Nigerian Corruption

Here's why scepticism over the world-changing impact of yet more aid and debt forgiveness is thoroughly justified.

The scale of the task facing Tony Blair in his drive to help Africa was laid bare yesterday when it emerged that Nigeria's past rulers stole or misused £220 billion.

That is as much as all the western aid given to Africa in almost four decades. The looting of Africa's most populous country amounted to a sum equivalent to 300 years of British aid for the continent.

The figures, compiled by Nigeria's anti-corruption commission, provide dramatic evidence of the problems facing next month's summit in Gleneagles of the G8 group of wealthy countries which are under pressure to approve a programme of debt relief for Africa.

Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, has spoken of a new Marshall Plan for Africa. But Nigeria's rulers have already pocketed the equivalent of six Marshall Plans. After that mass theft, two thirds of the country's 130 million people - one in seven of the total African population - live in abject poverty, a third is illiterate and 40 per cent have no safe water supply.

[...]

Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, set up three years ago, said that £220 billion was "squandered" between independence from Britain in 1960 and the return of civilian rule in 1999.

[...]

The stolen fortune tallies almost exactly with the £220 billion of western aid given to Africa between 1960 and 1997. That amounted to six times the American help given to post-war Europe under the Marshall Plan. (emphasis added)

I can't close this post without including the following excerpt, which goes to show that lots of sensible Nigerians understand all too well something a lot of foreign know-it-alls seem incapable of grasping.

The G8 has refused to cancel Nigeria's loans, despite writing off the debts of 14 other African countries this month.

Prof Pat Utomi, of Lagos Business School, said that was the right decision. "Who is to say you won't see the same behaviour again if it is all written off?" he said.

Utomi's views are hardly extraordinary, as they're commonplace amongst all Nigerians I know (or perhaps we're all just a bunch of neocon stooges without even knowing it; thank God for the great white liberal fathers to set us on the right path ...). Without an honest, hard-headed look at the roots of the difficulties which plague the continent, Mr. Blair and his supporters will have their work cut out for them ensuring that the past doesn't repeat itself.

The intensity of corruption in Nigeria is mostly due to the fact that there's been so much more to loot in that country, as the mechanisms which encourage large-scale public theft are pretty much the same continent-wide. Any lasting solution to African poverty will have to start with the realization that the primary unit of loyalty for most of the continent's peoples remains the states (not "tribes") which preceeded the European scramble for colonies, and as such, "public-spiritedness" in the highest sense simply does not exist.

PS: BBC correspondent Joseph Winter is one of the few foreign writers I've seen who understands how ethnic rivalries facilitate corruption. I understand why Westerners would prefer to gloss over the whole ethnicity business, given just how much blood has been shed over it in the last century, but any "solution" that refuses to come to terms with where most ordinary Africans' primary loyalties lie is destined to fail - and as places like Liberia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, the Congo, Rwanda and Zimbabwe (and even Nigeria between 1967 and 1970) show, pretending the problem doesn't exist isn't working too well anyway.

Comments

[Chuckles]

[...What I find difficult to understand is that European minorities were able to mantain those territories as unitary regions but the modern african state is not able to do, at least, the same...]

Err; because the Europeans maintained these territories through an uncompromising dedication to force and racial theories which established the social hierarchy in the said States? And because the States in question can ill afford to do the same since they lack the military prowess at the disposal of the Europeans and even if they didnt, they would have to contend with ethnicities that had access to the same prowess on the black market, hence civil war?
You also seem to forget that the reason the Europeans left was because it was beginning to prove impossible to manage these States according to the doctrine of the times.

[...and I note that if the notion of "loyalty to family" is at the core of the problem - and I believe it is! - then we cannot expect that a simple redesigning of states borders along ethnic lines will bring a end to the problem. The new states will find themselves struggling with the same problem even if at a minor scale. Families are not ethnicities!...]

I dont buy this. I dont expect a Nigerian State to work if the Igbos in it dont want to be part of the State. Why shouldnt I expect a Biafra Republic to work if all hands are on deck? You seem to forget that it is quite possible say, for Ijeshas and Ijebus - which are both ancient Yoruba States to accept a Yoruba Republic simply on the basis of common culture, ancestry, marriage, religion, mythology, etc and reject a Nigerian State simply because they dont want to be ruled by some pesky Northerners. You understimitate how much unacknowledged familial feelings shape the course of Nations. The simple fact is that the denominator that provides a basis for greater mutualism is usually the more stable one. For instance, Japan did have warring States, yet, a common denominator emerged to provide the basis for modern Japan. Even today, Kanto people and Kyoto people may not get along every well, but you dont see them ripping each others throats out. There is a more stable common denominator.
Besides, the correlation of ethnic fragmentation to underdevelopment is simply to strong and presistent globally to be discounted.
Add to that numerous news reports, statements by ethnic leaders, a history of civil war, encounters in schools, anecdotes in popular culture and one has to wonder why your position is what it is.

[...Possibly through war this scenario would mean an halt to progress in the whole region of West Africa maybe for decades, or so they think!...]

Nonsense. The glorification of Nigeria is the stupidest response on the International scene to African realities. Nigeria is not as important as people make it out to be. African progress has got nothing to do with Nigeria. It is this attitude that has in fact justified some of the worst excesses in Abuja - the notion that Nigeria is some kind of big brother with a manifest destiny in Africa. Nothing could be further from the truth - and greedy imperial anima inform the opposite. Like I said before, Nigeria means only one thing: OIL. Apart from that, that country would collapse at the drop of a pin. One only needs to surf around the Internet and look at Igbo discussion boards, or Yoruba and Hausa discussion boards, which host relatively privileged diasporic members of these ethnies to realize how little Nigeria means to these people; except as a cash cow to be bled to death through Oil rents.
Bottom Line: There are very few pyschological Nigerians and the creation of psychological Nigerians is a daunting prospect - which may likely involve further shedding of blood. Why risk this, when the alternative, a reasonable approach to self determination is looming on the horizon?

[Jim]

"One only needs to surf around the Internet and look at Igbo discussion boards, or Yoruba and Hausa discussion boards, which host relatively privileged diasporic members of these ethnies to realize how little Nigeria means to these people;"

Some of this stuff would make a stone blush, but the shit on the Tamil boards about Northerners (Aryans) more than matches it, yet somehow they manage to stay together. What is it? Habit?

India used to be a charity case back in the 50's and 60's - famines all the time, a complete mess. Indian official corruption is legend, but apparently not on the scale of African corruption. So what is their secret?

[Chuckles]

Well - Nigeria has "stayed together" also hasnt it? And I believe Bangladesh outranks Nigeria on TI reports. Fact is there are more psychological Indians (by numbers and proportion) than there are pyschological Nigerians.

[Abiola Lapite]

"Some of this stuff would make a stone blush, but the shit on the Tamil boards about Northerners (Aryans) more than matches it, yet somehow they manage to stay together. What is it? Habit?"

Have you considered that the peoples of India might share a lot more in common culturally and historically? Geography can be decieving: the fact is that Nigeria harbors more ethnic division within its borders than India, and a *heck* of a lot more than all of Northern Eurasia than all the way from the Atlantic to Vladivostock. Besides, the "united" India you speak of is the self-same one which endured a bloody partition and a ethnic insurgencies which have resulted in the murders of both Indira and Rajiv Gandhi.

[carib]

well, damn!

What's the solution? Just cut off aid to nigeria altogether?

[Abiola Lapite]

Believe it or not, but it hasn't been Western aid keeping Nigerians alive over the last 45 years.

[Jim]

"Have you considered that the peoples of India might share a lot more in common culturally and historically?"

That's what I was getting at. Inida is an organic unit. Islam has managed to alienate people form each other even where they speak the same languages
Bengalis speak the same language on both sides of their border, and Hindi and Urdu are variants of one language. The point is that India shows no real signs of spliting any further along another of its fault lines because it is at bottom an organic whole. And Nigeria isn't.