The Nigerian government on Thursday refuted Transparency International’s (TI) annual report, describing it as “fundamentally flawed, irrelevant and of little use to reforming countries or those interested in a genuine war against corruption.”

The Berlin-based graft watchdog on Wednesday released its 2004 report on global corruption index which lists Haiti, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Chad and Myanmar as the five most corrupt countries in the world.

In a press release issued in the capital Abuja, Inyingi Dappa, spokeswoman for the Nigerian Ministry of Information and National Orientation, said the report was a defective one because “TI has consistently ignored the corruption inherent in its practice of using the opinions of its 1,000 or so respondents and a handful ofnations to draw conclusions about which nations are the most corrupt in the world.”

Dappa said the Nigerian government has done a lot of work to crack down on corrupt practices and formulated “the toughest and most comprehensive anti-corruption laws in the world” since President Olusegun Obasanjo took office in 1999.

In the past few years, she said, Nigeria has established a number of government bodies to crack down on corrupt practices of various kinds, including the Independent Corrupt Practices (and Allied Offenses) Commission (ICPC), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, and the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control.

The ICPC had arrested or prosecuted criminals and individuals including such high-ranking officials as “a serving minister, a former minister and a former national secretary of the ruling party (the People’s Democratic Party),” she said, adding that “nobody would have contemplated such a thing 15 years ago.”

Nigeria would continue undeterred in its fight against corruption, she said.

“Our modest progress will continue to benefit our people and impact positively on the many that do legitimate business with thenew Nigeria that is emerging,” said the spokeswoman.

Xinhuanet, October 21, 2004