Despite Nigeria’s renewed battle against corruption, the country slipped two places to 142nd out of 182 nations in the 2025 Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perceptions Index.
Though the country maintained its score of 26 out of 100, the drop in Nigeria’s ranking on corruption underscores the slow progress in tackling public sector menace, even as President Bola Tinubu continues to pledge decisive action against graft.
The CPI measures perceived levels of public‑sector corruption on a scale where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
In 2022, the country scored 24 and ranked 150th, while in 2021, it held the same score but was placed 154th, its worst performance under former President Muhammadu Buhari.
The country’s best ranking in the past decade was in 2016, when it was 136th with a score of 28.
It is an embarrassment that the country scored 26 out of 100, below the global average of 43, and trailed 33 other African nations in the ranking.
It clearly shows that corruption is still very high and not abating in any way. The level of corruption going on in various public institutions is worrisome.
Corruption continues to affect governance and public service delivery across sectors, including security, health, power, and the judiciary.
Though the situation could have been worse without the EFCC and ICPC, many still feel that they are not doing enough. The agencies need to be independent in order to do their jobs thoroughly.
A situation where they work for the federal government of the day by always going after members of the opposition is unacceptable. This gives incumbent officials the opportunity to steal and loot public funds.
Most importantly, special attention should be focused on the judiciary. A corrupt judiciary is a threat to the efforts to eradicate corruption in the country.
It is due to corruption in the judiciary that Nigerians are losing hope and confidence in the judicial system and resorting to self help, because people believe that justice has become for sale.
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