Nigeria has dropped two places to rank 142nd out of 182 countries in Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perception Index (CPI), continuing its trend of poor performance in the annual assessment of public sector corruption.
The country scored 26 out of a possible 100 points—unchanged from the previous year—where 0 indicates a perception of high corruption and 100 reflects a very clean public sector.
While Nigeria's rank declined from 140th in the 2024 index, the change partly resulted from the inclusion of two additional countries this year. Nonetheless, its score remains among the lowest globally.
Sub-Saharan Africa was ranked the lowest-performing region overall, with an average score of just 32. Only four of the 49 assessed countries in the region scored above 50: Seychelles (68), Cabo Verde (62), Botswana (58), and Rwanda (58). The lowest scorers were Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, and South Sudan, each with scores below 15.
Nigeria's CPI performance has stagnated over the past decade despite repeated governmental commitments to tackle corruption. The country's best result in recent years was in 2016, with a score of 28 and a rank of 136th.
Paul Banoba, Transparency International’s Regional Advisor for Africa, emphasized the human impact of systemic corruption. “Public sector corruption always hits the most vulnerable people hardest,” he stated, urging African governments to “urgently translate anti-corruption commitments into decisive action.”
The index release follows recent international scrutiny of Nigeria's anti-corruption efforts, including the controversial nomination of President Bola Tinubu as a finalist for the 2024 “Corrupt Person of the Year” award by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
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