Corruption ranks 4th among top challenges

A new report has revealed that 70 per cent of Nigerians, who were asked to pay a bribe last year, refused to do so, at least, on one instance.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in its third survey on corruption, as experienced by Nigerians, titled: ‘Corruption in Nigeria: Patterns and Trends’, published yesterday, said the bribery refusal rate was found to be highest in the North-West (at 76 per cent). All geopolitical zones recorded a refusal rate of above 60 per cent.

The report came from a survey conducted by NBS in collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) with funding from the MacArthur Foundation and Denmark.

The report also showed that Nigerians have very little confidence in the government’s anti-corruption effort, noting that the confidence has been declining over time and across regions.

While in 2019, more than half of all citizens thought that the government was effective in fighting corruption, in 2023, the share declined to less than a third of all citizens, the report said.

It said the downward trend in the citizens’ confidence is observable across the entire country, with all six zones recording reductions of more than 10 percentage points between 2019 and 2023 in terms of the share of citizens who thought the government was effective in fighting corruption.

The report said that Nigerians ranked corruption fourth among the most important problems affecting the country in 2023, after the cost of living, insecurity and unemployment.

However, while the citizens do not trust government anti-corruption efforts, the report showed that Nigerians are beginning to reject corruption as a way of life.

“The share of citizens who think that bribery requests are acceptable to speed up administrative procedures decreased from 29 per cent in 2019 to 23 per cent in 2023,” the report said, adding:
“Fewer citizens report suffering negative consequences after refusing bribe requests in 2023 (38 per cent) compared with 2019 (49 per cent). This suggests that Nigerians feel increasingly empowered to confront corrupt officials without fear of repercussions.”

The report noted that in 2023, a sizeable share of all bribe refusers (21 per cent) indicated that their main reason for refusing a bribe request was because they had other options for getting what they wanted.

The data also showed that normative concerns (42 per cent), as well as the cost of living pressures (23 per cent), played an important role in explaining why Nigerians refused to pay bribes.

“Out of all Nigerian citizens who had at least one contact with a public official in the 12 months prior to the 2023 survey, 27 per cent paid a bribe to a public official. In the context of comparable past estimates, this means that the prevalence of bribe payments in Nigeria has undergone a minor but statistically significant decrease since 2019, when it stood at 29 per cent,” NBS stated.

It added that when also accounting for instances where bribes were requested but citizens refused, more than one in every three interactions (34 per cent) between citizens and public officials in 2023, involved bribery.

The Nigeria Police ranked highest among agencies where bribery is prevalent recording nine per cent in the share of citizens, who had contact with public officials, and who paid a bribe or were asked to pay a bribe.

Nigeria was listed 145 among 180 countries and scored 25 out of 100 points in the 2023 Corruption Perception Index published by a global anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International (TI).

This is an insignificant upgrade on the country’s position in 2022 when it ranked 150 among 180 countries with 24 from 100 points.

The post North West leads as 70% of Nigerians ‘refused’ to give bribes last year appeared first on Guardian Nigeria News.

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