Nigeria has climbed to a troubling position on the new Global Organized Crime Index, coming eighth out of 193 countries in the 2025 rankings.
The score captures the scale and variety of criminal activities operating in the country — from illicit drugs and arms to trafficking, cybercrime and fraud — and measures both the strength of criminal networks and a nation’s counter operations against them.
The Global Organised Crime Index uses experts, hard data and country-level analysis to reach its conclusions.
The 2025 criminality table names Myanmar, Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador and Paraguay as the top five.
This is not a crime-per-capita list. It measures the depth and complexity of organised criminal markets, criminal actors, and state and societal resilience to those threats.
What The Ranking Captures — Criminal Markets And Weak Resilience
The index breaks criminality into components: the size and scope of criminal markets, the strength and behaviour of criminal actors, and the capacity of states and societies to resist criminal capture.
In Nigeria, fingers have pointed to thriving illicit markets for drugs, petroleum, human trafficking, cyber fraud, and arms. Nigeria’s large population, vast natural resources and porous borders make it attractive to organized groups.
Only recently the United States designated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” arising from the rising attacks against diverse communities, but these are not simple crime, they call under the category of terror.
However, all hopes are not lost. Nigeria and other African states have recently made gains in financial-crime controls, winning praise from international bodies for reforms to anti-money-laundering systems.
The Financial Action Task Force removed Nigeria from its “grey list” earlier this year — a sign that legal and regulatory fixes are improving.
But Nigeria’s response must be multi-pronged. Strengthening law enforcement, protecting whistleblowers, improving border controls, disrupting laundering channels, and investing in community are immediate priorities.
For opposition and citizens, the ranking is a call to pressure government to do more.
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