Nigeria has slipped two places to 142nd out of 182 countries in the 2025 Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index, continuing its trend of weak performance in global anti-corruption rankings.
In the 2024 index, the country was ranked 140 out of 180 nations with a score of 26 out of 100. Despite the inclusion of two additional countries in the latest report, Nigeria maintained the same score of 26, resulting in the two-place drop.
Transparency International explains that while rankings can shift with the number of countries included, a country’s score reflects the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).
The 2025 index, released on Tuesday, shows sub-Saharan Africa as the lowest-performing region, averaging a score of 32. Only four of the region’s 49 countries scored above 50, with Seychelles leading at 68, followed by Cabo Verde (62), Botswana (58), and Rwanda (58). The lowest scorers were Sudan (14), Eritrea (13), Somalia (9), and South Sudan (9).
Nigeria’s efforts to curb corruption have progressed slowly despite repeated pledges from President Bola Tinubu. In 2022, the country scored 24 and ranked 150th, while in 2021 it scored the same but placed 154th — its worst showing under former President Muhammadu Buhari. Nigeria’s best performance in the past decade was in 2016, when it ranked 136th with a score of 28.
Paul Banoba, regional advisor for Africa at TI, stressed that public sector corruption hits the most vulnerable the hardest. “African governments need to urgently translate anti-corruption commitments into decisive action by further strengthening accountability institutions and increasing transparency, protecting civic space and supporting the public,” he said.
In a controversial move in 2024, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) named Tinubu a finalist for its ‘Corrupt Person of the Year’ award.