By Anwuli Oseloka
According to the annual world’s happiest report released on the 20th of March 2024, Nigeria was ranked the world’s 102nd happiest country with 4.881 pointsreleased by the United Nations out of the 143 countries surveyed.
This can be seen as a drop in seven places compared to last year when Nigeria was ranked the 95th happiest country in the world. Presently, Nigeria is witnessing a lot of economic challenges from the removal of fuel subsidy to the foreign exchange saga coupled with the high prices of items in the market. All these and more can account for a reduction of happiness in the lives of citizens.
The annual report incorporates a country’s GDP, life expectancy, perceptions of freedom, quality of life, high human development index, Economic prosperity, cultural richness and identity to provide insights into the unique needs of individual nations.
With the downward ranking, it only means Nigeria’s economy needs to be diversified, focusing on key sectors including tourism, manufacturing, financial services, and agriculture not just the oil and gas sector to improve the country’s GDP.
Also, the Nigerian government should implement various social welfare programs with the aim of supporting vulnerable populations, including healthcare, education, housing, and social assistance schemes. These alone can improve standard of living and make more Nigerians happy.
Finland remained the world’s happiest country for a 7th straight year in the report published.
John Helliwell, emeritus professor of economics at the Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia, and a founding editor of the World Happiness Report said ‘And you find out Finland’s pretty rich in all of those things, like wallets being returned if they’re dropped in the street, people helping each other day in and day out, very high quality and universally distributed health and education opportunities — so everyone more or less comes out of the starting gate the same.”
For the first time since the report was published more than a decade ago, the United States and Germany were not among the 20 happiest nations, coming in 23rd and 24th respectively.
In turn, Costa Rica and Kuwait entered the top 20 at 12 and 13. The report noted the happiest countries no longer included any of the world’s largest countries.
The report identifies the top 10 happiest countries on the continent, with Libya leading the list with a happiness score of 5.866.
Below is a table showing the Top 10 Happiest countries in Africa with their world ranking. Nigeria is among the top 20 happiest Countries in Africa from the ranking and points.
| Rank | Country | Score | Global rank |
| 1 | Libya | 5.866 | 66 |
| 2 | Mauritius | 5.816 | 70 |
| 3 | South Africa | 5.422 | 83 |
| 4 | Algeria | 5.364 | 85 |
| 5 | Congo (Brazzaville) | 5.221 | 89 |
| 6 | Mozambique | 5.216 | 90 |
| 7 | Gabon | 5.106 | 95 |
| 8 | Ivory Coast | 5.080 | 96 |
| 9 | Guinea | 5.023 | 97 |
| 10 | Senegal | 4.969 | 99 |
With this report, it only shows the Nigerian government needs to improve the quality of life and standard of living of its citizens to rise higher on happiest countries rankings.
A hungry man is not a happy man. Safe to say Nigerians are mostly hungry for economic, healthcare, educational and other infrastructural improvements.
