Global perception of the anti-corruption battle in Nigeria got a modicum of approval, yesterday, after the global anti-corruption body, Transparency International, TI, moved the country four places up in its yearly ranking of public sector transparency.
Nigeria's 139 ranking was up from the 143rd position the country was ranked last year, according to the TI ranking released early yesterday.
This came as the Federal Government, yesterday, dismissed the rating by TI, saying it was a product of "synopsis of negative media reports."
The relatively better ranking nonetheless, reactions within the country was not cheery as it was the opinion of many that corruption remained deeply rooted in the nation's body polity.
In the release made available on its website, TI put Nigeria in a joint 139 position with Azerbaijan, Kenya, Nepal and Pakistan among the 178 nation's surveyed. Nigeria was effectively ranked as the 35th most corrupt country in the world. In the rankings last year, Nigeria got a total score of 2.4 out of a total of 10.
The ranking based on public sector corruption, among other indices, followed a total score of 27 out of 100 in the Corruption Perception Index, CPI. The CPI is the degree to which corruption is perceived to permeate among public officials and politicians in a country by the business community and country experts.
The scale is based on a rating of 100 for very clean to 0 for very corrupt.
For the first time since the beginning of the rankings in 2005, three countries, Denmark, Finland and New Zealand, were joint first in the rankings having obtained an average score of 90 out of 100.
Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia, like last year, were tied at the bottom of the rankings which essentially were reflective of the perception of the business community on the transparency and cleanness of public officials and politicians.
The ranking sent mixed signals among the political class and the civil rights community with some lauding the improvement while some faulted the position.
The first African nation on the TI index is Botswana which is 30th on the global ranking. Nigeria's 139th position and total score of 27 is reflective of the country's score of 32 out of 100 in the African Development Bank's Governance rating.
Remarkably, two thirds of the 176 countries ranked in the 2012 index score below 50, on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 100 (perceived to be very clean), showing that public institutions need to be more transparent, and powerful officials more accountable.
"Governments need to integrate anti-corruption actions into all public decision-making. Priorities include better rules on lobbying and political financing, making public spending and contracting more transparent and making public bodies more accountable to people," Ms Huguette Labelle, the Canadian Chairperson of Transparency International said yesterday.
"After a year of focus on corruption, we expect governments to take a tougher stance against the abuse of power. The Corruption Perceptions Index 2012 results demonstrate that societies continue to pay the high cost of corruption," Labelle said.
FG dismisses rating
Minister of Information, Mr Labaran Maku, who reacted to the rating, said the agency did not take cognisance of the achievements recorded by this administration in its fight against corruption.
According to him, "the TI report and a recent Gallup Poll that also showed that Nigeria was among corrupt nations globally were products of perceptions of both the people and the media practitioners which fail to appreciate that the incumbent administration was taking steps to deal with corruption by employing systematic and institutional approaches that are gradual in yielding results."
Citing the instance of the prosecution of alleged fraudsters implicated in the fuel subsidy scam, investigation into the pension fund scandal, the geometric auditing of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and curbing of graft in the supply of fertiliser and seeds to farmers, the minister said these were concrete efforts that should be commended.
Comments Post a comment
Communism and Capitalism have both failed as systems of government because of the same illness: corruption. In a new and long lasting form of government, Trust can no longer be one of its components. All efforts should be made to form a new type of government with new mechanisms that will not require the element of Trust or the promise of a politician to guarantee that the will of the majority will always be reflected in the laws of that government. This will be a system that could improve in time the already existing possibility of such government today structured through the use of the Internet. A new form of Democratic government is Commutalism. Commutalism is a new concept of Democracy without politicians which is organized through the Internet to balance the needs of the Individual with the Respect for Equality. Commutalism is structured to provide the necessary goods for the survival of everyone and introduces at the same time a new transparent form of Capitalism to trade all those goods which are not necessary, like in a market open to the competition of all superfluous goods. For the sake of transparency, this new type of Capitalism would rule that each single transaction must be reported on the Net to become visible like an invoice made public and taxable at the origin with one fix percentage applied for everyone. In such system, all private properties and their owners like also all money transactions and trades of private property must be publicly reported on the Net. This is to prevent unlawful transactions and root out corruption through the immediate confiscation of those goods that have not been reported. Moreover, to reduce Greed and restore the financial equilibrium worldwide, it will be enough to eliminate the concept of inheritance. The private property of the people will return to the State after the death of each person to be auctioned among all citizens. People could spend as much as they want to educate their children but inheritance and donations would not be allowed. Once the survival is guaranteed for everybody there will be no need to be as tolerant with crime as we are today when the crime is a consequence of our corrupted system. In Commutalism, the right to own must be protected and guaranteed also for those who want to work and trade their own Time to obtain more than just the basic necessities provided by the system. http://www.wikinfo.org/Multilingual/index.php/Commutalism