It suddenly occurred to our team last week that we were working on two different CPIs at the same time: The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) and the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
At one point, when a team member mentioned CPI, we were not sure what he or she was referring to.
Anyway, we successfully analysed both CPI reports in our Pocket Science and Marina and Maitama newsletters before the deadlines.
To forestall further mutual misunderstanding of the CPI, one must add that there’s yet another CPI, the California Personality Inventory (CPI).
“Specifically, predicting an individual’s reaction, what they will say or do, under conditions is part of the purpose of the CPI. Also, the CPI shows how others will view and assess this individual.”
Source: Fetzer Institute
“Rather than focusing on psychological disorders like many clinical personality tests, the CPI is designed to measure normal-range human behavior. Its purpose is to predict potential reactions and understand interpersonal behavior dynamics,” Joshua Napilay remarks.
Well, as corruption perception indicators intersect consumer price indices, one could use a California personality inventory to harness one’s stock of hope and tools to cope in the midst of Nigeria’s internal and external price instabilities.
Meaning for Nigeria
First, we think it’s Good News!
“The Nigerian is perceived to be less corrupt in 2023 than they were the year before. The country moved up one point from a CPI score of 24 in 2022 to 25 in 2023.
Source: Transparency International.
The CPI uses a scale from 0 to 100. 100 is very clean, and 0 is highly corrupt.
This improvement comes after 6 years of continuous decline into the abyss of corruption, data from Transparency International on the Global Corruption Perception Index (CPI) shows.
Nigeria’s improvement in its CPI 2023 score comes at a time when the Americas and Western European/European Union countries are sliding down gradually in their corruption perception scores.
Yet, many times, behind every good news is a bitter truth.
For the CPI, Transparency International relies on between 3 and 13 sources that measure corruption across countries to determine its own corruption score for each country.
In the case of Nigeria, 8 such sources were consulted in computing the latest CPI score of 25/100. All these sources had their own independent assessment of corruption across countries:
- World Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) 2022
- Bertelsmann Stiftung (BS) Transformation Index 2024
- The PRS Group International (PRSI) Country Risk Guide 2023
- World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey (WEF EOS) 2023
- World Justice Project (WJP) Rule of Law Index Expert Survey 2023
- Global Insight (GI) Country Risk Ratings 2022
- Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Country Risk Service 2023
- Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem v. 13) 2023
Only 3 of these 8 sources scored Nigeria above the Sub-Saharan averages: World Bank CPIA 2022 scored Nigeria highest with a corruption-clean score of 35/100. Bertelsmann Stiftung (BS) Transformation Index 2024 scored it 33/100, while the PRS Group International (PRSI) Country Risk Guide 2023 scored it 26/100.
The rest, beginning with Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2023, scored Nigeria below the Sub-Saharan average scores.
Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem v. 13) 2023 even scored Nigeria lower than they scored the 3 countries Transparency International scored lowest in its CPI.
The other 5 sources of corruption measurements (not used in calculating Nigeria’s CPI 2023) are:
- The African Development Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment 2021
- Bertelsmann Stiftung Sustainable Governance Indicators 2022 3. Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformation Index 2024
- Freedom House Nations in Transit 2023
- IMD World Competitiveness Center World Competitiveness Yearbook Executive Opinion Survey 2023
- Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Asian Intelligence 2023
Anyway, if the CPI reflects the view of Transparency International and 8 other research and policy organisations, we can say Nigeria is making progress in its struggle against corruption in the public sector.
Meaning for the World
A sneak peek into the newly-released CPI 2023 figures shows an unimpressive global performance.
