Lai Mohammed reacts as report ranks Nigeria among most corrupt countries in the world

 

The Minister of Information and Culture Minister, Lai Mohammed is not pleased with the latest Corruption Perception Index (CPI) report by Transparency International (TI).

The report which was released on Wednesday, February 1, 2023, showed Nigeria among the most corrupt countries in the world as the country takes the 150th position out of 180 countries.

The ranking showed that Nigeria dropped four places on its latest Corruption Perception Index ranking.

But the Minister of Information faulted the report saying President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is not fighting corruption to impress Transparency International.

Mohammed said, “We’re fighting corruption because we believe if we don’t fight corruption, there’ll be no growth, either in terms of the economy or even political. Therefore, what we do and what we have put in place to fight corruption is not because we want to be rated by anybody.

“Corruption fighting is not just by how many people have you arrested or how many people have you tried or how many people have you convicted.”

In the 2022 Corruption Perception Index ranking, the 180 countries assessed by their perceived levels of public sector corruption were rated on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).

Nigeria, apart from taking the 150th position also scored 24 out of 100 points. The score places the most populous country in Africa among countries that have “made no significant progress against corruption or have declined since 2012”.

The score also showed that Nigeria maintained its previous year’s score.

In previous years, Nigeria scored 26 points in 2019, 25 in the 2020 assessment, and 24 in 2021.

This implies that the campaign of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration against corruption has not recorded any significant improvement.