Northwest, Northeast top bribery prevalence rate in Nigeria

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Nigeria's Northwest and Northeast regions have the highest prevalence of bribery among adults, a new report published on Wednesday indicates.

The report, prepared by Nigeria's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), with a focus on the quality and integrity of public services in the country, shows that the Northwest has 36.2 per cent prevalence rate while the Northeast has 35.2 per cent prevalence rate.

The prevalence of bribery, according to the report, "is calculated as the number of adult Nigerians who had at least one contact with a public official and who paid a bribe to a public official, or were asked for a bribe by a public official, on at least one occasion in the 12 months prior to the survey, as a percentage of all adult Nigerians who had at least one contact with a public official."

The country's Southeast region, currently in the throes of a separatist agitation championed by Nnamdi Kanu's Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), has the lowest bribery prevalence rate of 24.2 per cent, which is below the national average prevalence rate of 32.3 per cent.

In between these extremes are the Southsouth, Southwest and Northwest with corruption prevalence rates of 33.8 percent, 32.8 per cent and 29.1 per cent, respectively.

In terms of an average number of times a bribe is paid in each of the regions, Southeast has 4.9, followed by Northwest with 5.2 and Southwest with 5.7 times - all of which are below the national average of 5.8 occurrence rate. A bribe is paid in an average of 6.2 times in the Northeast, while both the Northcentral and the Southsouth have a 6.4 occurrence rate.

However, the report notes that from the "spatial analysis of bribery prevalence across the 36 states of Nigeria, no clear geographical pattern emerges. At the state level, the prevalence of bribery ranges between 13 per cent in Kwara State and 52 per cent in Borno State, indicating that local factors can have a significant impact on interactions between civil servants and the public."