Poverty fuels insecurity and terrorism, says Atiku
Vice President Atiku Abubakar was in Britain recently where he made speeches at the House of Lords London and a luncheon held in his honour by the Britain - Nigeria Association.
NIGERIA'S contemporary history is inextricably linked with Britain. Our relationship, spanning the best part of the last century, has laid a strong foundation for understanding and cooperation. It is this historical link that makes me feel at home here and gives me the confidence to share with you some of my thoughts.
It is not a coincidence that the volume of trade between Nigeria and Britain is the largest for Nigeria compared to any other nation. In the past, we have not hesitated in fighting alongside the United Kingdom in defence of long cherished freedoms, and our fallen heroes are jointly remembered in places like Burma and similar battlefields. Our relationship with Britain, therefore, remains special, and we cherish it even as we move away from the past and forge ahead into the future.
Indeed, this relationship built on solid historical foundations as it were, is particularly valuable as it gives us an anchor for cooperation in many global fora. As the world continues to shrink, and nations continue to appreciate the inevitability of interdependence, we count very much on this understanding and special relations. Europe has long anticipated the need to come together. Africa has also seen the need to come together and the new African Union is promising not only to unite Africa but transform the continent into a critical partner with Europe in guaranteeing world peace and prosperity. The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) is Africa's agreed framework for peace and development in the coming decades, and friends of the continent are welcome as partners in realising the vision of NEPAD. The challenge before mankind is to ensure that in the new global economy, greater interdependency goes hand in hand with a more even distribution of prosperity. NEPAD is one vehicle for ensuring that this is achieved without much pain.
The link between world peace and prosperity is becoming increasingly inextricable, because one cannot be realised without the other. Experience has shown that insecurity in general, and terrorism in particular, flourishes in an environment of poverty and deprivation. This has meant that nations, particularly the developing world, must strive towards developing and uplifting the standard of living of the generality of their people. This exigency has placed a much greater burden on the leadership of the developing world to increase their productive capacities, generate employment, and ensure sustained growth of our economies. For only then can the world stem this growing tide of terrorism and the escalation of conflicts.
Nigeria has demonstrated its willingness to shoulder its own share of the global burden by expending over $10 billion in peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts in the West African sub-region alone in the recent past. But a policy of containment and pro-active peace building is clearly not enough to prevent new eruptions of conflict. Relieving the scourge of poverty, expanding the democratic space, and giving hope, constitute a necessary complementary strategy. The international community can play a decisive role in reducing poverty by opening up their markets to the products of the rural poor, amongst other measures, so that the poor too would participate and become stakeholders in the globalised economy, and see continuing global peace as critical for their survival.
In Nigeria, one of the major challenges of our democracy is how to address the decay in our infrastructure and social institutions, generate prosperity and restore hope to millions of men, women and children who, hitherto, see nothing but despair and a bleak future on their horizon. We have since embarked on a series of economic reforms aimed at eliminating waste, instilling prudence, and returning the country to the path of economic growth. The reforms will release the spirit of free and unfettered enterprise in our people and make the private sector the main engine of economic growth.
One of our major obstacles, however, has been our debt burden. We inherited a debt of nearly $30 billion, which, over two decades, grew from a number of small loans into this huge portfolio largely through penalties. In a democracy, we have a problem of ownership, because our people find it difficult to go on half a meal a day, or live on less than a dollar a day, to payoff debts that were acquired by dictators, and largely made up of penalties imposed for the failure of the same dictators to service the principal. This year, we dedicated a whole one third of our annual budget just to service this debt burden. No country can sustain this expenditure, certainly not a developing country that has to shoulder the burden of keeping the peace in a volatile sub-region.
The way forward will suggest a greater degree of openness and transparency about the principal actors who incurred the debt, and how much of it was ever expended on verifiable projects, on the side of the lenders; and a demand for public accountability before our national legislature and the citizens, by the signatories to such loans, on the side of the borrowers. Hopefully, this mutual assurance and accountability will enable the public to own a tolerable portion of the true debt, while the international community should, through ongoing initiatives, relieve the African continent and other heavily indebted nations of the rest of this intolerable burden holding them down.
In matters such as these, and in this venerable chambers amongst long time allies and friends, one must resist the temptation to be shy. I want to assure you that, as a nation we are committed to achieving the Millennium Development Goal within the context of our national development plan; the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS). But to help us achieve these goals, our development partners must play their part in halting the net transfer of resources from the poorest continent in the world, Africa, to the developed economies. Much as we created institutions to fight corruption and entrench accountability and transparency in the public sector, our citizens want to see improved infrastructure, basic social services, and an improvement in their standard of living. Our efforts at fighting crime, preventing conflict and securing the environment for investment will come to naught, if we cannot provide a functional education and the strong private-public sector partnership required to create employment and the prospect of a better future. Debt repayments drain away resources for these. The age-old English idiom, a stitch in time saves nine, aptly prescribes a solution to this problem.
For a fraction of the resources that the developed world is compelled to spend in emergency relief when disaster strikes due to under investment in various sectors, in emergency food aid when crops fail, and in response to epidemics that sweep through malnourished and diseased populations, Africa's debt could be written off, the private sector strengthened through capacity building and partnerships, markets developed through knowledge and skill transfers, and social services and infrastructure optimised by foreign investment in newly privatised public utilities. These infusions into Africa, combined with a sustained mobilisation of the natural and human talents of the continent, will put Africa back on the path of sustained economic growth and development, away from its present course of collision with poverty, hunger, disease, insecurity and human disasters.
In this respect, I wish to commend the efforts of her Majesty's government for doubling development assistance this year. I also wish to commend the efforts of Prime Minister Tony Blair, for creating a 'Commission for Africa', which was recently inaugurated. We similarly applaud the United Kingdom's push for debt cancellation at the recent G8 Summit. These are brave and timely initiatives that will go a long way in changing the fortunes of the developing world for good, and making the world more peaceful and, therefore, prosperous place to live in. It is our hope and prayer that together we can strive to succeed in this endeavour to make the world both peaceful and prosperous, and preserve a common heritage and shared values in an increasingly globalised world.
