******The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is one of the eight most corrupt national oil and gas companies in the world, Transparency International (TI), said.
******Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a recent report that allegations of internal graft, incompetence and political interference have undermined the work of the EFCC.
******The United Nations Development Programme recently released its 2009 Human Development Report. Nigeria was ranked 158th out of 182 countries.
******Life Expectancy of 47.7 years (ranking 167th).
******The World Bank has estimated that as a result of corruption, 80 percent of energy revenues benefit only 1 percent of the population.
*******Despite claims to the contrary, Boko Haram has not yet coalesced into a formalized terrorist organization. Accordingly, fighting them with firepower will not work. Diplomacy and democracy will, the US Council on Foreign Relations has said of Nigeria.
*******The police continued to commit with impunity a wide range of human rights violations, including unlawful killings, torture and other ill-treatment, and enforced disappearances. Some people were targeted for failing to pay bribes. Several people were tortured to death in police detention. Prisoners were held in appalling conditions, many of whom had been awaiting trial for years.
*******The government intimidated and harassed human rights defenders and journalists. Violence against women remained endemic, and abuses against people suspected of same-sex relationships continued. Forced evictions affected thousands of people across the country. At least 58 people were sentenced to death, bringing to more than 870 the number of prisoners on death row. Many were sentenced after unfair trials. However, the government announced a "self-imposed moratorium" on executions.
*******The United States and European Union are undermining human rights worldwide by letting states with dubious elections like Pakistan and Kenya pose as real democracies, Human Rights Watch said in its annual report. The group said Russia, Nigeria, Bahrain, Jordan and Thailand also had acted as if merely holding an election was enough to make them worthy of being called democratic.
********A report revealed that, in absolute poverty, the North East, North West and North Central has retained the poorest geo-political zones in Nigeria since 1985.
******Nigeria's 2007 election condemned as a farce; "You cannot use the result from half of the country to announce a new president," said Innocent Chukwuma, chairman of the Transition Monitoring Group, a respected Nigerian observer mission. Max van den Berg, head of the EU team, said: "For now the assessment is outspokenly negative… I'm very concerned."
******The Nigerian banking industry is poised for greater productivity this fiscal year as nine banks made list of top 1,000 World Banks ranking and top 25 banks in Africa.
********The Country Director, World Bank in Nigeria, Onno Ruhl said that unstable power supply, lack of access to finance, high cost of financing businesses, high taxation, poor infrastructure, corruption and macro-economic environment are some of the reasons for poor investment in Nigeria.
*******The environmental restoration of Ogoniland could prove to be the world's most wide-ranging and long term oil clean-up exercise ever undertaken if contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and important ecosystems such as mangroves are to be brought back to full, productive health.
*******A major new independent scientific assessment, carried out by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), shows that pollution from over 50 years of oil operations in the region has penetrated further and deeper than many may have supposed.
******DESCRIBED as only better than Somalia, Nigeria has once again been ranked 14th most failed state in the world out of the 177 countries considered in the ranking by the Fund for Peace.
******According to the summary analysis on Nigeria, "the country's deep grievances along religious and communal lines have resulted in violence in the Niger Delta region, the Middle Belt, and the North. There is also endemic corruption and deep distrust of the state, inadequate public services, and security forces that often operate with impunity. The country is also subject to campaigns of violence by a number of militant and militia groups, including the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).
*******"Finally, there are deep divisions among the political elites. In this year's elections, there was controversy over whether the incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan, a southerner who took over after the death of Umaru Yar'Adau in May, should receive his party's nomination. Traditionally, power has rotated between politicians from the North and South. President Jonathan was successful both in receiving the nomination and in winning re-election," the report stated.
*******However as Africa's largest oil producer, Nigeria shows the worst performance amongst its oil producing states colleagues, as most of the troubled middle east countries and disaster affected nations are even more stable in ranking than the giant of Africa.
Humm.....quite a list don't you think? Or rather what do you think about the comments from these foreign nation
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