Believe it or not, Nigeria is out of the radar and blacklist of 'Most Corrupt Nations" in the world! According to Transparency International, Nigeria is now the 42nd most corrupt country in the world!! Wow, is that good news or what? I beg to say it is! (considering our prestigious history of corruption). Could this be a sign of change in our country? I pray so..
To digress a bit, let me talk about the country that has taken the No 1 position which Nigeria came close to holding some few years back. According to TI's 2010 Corruption Perception Index (http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results), Somalia is the worlds most corrupt country. At this point you might ask yourself the question, "What resources does a country like Somalia possess that they would be ranked as No 1 in the world for corruption?" After-all its a war torn and extremely poor country. However I guess the answer to that question is very glaring if you give it a second thought. Its level of poverty is the very reason it has been "perceived" as No 1 for corruption in the world. How so? Simply because ALL or a greater sum of its wealth or potential for wealth has been looted and destroyed in the hands of manic leaders. Quite unfortunate to say the least as those who bore and still bear the consequences of these leaders are the people.
Also according to this same Corruption Perception Index, three quarters of the 178 countries listed scored below 5, on a scale from 10 (very clean) to 0 highly corrupt.
Nigeria, as you may be wondering, scored 2.4 bringing it to the 42nd most corrupt nation in the world and leaving it with a regional (continent) ranking of 28.
I happened to have stumbled across this statistics in my search to pull out "corruption rankings", to justify or make sense of why PAY-PAL refuses to allow transactions from Nigeria. During my search i also stumbled across another blog on wordpress, where i found tons of comments by Nigerians debating on why Nigeria was not listed in the top 10 list! Talk about patriotism right?! I found it quite amusing that the criticism on our absence from the list, and open insults to fellow commentaries on that blog came the most from NIGERIANS to NIGERIANS!! And yet if a citizen of another country ventures to say just one slightly derogatory remark about the country or the people, we rush to the defense and almost skin the person alive digitally! How ironic indeed?! I guess a prophet would rather criticize himself than have others stone him openly!
My view on this issue is that our ranking on TI’s list is somewhat of trivial to the current state of affairs of the country. I can say only one thing though, change is coming to Nigeria and to Africa whether No 1, 5, 10, 30, or 42 on the list. So rather than focus on our ranking, lets focus on rebuilding, re-orienting and re branding ourselves and subsequently our country.
Most importantly change will come when people stop to depend on our leaders for change and to depend on themselves within their immediate environment to bring change (no matter how small) and to be a change agent.
Tuyo por siempre
Chinny ;)
