Nigeria Ranks 37th in 2014 Ibrahim Index of African Governance

 

By Adeola Akinremi

The 2014 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), released on Monday, shows that Nigeria ranks 37th out of 52 African countries.

This appears an improvement from the 2013 ranking where the country took 41st position, but the Director of the IIAG at Mo Ibrahim Foundation, Elizabeth McGrath, told THISDAY in a telephone interview that the score was insignificant, because Nigeria deteriorated further in two of the four major categories of the index.

The four categories composed of safety and rule of law, participation and human rights, sustainable economic opportunity and human development are further divided into 14 subsections with 94 indicators.

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.

Somalia has appeared at position 52 to close the list of countries on the African continent.

A social commentator and livelihood right activist, Eze Onyekpere in a telephone conversation with THISDAY said the latest IIAG is a true affirmation of Nigeria’s governance status in Africa.

“Nigeria never ranks well. It’s is not a surprise if Nigeria doesn’t rank well. The competitive index we have had so far has shown we are not making progress. If you look at UNDP and others, the story has been the same. So this it is an affirmation,” he said.

However, Nigeria received a relatively high rank in public management sub-category as 18th country out of 52, but achieved a low rank becoming 44 out of 52 in the main category of safety and rule of law.

The Ibrahim Index of African Governance is an analysis by Mo Ibrahim Foundation aimed at improving the level of governance of African countries. The annual index provides a framework for citizens hold governments accountable, while helping governments to focus attention on creating prosperous nations by ensuring better delivery of goods and services, and favourable policy outcomes, across every country on the continent.

McGrath said: “It is an annual index which is calculated each year by Mo Ibrahim foundation suing data from 35 different organisations. So what we do is bring together data of 130 variables and we create essentially overall governance score for every single African country.  And that overall governance score is the average for the main category of governance found by the foundation. They are safety and rule of law, participation and human rights, Sustainable economic opportunities and Human development.

“What we found for the 2014 index is that is there is overall improvement in governance on the continent. But we have highlighted some shift on the overall governance level and governments everywhere on the continent need to remain vigilant with regards to performance.

“What we have done is looking at African governments’ performance over the past 10 years and we have seen the main drivers of the overall positive trend of gain.”

She added: “So when we looked at 2009 and 2013, progress has been driven jointly by participation in human rights and human development.

“Interestingly, the main driver of gain from 2005 and 2009 has been sustainable economic opportunities. So in the last five years, improvement in sustainable economic opportunities on the continent has dropped slightly.”

Explaining how to look at the index, McGrath said the index should be looked at as a cumulative data over five years with attention paid to the 2014 index.

“Every year we refine the structure of the index slightly. So we improve the indicators that we use and for us to do this, we have to refresh all of the data back to 2000.  So any comparison or rank with scores of ranks of any country should be done on 2014 index.

“Interestingly, the main driver of gain from 2005 and 2009 has been sustainable economic opportunity. So in the last five years, improvement in sustainable economic opportunities on the continent has dropped slightly.

“What is interesting about the trend in sustainable economic opportunities is that in contrast to an improvement of 3.4 score point between 2005 and 2009, the largest in any category in that five year period, sustainable economic opportunity has registered the opposite trend in the last five years with the deterioration of 0.2 score point.

“This reversal trend is shown in two of the four sub-categories. It is in public management and business environment. Also there has been slow pace of improvement on the continent in infrastructure and the rural sector,” she said.

She told THISDAY that countries in the bottom up ranking registered the largest improvements over the last five years, saying “Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, and Niger have changed course from having the negative trajectory to becoming the biggest governance improvements on the continent and this progress is driven largely by participation in human rights.

“To counter that, we have also seen historic strong performance from countries such as Mauritius, Cape Verde, Seychelles, South Africa, and Botswana who are top five in the index but have shown deteriorations in at least one category over the past five years, even though they have improved in overall governance. This speaks to the fact that everyone has to remain vigilant. All countries should consider that governance requires ongoing commitment and improvement in governance even if you are at the top of the ranking.

“What is important is for everyone on the continent to remember that even though there are positive overall governance trend on the continent and in countries like Nigeria, there is need to slow down and look at the data, because it marks a mix message. Some areas of governance are improving and others are deteriorating and the government especially should be using the index to identify where they need to be improving and where resources need to be allocated.   The foundation very much advocates a balance approach to governance. Each of the four categories in the index should be equally focused on for balanced governance overall.”

Mo Ibrahim wrote in a forward to the report that “the 2014 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) reveals discrepancies in governance performance between countries and within the four conceptual categories. More than ever, these discrepancies call for an Afro-realist approach, which tempers historical Afro-pessimism and current Afro-optimism. Anyone who wants a true grasp of African realities must reject the ‘one-size-fits-all’ attitude which reduces the continent geographically or governance conceptually, in favour of a more granular approach.”

The Ibrahim Index of African Governance published on Monday by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, was established by the Sudanese philanthropist, Mo Ibrahim in 2006 to chart Africa's development progress.