World Happiness Report: Nigeria Drops to 95th in the World

Nigeria has climbed down from its perch as the world’s happiest people in 2010, to the 95th globally and 6th in Africa, according to 2017 World Happiness Report, released yesterday.
It would be recalled that seven years ago in 2010, Nigeria was rated in a Gallup global poll as having the “happiest people on earth”.
The 2010 poll of 64,000 peo­ple from 53 countries around the world, found Nigerians to be the most optimistic in the world in their outlook for 2011.

It also found that the most opti­mistic people mostly live in low in­come countries, such as Nigeria, Af­ghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Peru and Bangladesh.
But in 2017, the scenario has significantly changed.
Today, Norway has unhorsed Denmark as the world’s happiest country while Algeria retains her first position in Africa, in the same report.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the ranking which was released on Monday, by the Sustainable Development Solu­tions Network (SDSN) as part of the UN World Happiness Day - March 20, assessed 155 countries by their happiness levels.
According to the report, Nige­ria advanced from 103 position in the world and maintained its stand as the 6th happiest country in Afri­ca as indicated by the 2016 happi­ness ranking.
Nigeria’s position showed that in spite of its current economic re­cession and security challenges, its citizens remained happy.
Algeria maintained its lead as the happiest country in Africa, fol­lowed by Mauritius, while crisis-torn Libya is surprisingly ranked third ahead of Morocco.
The report also indicated that Somalia, another crisis-torn na­tion, is Africa’s 5th happiest coun­try ahead of Nigeria and South Af­rica which ranked 7th.
Tunisia is placed at number eight; Egypt stands at nine and Si­erra Leone in the 10th position.
At the bottom 10 are Republic of Benin, Madagascar, South Su­dan, Liberia, Guinea, Togo, Rwan­da, Tanzania, Burundi and the most unhappy, Central African Republic.
On the global stage, Nor­way has trumped Denmark as the world’s happiest country in a report that calls on nations to build social trust and equality to improve well­being.
Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Finland, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Swe­den rounded out the top 10 coun­tries.
Germany was ranked 16th, the U.K. 19th and France 31st while U.S. dropped one spot to 14th.
According to the report, coun­tries in sub-Saharan Africa, along with Syria and Yemen were the least happy.
South Sudan, Liberia, Guinea, Togo, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi and Central African Republic were at the bottom.
NAN reports that the World Happiness Report, an initiative of the UN, is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness, aimed at influencing government policy.
The report reviews the state of happiness in the world and shows how the new science of happiness explains personal and national var­iations in happiness.
It reflects a new worldwide de­mand for more attention to happi­ness as criteria for government pol­icy.
The rankings are based on six factors — per capita gross domes­tic product, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, social support and absence of corruption in gov­ernment or business.
The lowest countries are typi­cally marked by low values in all six variables.