March 15, 2018

Nigeria has been ranked the 91 happiest nation of the world, and fifth in Africa in the 2018 World Happiness Report.

News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the survey was released on Wednesday by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) as part of the UN World Happiness Day- March 20.

SDSN is part of the UN’s response to the outcome of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20), and its mandate to work towards a post-2015 development agenda.

The 2018 report assessed 156 countries happiness levels 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.

As indicated by the report, Nigerians seems to be happier now, as the country moved up from its previous position of 95 at the global level, and sixth in African in 2017.

In 2016, Nigeria stood at 103 position in the World and sixth in Africa respectively in the annual global happiness index.

Nigeria’s position showed that despite its economic and security challenges, its citizens remained happy.

Mauritius is now the happiest country in Africa, followed by crisis-torn Libya, Algeria and Morocco respectively.

The report also indicated that Somalia, another crisis-torn nation, is Africa’s sixth happiest country ahead of Cameroun, Gaborn and South Africa which ranked seven, eight and nine respectively.

On the global stage, Finland is now the happiest country to stay in the world, displacing Norway which topped the index in 2017.

Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia rounded out the top 10 countries respectively.

The United States happiness ranking landed in 18th place, dropping four spots from last year.

Germany stands in 15th place, United Kingdom maintains Japan in 54th place ,and Russia and China are at positions respectively.

According to the survey, people in Burundi are unhappiest with their lives, followed by Central African Republic (155), South Sudan (154), Tanzania (153) and Yemen (152).

Liberia, Rwanda, Malawi and Haiti and Syria were among the bottom 10 unhappy countries.

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.