BEVERLY HILLS, January 31, (THEWILL) – Nigeria’s rating in global democracy and governance has dropped from 4.50 points, from an obtainable 10, in 2016 to 4.44 points in 2017 according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Democracy Index 2017.
The EIU 2017 Democracy Index provides a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide for 165 independent states and two territories (making a total 167) and analyses how global democracy fared in 2017.
The Democracy Index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture.
Based on its scores on a range of indicators within these categories, each country is then itself classified as one of four types of regime: “full democracy”; “flawed democracy”; “hybrid regime”; and “authoritarian regime”.
This is the tenth edition of the Democracy Index, which began in 2006 and a special focus of this year’s report is the state of media freedom around the world and the challenges facing freedom of speech.
Nigeria maintained its 109 position and was grouped in the Hybrid democratic and governance categorization, falling short of flawed democracies and full democracies.
Norway tops the list of categorizations in full democracies with 9.87 points followed by Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand and Denmark with 9.58, 9.39, 9.26 and 9.22 points respectively while the United States was tied at 21 with Italy and grouped in flawed democracies with 7.98 points.
Africa’s best was Mauritius ranked 16 with 8.22 points among the 19 countries ranked as full democracies, followed by Cape Verde (23), Botswana (28), South Africa (41) and Ghana (52) with 7.88, 7.81, 7.24 and 6.69 points respectively in flawed democracies.
The least ranked countries were Democratic Republic of Congo ranked 163 followed by Central African Republic (164), Chad (165), Syria (166) and North Korea (167) with 1.61, 1.52, 1.50, 1.43 and 1.08 points respectively.
About the Author
