Last year, Nigeria scored 2.7 points and took 121st position out of 180 countries but this year its CPI score dropped to 2.5 ranking to share the same position with Lebanon, Libya and Mauritania.
Nigeria’s CPI index in the span of an eight-year period dating back to 2001, did not improve until 2006 when it ranked 142nd out of 163 countries.
Before then, the country ranked second to last for four years consecutively with its lowest CPI ranking in 2001 at 1.0. The first three countries on this year‘s CPI index are New Zealand, Denmark and Singapore.
The general-secretary of IT in Nigeria, Osita Ogbu, blamed the retrogression on the Federal Government’s lack of political will to fight corruption.
He said some of the areas where the country under the late President Umar Yar’ Adua had defaulted were the electoral system, judiciary, and poor implementation of anti-corruption laws.
“Firstly, there is absence of electoral accountability in Nigeria. Nobody has been punished for his or her role in the fundamentally flawed 2007 elections.
The leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission which conducted the flawed elections still remains in power. INEC has since then continued to conduct other flawed bye-elections,” he said.
Ogbu added that the case of alleged bribery of some Nigerian public officials by Halliburton, Wilbros and Siemens was another evidence of impunity in Nigeria.
He said while those who offered the bribes had been convicted in their countries, nothing had happened to the Nigerian officials and the political party alleged to have received the bribe.
The report said the other events that had weakened the government were the non-passage of the Freedom of Information bill, the granting of injunctions restraining anti-graft agencies from either investigating or prosecuting suspects and the wage dichotomy between political office holders and public servants.
“The trial of the former governors who were alleged to have siphoned billions of public funds have been reduced to a playboy affair. A special ‘rule of law’ has been contrived in their favour which may result in their escaping justice,” he said.
Meanwhile, the United States has dropped out of the ‘top 20’ in a global league table of least corrupt nations.
Somalia was adjudged the most corrupt country, followed by Myanmar and Afghanistan as joint second-worst and then by Iraq.
The US fell to 22nd from 19th last year, with its CPI score dropping to 7.1 from 7.5 in the 178-nation index, which is based on independent surveys on corruption.
This was the lowest score awarded to the US in the index‘s 15-year history and also the first time it had fallen out of the top 20.
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