of course, rising insecurity, high unemployment rate and systemic failure in healthcare delivery and leadership dysfunctions on corruption, as the TI chief noted, also contributed to the perception of corruption in Nigeria.
Bottomline: we must heed TI’s advice rather than try to pick unnecessary holes in the report. The report is in no way a vote of no confidence on the anti-corruption agencies but an admonition that more still needs to be done to bring the rate of corruption down in the country. Indeed, governments at all levels must study the report with a view to focusing attention on areas requiring more action. All hands must be on deck to check corruption for the country to make progress if it is not to collapse under its share weight.