This happiness index is dubious

MAHMUD JEGA VIEW FROM THE GALLERY

United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network and your partners, this 2026 World Happiness Report which you published to mark theInternational Day of Happiness (IDH) on March 20, it is very dubious. You listed 147 countries in order of citizens’ happiness, which you said were based on Gallup World Poll’s 3-year average of life evaluations. Your index is obviously rigged to favour Western countries, their planted racial offshoots in the Pacific and their imperialist co-travelers, and to claim that their citizens are happier than other people around the world. For where?

I am not necessarily angry with you because you said Nigeria ranks 106^th in your so-called happiness index. Who did you ask in Nigeria? Most probably you asked a hard-pressed urban agbero, an Internally Displaced Person in an IDP camp, a motorist who just heard at a petrol station that the price has been adjusted upwards, a man who heard that his multi-billion-naira pipeline security contract is about to be revoked, a man whose job in enforcing Monday Sit at Homes is about to end, or even, a jilted lover in Kano who just heard that his kolanut basket was used to marry off his fiancée to another man. Which happiness did you expect there?

Otherwise, who told you that the men and women living in rural Nigeria, who have only maize and garri to eat, who wear the same set of cloth for weeks on end, who sleep on hard mats without mattresses, who may look unhappy to you but are actually happy, only praying to God for the rains to fall and for Him to reward them in the Hereafter? All the youths you see in rural Nigeria, running around in farms, doing bare-hand fishing in rivers and lakes, playing football in dirt fields, hunting birds and rats, lifting up stones to catch scorpions, cutting wild grass to sell in the market to make some pocket money, or even the young pastoral folks whose biggest happiness is to see their cattle grazing in green fields and drinking clean water in ponds, did you ask them if they are happy? Even King Charles said last week that Nigerians no dey carry last; how can we carry last in this your dubious happiness index?

You alleged in your report that Finns, the people of Finland, are the world’s happiest folks for the ninth year in a row, closely followed by citizens of its Nordic neighbours Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Something must be wrong with your index and its methodology. These descendants of Vikings must have rigged the index in their own favour. Otherwise, how could anyone be happy to live in countries covered almost entirely by ice and snow, the whole landscape so white that it can blind you, the sun not visible for up to six months a year and then it appears and refuses to set for another six months? You, Finns, ever afraid that Russian troops will invade you once they finish with Ukraine, which was why you recently run helter skelter to join NATO, how can you be the world’s happiest people?

After rigging all the Nordic countries to the top of the index, you made— surprise, surprise— Israel the 8^th happiest country in the world! With all the Iranian missiles raining down on Tel Aviv, with Hamas still in charge in Gaza, with Hezbollah regrouping in Lebanon, with the Houthis about to resume action in the Red Sea, with your ultra-Orthodox Jews, 14 percent of the population, dodging compulsory military service, with your Prime Minister wanted internationally for war crimes while he is standing trial at home for receiving bribes, and he is forever launching wars to evade trial, and with some US senators saying their country’s military aid to Israel should end this decade? With all these, you are still number 8 in happiness?  

Slightly lower down, you said Mexico is the 10^th happiest country in the world. With all the drug cartels and all the drug warfare on its streets? If these descendants of Aztecs are so happy, why are so many Mexicans trying to cross the Rio Grande and old man Donald Trump is building a wall to keep them out? Even here in Nigeria, why were some people gloating, that our brother Reno Omokri has been posted as Ambassador to Mexico, there to meet with top drug warlord El Mencho’s men?

Further down your list, you alleged that Australia, which calls itself “The Land Down Under,” is the 11^th happiest country on Earth. What? When one kick from a Great Grey Kangaroo can send an Aussie away forever, and there are 50 million kangaroos roaming around? Which Australian will be happy to wander into the Outback, with so many poisonous snakes swirling around, or to go near a creek, where the Saltwater crocodile, the world’s largest reptile since the dinosaurs, is waiting to grab a meal? How can any Australian be happy to visit the small island of Tasmania, there to meet the Tasmanian Devil, described in our primary school textbooks as having “sharp teeth and a vicious temper”?

Right under Australia, you listed its fellow traveler New Zealand as the 12^th happiest country. For where? Apart from Maori dance, what else makes New Zealanders happy? Their once vaunted cricket team, the All Blacks, are less fancied now. If New Zealand is such a happy place, why was their former prime minister Jacinta Adern recently seen shopping for a house in Sydney, and she permanently immigrated to Australia? 60,000 other New Zealanders also immigrated last year. In Nigeria today, we have five living former Heads of State but none of them has immigrated to Togo, Ghana or Dubai, so which country is happier?

You listed Canada as the 18^th happiest country in the world. You mean, Canadians are eagerly looking forward to becoming the 51^st state of the United States [or maybe 52^nd, if Greenland is admitted before them]? When the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are finally absorbed into the FBI, what happens to their 90 carefully bred ponies? Toronto Blue Jays baseball team, you will be placed under the care of New York Yankees, San Francisco Giants or Chicago Rex Sox. All that your vast Northwest Territories will be rid of polar bears and wolves because Trump will send US oil companies to start drilling. I am sure all that makes you Canadians very happy.

You said Saudi Arabia is the 32^nd happiest country in the world. Are you trying to bribe MBS to reward you with an oil well just beyond the reach of Iranian drones? Otherwise, you Westerners, for many decades you painted Saudi Arabia as a very unhappy place which lacks liberal democracy, abuses human rights and restricts religious freedom. In the 1990s when I attended the UN’s annual Human Rights Summit in Geneva, some Saudi dissidents ran around sharing leaflets saying “Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy with no Constitution, no political parties, no elected parliament, no independent judiciary, no trade unions and no regular elections.” What has changed? Is it because it pledged to invest trillions of dollars in the US economy, and you are hoping to bribe MBS to “normalise relations with Israel” even while the Palestine Question is not resolved?

Wonder of wonders, in your rigged index, you put Russia as 66^th and China as 68^th happiest countries in the world. If Russians are happy to be drafted into the former Red Army to go off fight in Ukraine, then why are you Westerners sending German Leopard battle tanks to go kill them on the battlefield? You mean, Russians living in Siberia told you they are happy to be catching salmon, hunting reindeer and dodging Siberian tigers? Isn’t that a similar lifestyle to Nigerien Tuaregs dodging sandstorms and herding goats in oases, yet you put Niger Republic as number 110 in your so-called index? The Chinese that you put as number 68^th, when for decades you alleged that Communist one-party rule is oppressive, yet they built in one generation an economy that is about to overtake America’s, are you now trying to bribe Mr. Xi not to copy Donald Trump’s example and bomb Taiwan, when he even has a better historical, geographical and political reason to do so?

In order to disgrace Africa, you placed South Africa as number 95^th on your so-called happiness index, behind Laos, Nepal, Albania and Tajikistan. You must have conducted this poll among disgruntled English-speaking Whites that Donald Trump said are being persecuted in South Africa and he took them off to US. As evidence of persecution, he displayed an old picture of a militia attack in Congo Brazzaville! How do you explain that 12,000 of those Whites, including thousands of them in the US, recently checked their citizenship status in preparation for a permanent return to South Africa? Isn’t that proof enough that they are happier in Africa than in Trump’s America, your propaganda notwithstanding?