Nigeria is one of the least happy countries in the world.

The latest global report on happiest countries ranked Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, 95 out of 137 countries examined.

The study, based on six factors, including GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption, gave Nigeria a score of 4.981 out of 10.

Despite ranking poorly, Nigeria still performed better than Cameroon, Morocco, Ghana, Tunisia, and many other African nations.

According to the report, when a government prioritises happiness, it significantly impacts institutional practices.

“Once happiness is accepted as the goal of (the) government, this has other profound effects on institutional practices. Health, especially mental health, assumes even more priority, as does the quality of work, family life, and community,” the report noted.

For the sixth consecutive year, Finland has held the top spot thanks to a score that places it far above all other nations.

Denmark is still in second place, with a confidence interval between that position and fourth. The confidence regions for the remaining top twenty nations’ rankings span five to ten nations.

Due to its smaller sample size, Iceland ranked third, has a confidence range from second to seventh. Israel is currently in fourth place, up five spots from last year, with a confidence interval of second to eighth.

The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland occupied spots five through eight. New Zealand and Luxembourg completed the top ten.

According to the survey, Afghanistan (137) and Lebanon (136) continue to rank as the two least happy nations.

According to the rankings, Sierra Leone was ranked 135th, followed by Zimbabwe (134), Tanzania (129), Comoros (130), Malawi (131), Botswana (132), the Congo Democratic Republic (133), and Zambia (126).

The researchers concluded that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, people’s assessments of happiness had been “remarkably resilient,” with global averages from 2020 to 2022 equal to those in the years before the pandemic, from 2017 to 2019.