Nigeria angrily rejected the results and methodology of the world’s best-known corruption study on Wednesday after being named the third most corrupt of the 145 countries surveyed.
Nigeria, the oil-rich but socially poor West African giant, has been anchored at or around the bottom of Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index since it was first published 10 years ago.
Five years after former dictator President Olusegun Obasanjo led his country back into elected rule with a promise to clean up public life, it is still languishing near the foot of the index, above only Haiti and Bangladesh.
Nigeria’s Information Ministry hit back in a strongly worded statement, branding the index ”fundamentally flawed, irrelevant and of little use to reforming countries or those interested in a genuine war against corruption”.
Citing a recent study into the workings of Transparency’s index, the ministry said that the group used only a limited sample of countries and a small number — about 1 000 — of respondents to make its judgements.
There are about 200 countries in the world, but the non-governmental agency only cites data from the 146 for which it feels it has enough evidence to pronounce on the relative levels of honesty in public life.
”It has consistently used these dubious paradigms to gain world acclaim, while destroying the reputations of nations and impugning their efforts at enthroning good governance,” the ministry’s statement said.
Obasanjo has begun a campaign to root out corruption in Nigeria’s public sector, forming two anti-graft bodies and ordering a handful of high-profile arrests, but the drive has yet to win any high-profile convictions.
Meanwhile, opposition activists and ordinary Nigerians continue to complain of official dishonesty and greed at almost every level, from the omnipresent police checkpoints to the ministries and Parliament in Abuja.
Transparency International drew particular attention to the corrupting effect that vast oil revenues have had on Nigeria and on a dozen more oil-exporting countries in the bottom half of the honesty league.
”Public contracting in the oil sector is plagued by revenues vanishing into the pockets of Western oil executives, middlemen and local officials,” the group’s chairperson, Peter Eigen, said in a news release.
Even as Transparency was releasing its report in London, Nigerian lawmakers were holding a public hearing into allegations that United States oil services outfit Halliburton had bribed Nigerian officials to secure a huge gas contract. — Sapa-AFP