Nigeria now ranks 146 out of the 180 countries enlisted on the recently published annual corruption perception index (CPI).

Published by Transparency International (TI), the West African country dropped two places on the list, compared to the 144th position she maintained in the 2018 CPI.

More so, Nigeria's CPI score for 2018 was 27 while it now stands at 26.

The index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, according to experts and business people. It uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. 

More than two-thirds of countries score below 50 on this year’s CPI, with an average score of just 43. Similar to previous years, the data shows that despite some progress, a majority of countries are still failing to tackle public sector corruption effectively, according to TI.  

The top countries are New Zealand and Denmark, with scores of 87 each, followed by Finland (86), Singapore (85), Sweden (85) and Switzerland (85). 

“Governments must urgently address the corrupting role of big money in political party financing and the undue influence it exerts on our political systems,” TI writes. 

The bottom countries are Somalia, South Sudan and Syria with scores of 9, 12 and 13, respectively. These countries are closely followed by Yemen (15), Venezuela (16), Sudan (16), Equatorial Guinea (16) and Afghanistan (16).