Special Assistant to the President on media and publicity, Garba Shehu, on Friday, played down the relevance of Transparency International’s latest report on the state of corruption in Nigeria.
The TI 2019 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) released on Thursday, had ranked Nigeria 146 out of 180 countries, scoring the country 26 out of 100 points, a decline from the 2018 version.
But Mr Shehu, speaking on Sunrise Daily, said the report could not be passed off as factual since it was based on secondary sources.
“The report itself is a perception index,” he said. “So perception is what it is. It is different from the reality that you have on the ground. The report is harsh on the government. It does not take due cognisance of the ground reality.”
“In fairness to the TI that presented the report, they said themselves that it is not research-based,” Mr Shehu added. “So it is not fact-based but based on second-rate data – information collected here and there. In effect, anybody could put together this kind of report from press releases issued by opposition political parties.
“The fact on the ground contradicts this report. This administration has done enormously well. We have achieved quite a lot.”
When he was further prodded to clarify his position on the quality of TI’s secondary sources, Mr Shehu maintained that the report does not reflect the country’s reality.
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