• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Nigeria ranked 75th on global safety perception index as insecurity worsens

Gunmen abduct civil servant near military base as insecurity further grips Abuja

Africa’s most populous country has been ranked 75th out of 141 countries surveyed on the 2022 global safety perception index amid worsening insecurity which continues to claim lives daily.

The Lloyd’s Register Foundation Safety Perceptions Index (SPI), produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace measured the levels of worry, likelihood, and experience of risk across five domains which are health, personal, violence, environment, and the workplace.

Nigeria had an overall score of 0.21 while for worry, likelihood, and experience it scored 0.30, 0.22, and 0.18 points respectively.

Issues around kidnapping, terrorism, communal and ethnic clashes, police violence, and criminal activities among many other problems have become rampant in Nigeria, and have significantly impacted the country in terms of economic prosperity, population, etc.

Despite repeated assurances from President Muhammadu Buhari and the security chiefs, insecurity has gotten worse with reports showing that Nigeria has one of the highest security spending in Africa.

The condition has further deteriorated since the beginning of the year as bandits threatened to abduct the president. Apart from the destruction of lives and property, the problem of insecurity has made the country unattractive for potential foreign investments while existing investors are moving out.

Read also: Insecurity: Martins urges Buhari to address Nigerians

The report revealed that generally in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region, risk is quite high as all the ten countries with the highest levels of risk are located in this region.

“Sub-Saharan Africa had the highest overall score on the index; half of the 34 countries in the region that were included in the index were ranked amongst the 20 countries with the highest impact of risk,” it stated.

The report noted that SSA had the highest average score on four of the five domains, and the second highest score on violence risk, most countries in the region had strongly correlated levels of worry, likelihood, and experience.

The countries ranked from 129th to 141st were all African countries that scored very high on concerns around safety and risks. These countries include Gabon, Uganda, Namibia, Congo Brazzaville, Sierra Leone, Malawi, etc.

“The average SPI score in the region was highest in the southeast, with Malawi, Lesotho, Zambia, Mozambique, and South Africa all ranked among the ten countries with the highest overall score. This area has seen considerable political and social unrest over the past decade, and has seen a surge of terrorist activity in the past few years,” it stated.

Singapore topped the chart and ranked first with a score of 0.04, as its level of risk was consistently low across every domain and every risk theme. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan both followed closely with 0.6 points and ranked 2nd and 3rd respectively.

According to the report, the perceptions of worry, likelihood, and experience of risks decrease as the freedom to make life choices, life expectancy, overall happiness, social support, and GDP increase.