NBS survey says Police, judges, prosecutors most corrupt in Nigeria

• Police denies survey
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said that Police officers, judges and prosecutors as the most corrupt public officials in Nigeria.
The custodian of the nation’s statistics made the revelation in its latest report released on Wednesday.
The revelation was contained in its 2017 National Corruption Survey, revealed that 46.4 per cent of Nigerian citizens have had “bribery contact” with police officers, 33 per cent with prosecutors and 31.5 per cent with Judges/magistrates.
The survey, tagged ‘Corruption in Nigeria – Bribery as Experienced by the Population’ also revealed that custom officers, judges, magistrates and prosecutors were the public officials who received the largest average cash bribes.
The NBS estimated the average bribe paid to Custom officers as N88, 587, Judges/magistrates as N18, 576 while Prosecutors received an average of N10, 072 as bribes from Nigerians.
The survey also listed police officers and tax/revenue officers as public officers to whom the highest number of bribes were paid.
It said 29.7 per cent of all bribes are paid to police officers upon a direct request before the service is provided.
In the private sector, employees of insurance companies, teachers in private schools and doctors in private hospitals have highest bribe prevalence in Nigeria, the survey revealed.
The survey further shows that 6.0 per cent of Nigerians have come in contact with bribe-seeking employees of insurance companies, 5.9 per cent with teachers in private schools and 3.7 per cent with doctors.
The survey said men pay higher bribes to public officials (37.1 per cent) than women (26.6 per cent).
The NBS also found that young Nigerians have the highest prevalence of bribery in the country as 36.4 per cent Nigerian population aged 25 to 34 years are the people with highest bribery prevalence.
The highest and lowest prevalence of bribery by geographical location and sex showed that 39.5 per cent of the people are urban males while 24.9 per cent are rural women.
In a swift reaction, The Nigeria Police has denied the NBs report claiming that it is on top of the corruption index in the country.
Police spokesman Jimoh Moshood described the report as false saying: “We have not seen such report and we cannot react to what we have not seen but what I know is that the Nigerian Police Force is not corrupt.
“Corruption is a personal thing and Nigeria Police Force is not a corrupt institution and it is not for anybody to have made such allegation.
”The allegations are mischievous because it is not empirical and we distance ourselves from such and we want all Nigerians to condemn such.
”In fact a lot of changes have been introduced into the Force to ensure that we are accountable to the people”, Nation quoted him as saying.
“Such a report is unacceptable by the Force and we want everybody to disregard such because the Nigeria Police is not corrupt.
“The allegation is not empirical and it cannot stand any test or proof. It is misleading,”‎ he added.