by Oluwatosin Fatoyinbo
The 2014 edition of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance was released today and Nigeria was ranked 37 of 52 African countries.
Nigeria moved four places up haven been ranked 41 in the 2013 ranking. However, the Director of the IIAG Elizabeth Grath said that the country further deteriorated from the 2013 ranking in four major categories : safety and rule of law, participation and human rights, sustainable economic opportunity and human development
According to McGrath, “Since 2009, Nigeria rank hasn’t changed much, it remains the same. Nigeria has over the past five years registered slight improvement in overall governance. It now ranks 37 after 52 countries we cover.
“It is interesting because this overall governance slight improvement marks different trend at the category level. So we’ve seen that safety and rule of law has deteriorated in Nigeria by 6.6 score point. Human development has deteriorated slightly by 0.3 point. But for the counter balance, we have seen an improvement in sustainable economic opportunities at 3.8 and even bigger improvement in participation and human rights at 6.4”
In this year’s ranking Nigeria scored lower than the African average (51.5) and ranked 37th (out of 52) overall. Also, the country scored lower than the regional average for West Africa (52.2), ranking 12th (out of 15) in the region.
Mauritius repeated the feat it achieved last year topping the list as the best country in Africa with 81.7 score in the overall governance with Cape Verde, Botswana and South Africa in the second, third and fourth positions respectively.
In West Africa, Ghana and Senegal made it to the top ten scoring 68.2 and 64.3 to be ranked 7th and 9th positions respectively.
Benin Republic ranked 18th, Burkina Faso 21st, Gambia 23rd, Sierra Leone 25th, Mali 28th, Niger 29th, Liberia 31st, Togo 36th, Mauritania 39th, Cote d’Ivoire 40th, Guinea 42nd and Guinea Bissau 48th
