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New Page 15
A tall order for Obasanjo
TONY OKERAFOR
•Continued from last week
FOR the fact
that the G. Eight leaders and their African guests had met and parleyed behind
closed-doors, we never actually get to hear first hand what it was that our
president had said to the club of the "big boys", or how forceful and strenuous
his case for debt relief was. But, it’s on record that, shortly after the submit
ended, Mr President had declared himself to be ‘pleased with what the leaders in
Cananascus have come up with". For the sake of good reason, let’s be contented
with one view, a widely-circulated one among some Nigerian diplomats and
journalists, that Chief Obasanjo, being a political leader, had only seen
himself inclined to agree with other political leaders, and couldn’t for God’s
sake, have meant those remarks for the domestic audience back home in Nigeria.
Otherwise, I would have safely concluded
that our president has been fighting a lost battle, and knows it, but, will not
give up because of political expediency. In truth, and with due respect to Mr.
President and his tireless effort at winning debt relief for us, there is a big
question-mark over this seemingly relentless crusade. Not surprisingly, the
people who are asking the questions are the same people to whom we’re directing
our impassioned appeals. They ask us, and must surely have been putting the same
queries to Mr. President: do you really need debt relief? What has our president
been saying to them in return? Let’s attempt to hazard a guess, because, as we
all know, political leaders, who are the "biggest" "diplomatic" diplomats of our
time, don’t always speak openly or plainly. It’s expected, for instance, that
Mr. President would have stressed it before President Bush. President Chiraq,
Chancellor Schroeder, Prime Minister Keizumi or Prime Minister Blair that our
debt burden, which currently stands at something in excess of 32 billion U.S.
Dollars, is not only cripping the economic development of the country, but, is
equally capable of threatening our fledgling democracy. Perhaps, Mr. President
has rung it in Tony Blair’s ears that Britain, which currently has more
investments in our country than any other country can boast of needs to work for
a democratic, prosperous and stable Nigeria - a Nigeria which isn’t grinding to
a halt under the burden of debt. Nigeria is also a major importer of Japanese
goods, and it’s likely that, when in 2001, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s
predecessor visited Abuja, Mr. President had urged him in that direction: namely
to give the country some concessions on debt relief.
How about America? Isn’t Nigeria of any
strategic importance to Washington? The answer is "yes", it is. Haven’t Obasanjo
and Bush, or Clinton before him, yet established a close enough friendship or
working relationship for the Nigerian leader to have won the ear of his U.S.
counterpart? They probably have. After all, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush have each
come here, and I don’t believe the president of the most powerful and richest
nation on earth makes it his business to visit each and every country around the
world, just for the sake of it.
However, Nigeria is a very influential
country in Africa, and particularly over the last five years, it has been
fortunate to have a leadership whose power and influence has been used to
positive effect in the region and beyond. Whether some people like it on not,
this country has been the leading factor of stability on our continent. Of far
greater consequence to America is the fact that we can, and indeed, will become
a big alternative source of oil supply to the world’s largest consumer of the
black gold. It’s only reasonable to expect Mr. President to try to press that
point home, and it’s equally reasonable to expect a relatively pragmatic chap
like Mr. Bush not to overlook that fact.
Added to that, we’re Africa’s largest oil
exporter, and the relative peace and stability we have been able to achieve and
maintain in a post-military rule Nigeria is because of our small success with
democracy - no matter how fledgling many people may find it. The Americans can
be made to realize that grinding poverty isn’t a dividend of democracy, and that
it’s also not in their own long-term interest not to help such a populous and
important ally as ourselves with real assistance by way of debt relief of some
sort. In fact, I cannot tell, and one wonders if there are too many Nigerians
outside the Obasanjo administration who actually know, whether, beyond the
confines of politics and diplomacy, the Nigerian government has been able to
register its co-operation with America in the U.S. - led three-year-old global
war against terrorism.
How about the figures and the statistics?
What do they actually say about the plight of the average Nigerian and this
seemingly ill-fated campaign by our government to get the richer and the large
monetary institutions which they finance, to reduce some of the debts owed to
them? Back home in Nigeria, Obasanjo’s subordinates don’t tell us so, but,
whenever they travel abroad, they and their boys are heard to make the salient
point that most ordinary citizens of this country are living in abject
poverty-fending for themselves on less than one U.S. Dollar a day. We may be
oil-rich, but, two decades of unmitigated kleptocracy and other forms of
corruption and mismanagement, under military rule, is a big factor in the
devastation of our economy and the impoverishment of our people. It’s not clear
to anyone outside the Obasanjo administration whether Mr. President, as some
people are speculating, is clamouring to have us categorized alongside these
countries within and outside Africa as coming under the HIPC group-the group of
the highly-indebted poor countries. However, we all know that our country has
been ranked by a U.N. conducted survey as falling among the world’s thirteen
poorest nations despite our oil-wealth.
I want to say, with due respect, that
arguments such as these don’t seem to be helping our cause. With the respect, I
also want to stress two other important points: namely, (1) that none of these
folks whether Bush or Blair or Berloskoni or Martin (Canada) or Chiraq or
Koizumi or Schroeder is willing to come out publicly to identify with the cause.
(2) The real people that matter don’t even
want to hear of it, and in truth, not enough is being done, if at all anything
can realistically be done, bot bring them onboard.
Who are the real people? You may ask. They
are the parliaments of these creditor-nations. Some of us may need to be
educated on this. Mr. Bush can run foreign policy the way he likes; that’s not
in doubt. But, it’s the U.S Congress, consisting of the Senate and the House of
Representatives, that control the purse-strings. One wonders why it is that Mr.
President, Uncle Sege, that is, doesn’t want to let go. Someone said as much the
other day, and he tried to make this rather attractive point, that President
Obasanjo may have decided that now must be the right time to try to get his
friend, Mr. Bush, to expend some of the political capital he earned in last
month’s re-election on this debt relief issue. Mr. Bush’s party, the
Republicans, do not only control both chambers of Congress, but, during the
November 2 exercise, the Republicans increased their majority in the two houses.
It’s normal, under the circumstances, to expect a strong-willed person like
George W. Bush to be able to bring some leverage to bear on his country men in
the legislature. but, the multi-million naira question is this: is the man
conviced, if not fully committed, to the cause he’s been asked to fight? If the
answer is "yes", then, perhaps, he’s only waiting for the ideal time before he
comes public with it.
But, if, as some of us have suspected all
along, the answer is "no!" then, we might as well leave matters as they stand,
because Mr. President, Chief Obasanjo, cannot and will not speak or appeal to
the legislators over the head of their president and commander-in-chief.
Although some of us are sceptical, and
have turned increasingly so over the last one or two years, one must also admit
that, judging by Olusegun Obasanjo’s antecedents, it might be rather hasty, even
now, to fault him on this one. But, having said that, we must be able to tell
ourselves the truth, nevertheless; and the truth is this: the omens don’t look
good at all. On every single list that the nations of the Paris Club and others
have drawn up, Nigeria hadn’t received any mention. Besides, our "friends" in
the executive branches of the governments of the industrialized nations are
thoroughly unsympathetic to our cause.
What we’re increasingly being told is that
there is no way we can realistically expect to be ranked on the same scale as a
very poor country like say, Niger or Mali or Haiti, when we’ve had and still
have so much oil money staring at us in the face. The truth is, powerful forces
are campaigning well and hard against any kind of debt relief or forgiveness for
us. To be honest, their arguments are also receiving good heed in important
places. They say, unlike other sub-Saharan countries, such as, Zambia, Uganda,
Malawi, Bourkina Fasso, Liberia and some in the African Great Lakes, Nigeria
won’t be needing large sums of financial aid. What we really need, they say, is
more development assistance. They are not sympathetic to our own side of the
story that, our huge revenue from oil notwithstanding, the country is still home
to more people living in abject poverty than anywhere else in the world, except
China and India. Apparently, they are also not swayed by the contention that
two-thirds of our people can hardly be sure of three square meals per day, and
when we tell them that ninety per cent of Nigerians have access to just ten per
cent of our wealth, they remain adamant.
Why is this? Well, the answer or answers
are not far-fetched. Look! Nigeria is not just oil-rich, but, even the federal
government has conceded the fact that, over the last three decades alone, our
country has earned something in excess of 360 billion United States Dollars. So,
when we talk to them about poverty or the need for them to forgive some of the
money we owe to them, they feel, although not altogether wrongly, that, despite
all our troubles, the economic crisis that we face are fundamentally structural.
In other words, they are the bye-products of corruption and mismanagement or
poor planning than anything else.
As a result, one sees Mr. President facing
a daunting task. Clearly, any real reduction of our foreign debt would help free
up a lot of hard currency, which is currently been directed towards servicing
the interests that have accrued from such debts. The problem he faces now is
that the argument relating to how decades of army rule have impoverished the
many, while enriching the few, is hardly holding water any longer in many
western capitals. What one reads and hears day in, day out, in the powerful
print and electronic media of the Western World is how the Obasanjo
administration had gone beyond its fifth year in office, and still, there are
just a few tangible signs of improvement, and many indications that things are
getting harder for ordinary Nigerians.
On a final note, I want to say that one is
not too sure whether our government didn’t shoot itself in the foot when it
authorized, or should I say "allowed", Mr. President to lean our neighbours
Ghana and Sao Tome and Principe some 45 million Dollars, which you and I know
will surely be written of as bad debts. I also feel, and most sincerely, too,
that President Obasanjo and his group could have helped themselves and the
nation the more if they had been much more transparent about, first, how much
they actually recouped, and second, how they have spent parts of the
Dollar-billions which we’re told the late Abacha, his family and cronies had
stolen from the national treasury. I don’t believe, one bit, that a nation whose
leaders, whether former president, could loot its treasury to such a degree can
find too many willing creditors who are willing to forgive their debts. It’s a
fact. Try as they may, it’s not very likely that Mr. President and his team will
be able to persuade the parliamentarians of Europe, America and Japan that the
recent Transparency International report that ranks our country among the
world’s two most corrupt nations didn’t "take into account the long strides
taken by this administration towards the elimination of corruption in our
country."
•Concluded.
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