Seventy one percent of people in Nigeria lack trust in the country’s judiciary, a new report has revealed.
The report titled ‘The State of Freedom in Nigeria Report’, was released by Anvarie Tech and ResearcherNG and Bincika Insights and funded by the Washington DC-based National Endowment for Democracy.
Presenting the report, Farida Adamu, Senior Programme Manager, Anvarie Tech, said it assessed citizens’ views on Freedom of Expression, Political Participation, Rule of Law and Corruption between November 15 and December 10, 2021.
She said it was based on a study of 1,861 people across the six geopolitical regions in the country through simple random sampling standardized globally.
According to the report, 71% of Nigerians lack trust in the judiciary, 65.2% lack trust in the government institutions established to tackle corruption, and 40% do not believe elections are free and fair.
On Freedom of Expression, “50.4% of respondents agree that citizens are free to criticize the government without fear, while 49.6% disagree with this statement.
“Majority of respondents, 69.3%, agree that Nigerian citizens are free to organize political groups, while about 30.7% of respondents disagree.”
According to the report, citizens’ perception of the ability of the media to report critically about government institutions and officials without fear indicates that 51.4 percent of respondents agree that the media can report critically about government institutions and officials without fear, while 48.6 percent of respondents disagree.
It said the decline in trust for the government that was witnessed immediately after the 2007 general election in Nigeria, led voters and indeed the majority of Nigerians to demand electoral reform.
