Date Published: 07/14/09

No growth for Nigeria without rule of law

The World Bank, on Monday, said the future growth of Nigeria's economy would be directly linked to improvement in the rule of law, accountability and political stability.

The Bank said the country would also need to improve on governance effectiveness, regulatory quality and the control of corruption with a special focus on improving the public service.

Nigeria had maintained a steady upward growth of 6.2 per cent to 7 per cent per cent between 1999 and 2007, but a recent report by the CBN said growth in the first of quarter of 2009 slowed to 4.5 per cent.

The report rated Nigeria as "still low" on the rule of law, while countries like Zimbabwe and Afghanistan were scored "very low". The World Bank World Wide Governance Indicators (WGI, 1996-2008), entitled Governance Matters, said the future development in the country would be directly linked to good governance.

According to the statistics released by the WGI, about 97 percent of countries performed better than Nigeria on "political stability and absence of violence" in 2008 out of the 212 that were surveyed for the period.

The report ranked Nigeria 3% on political stability, suggesting it could have been better than the three percent of the countries surveyed, but 97 percent were better on the issue.