Nigeria dropped 12 places from its position of 136th least corrupt country in 2016 to 148th.
Despite the widely-publicised anti-corruption war of President Muhammadu Buhari's administration, Nigeria ranks as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, according to the 2017 corruption perception index (CPI) released by Transparency International (TI).
The index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption in the opinion of experts and business people and uses a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
In the new index that was published on Wednesday, February 21, 2018, Nigeria dropped 12 places from its position of 136th least corrupt country in 2016 to 148th.
This drop comes despite the country's improved overall CPI score of 28/100 which is one point more than 2016's 27/100.
Why Nigeria is struggling with corruption
According to the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), which is Transparency International's national contact, the new index is worrying as it reflects the inability of President Buhari's administration to combat corruption like he promised.
Its statement read, "On the African continent, Nigeria ranks 32nd position in Africa out of 52 assessed countries in 2017. While Botswana leads the continent with the record of competent and largely corruption-free public administration, Nigeria hopelessly falls behind with 27 points. In West Africa, Nigeria is the second worst country out of 17 countries leaving only Guinea Bissau behind.
"This fresh setback in the fight against corruption confirms that grand-corruption, political corruption, nepotism, favoritism and bribery persist in Nigeria at all levels.
"It is CISLAC's view that the negative perception is mainly a consequence of the inability to combat grand corruption and astronomical plundering of public coffers costing the Nigerian tax payers around 25% of annual GDP.
"Since the current administration has come to power on the anti-corruption ticket, no significant politically exposed person has been duly sentenced on anti-corruption charges."
Botswana is least corrupt African country
While Nigeria is jointly ranked 148th alongside Guinea and Comoros, African countries ranked higher than Nigeria include: Botswana (34th), Rwanda (48th), Namibia (53rd), and Kenya (143rd).
New Zealand is the least corrupt country in the world, according to the index, with an 89/100 CPI score, with Denmark (88/100) trailing at second and Finland, Norway, and Switzerland joint third.