The United Nation’s first World Happiness Report places Nigerians in the 100th position.
The United Nation (UN)’s first comprehensive survey on national mood has rated Nigerians as the 100th happiest people on earth. South Africans and Namibians, according to the study Known as World Happiness Report, are happier than Nigerians. South African are rated 90th. Namibians occupy the 97th slot.
The new report comes about two years after Nigeria was described in a 2010 Gallup global poll as having the “happiest people on earth”.
The 53-country Gallup poll rated Nigerians at 70 points for optimism. Britain scored a deeply pessimistic -44. The 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. Twenty countries scored low on per capita income and hope for 2011, including Russia and a number of eastern and central Asian states, plus Colombia and Ecuador. Four countries – Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Switzerland – were high on both income and optimism.
However, the Happiness Ranking report ranked Denmark at the top of the scale, ahead of Finland, Norway, the Netherlands and Canada, Britain and the United States.
Costa Rica, Israel and the United Arab Emirates citizens are declared happier than Britons who occupied the 18th slot.
At the bottom of the scale is Togo, which was declared the nation of the least happy citizens in the world, behind a long list of other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
The report, which covered 156 countries, largely found that the world’s wealthiest nations were the happiest, on a sliding scale. The report found that money does not just buy happiness.
The report identified political freedom, strong social networks and an absence of corruption as explaining well-being differences between the top and bottom countries. It also discovered that mental and physical health, a person to count on, job security and stable families are also important in whether or not to be happy.
The 158-page report claims the world has become a ‘little happier’ in the past thirty years as a result of rising living standards.
A prominent development economist at Columbia University in New York, who edited the World Happiness Report, Jeffery Sachs said happiness could be achieved independent of economic well-being as measured by Gross National Product.
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They got this one wrong. They should be using the number of suicides, shooting rampages and divorces as indices for the ranking. Must they take everything away from the third world countries? How can an independent authourity rank us number 1 2years ago and they come up 100th. Well, I guess that means 1st with 2 zeroes.
ReplyDeleteI like the first comment, i cannot agree more...:D! though,they are right that happiness is achievable independent of wealth and economic well being
ReplyDeleteHappiness has much to do with your expectations of the future - what the future holds for you or for your society as a whole. Even if the past or present has not been too palatable, what the future holds counts more on what makes one happy. Can Nigerians reasonably expect some future changes that can add to their well being? Or do we see a future that is doomed? Do we trust that the present set of leaders on whose shoulders our future "depends" know the way to where they purport to be going? Answers to those questions and many more will surely add significantly to how happy we can ever be as individuals and as a nation.
ReplyDeleteI agreed totally with comments, Nigerians are one of the most happy people on earth till today, what is happening in Nigeria is just a sectional thing which we always put behinds us in few seconds. A poor man in Nigeria is internally happy with himself, though may externally look angry against the Govt, but in totality, you can't take it away from us. We are happy people and very optimistic.
ReplyDeleteI totally disagrees with your view. How can you say a poor man is happy when history has shown these year that majorities commit suicide because of poverty. Is it because you are not affect. Come to thing of the live story of a man with three children who kill himself because poverty these year and all others. The first commentator has made good points.
ReplyDeletewe are happy people but still tears in our eyes,even the picture prove it right.....blessing
ReplyDeleteAre we really up to that position, please check the rating because Nigerians are only suffering and smiling at the same time, reason with me, the roads are bad, no adequate electricity,no pipe bone water, education standard is zero, the leaders are all corrupt.etc
ReplyDeleteu are just too correct all are corrupt especially 4rm my state delta
ReplyDelete