Nigeria is still stuck near the bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, coming in at 154th out of 180 countries in the 2023 ranking released Tuesday. The score—25 out of 100—keeps Africa’s most populous nation firmly in the “highly corrupt” bracket for the fourth straight year.
The Berlin-based watchdog says the persistently low mark mirrors the looting that keeps draining public coffers and stalling everything from road repairs to hospital supply chains. “Billions of naira disappear instead of building classrooms or keeping the lights on,” it warns, citing federal and state audits that routinely flag ghost workers, inflated contracts, and payments for projects that never break ground.
Nigerians feel the fallout daily. Clinics run without essential drugs, urban water pipes stay dry for weeks, and grid collapse is almost routine. “You pay for electricity you don’t get and still bribe someone to install the meter,” said one Lagos resident interviewed in the report. Port officials, police checkpoints, and even public-school registrars regularly demand extras before they deliver the basic services citizens already fund through taxes.
The index, compiled from business-executive surveys and eight independent assessments, shows Nigeria trailing neighbors such as Ghana (43 points, 70th place) and far behind top-scoring Denmark (90). The country’s score has moved only one point since 2017, signalling that anti-graft agencies—the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and Independent Corrupt Practices Commission—have little concrete progress to show despite high-profile arrests and asset seizures.
Transparency International says weak oversight keeps the door open for graft: public contracts are still awarded in secret, Supreme Court rulings on unexplained-wealth cases sit unenforced, and whistle-blower protection laws lack teeth. The 2023 audit of the oil-for-fuel swap programme alone uncovered a N3.6 trillion naira hole, yet no senior official has been convicted.
The group’s advice is blunt: publish beneficial-ownership records of every company that wins federal work, allow livestreamed contract bidding, and give courts deadline-bound powers to seize illicit assets. Until that happens, it predicts Nigeria will keep “jogging on the spot” while public services grind down and citizens pay twice for the basics.
