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Should they cancel �our�
debt?
By MajiriOghene Bob
Do you think that because
President Bush meets with leaders of the G-8 group today (our Independence
Day) to consider a �forgiveness� of debts African nations owe
international finance institutions, a breath of fresh air at last, is in
the pipeline? I do not think we should be too hopeful and smug that
Nigeria will be among the thirty poorest nations that this group is
expected to give a 100 per cent debt reprieve. The real reason President
Bush is interested in debt cancellation for now is because Iraq is
involved. It is said that Saddam Hussein borrowed a lot of money from this
group of shylock nations which he spent on the purchase of an arsenal for
the development of weapons of mass destruction and the construction of his
mansions and palaces. Despite the fact that other G8 members are not
comfortable with this Bush-move, Canada has gone right ahead to cancel
debts owed her by Ghana, Senegal and Ethiopia. Nigeria was not
considered.
Nigeria may not have been
considered because she cannot in so many respects be seen as poor. Nigeria
still is in the �gowonic phase� of her life where she has so much money
but is hardly aware what to do with her wealth. Sometimes too, Nigeria has
the sort of money that usually is �killed and divided� as part of what has
been dubbed �the dividend of democracy�. The people who will sit down to
decide if Nigeria qualifies to be forgiven her debt already see Nigeria as
being too rich to be poor and too poor to be rich. It is said that Nigeria
owes these international finance institutions (IFI) something close to $34
billion and another $50 billion stashed away in private banks in these G8
countries by former military leaders.
There are two adjectives that
have been used to describe the debts we incurred mostly during the
military years. One, the coalition of NGOs who have consistently
campaigned for the cancellation of debts owed the G8 countries refer to
these debts as �dettes odieuses�, odious debts. For a debt to
be �odious�, it is a debt �incurred by a despotic power not for the needs
of the state, but to strengthen its despotic regime and to repress the
population that fights against it�(Alexander Sack: 1927). Two, for those
of us who have complained that our president is not adroit with his
manipulation of language, surely we must eat our words now because he
struck a bulls-eye with a description of these debts as �dubious debts�.
The real reasons these debts are dubious and odious is that the people who
gave these monies out to Nigerian dictators gave out these monies with the
knowledge that these monies were taken and spent without the permission of
the Nigerian people. Those who gave military dictators like Saddam
Hussein, Sanni Abacha and Babangida loans knew that these are people who
needed the extra cash to maintain their iron grip on illegitimacy and
boost their superiority ego. And I have this gut feeling that the
international finance bodies who generously gave these loans to these
despots knew that most of these monies will find their way back to their
own banks somehow. If this is not the case, how come we are said to owe
$34 billion and another $50 billion is in private banks in most of these
G8 countries?
One thing seems clear to me
here and now, and it is this: that Nigeria as a state and Nigerians as a
people do not really owe the G8 fellows a dime. What the true position is,
is that there probably exists some sort of conspiracy between those who
lent these monies and those who took the monies. There probably was a deal
struck between the lender and the recipient, even though the detail of
their deal is unknown to us.
Now, even though we are
considered to be a highly indebted poor country and that we owe the east
and the west a lot of money, are there no conditions spelt out for an
outright repudiation of our debt? Of course there are several. One, there
is this simple arithmetic I have put in place: if we owe $34 billion and
our $50 billion lie in banks in the G8 countries, should we not be talking
about what these countries owe us? You may want to chide me that this is
too na�ve and crude but how posh and sophisticated can it get? Two,
another condition put in place by international financial experts state it
that �when a despotic power gets replaced by another no less despotic or
any responsive to the will of the people, the odious debts of the
eliminated power are not any less their personal debts and are not
obligations for the new power�. What can be clearer than this? Who among
us does not suddenly realise that we do not really owe the G8 people a
kobo and that the people they should pursue with a lot of zest for their
monies are Nigeria�s former dictators who, willy-nilly had a personal
interest in acquiring these loans?
Let us go back now to our
title: should they cancel �our debt�? Should Nigerians be left off the
hook, and start making plans to increase the quality of life of her people
without the burden of an odious, dubious debt weighing us down? I have two
answers based on the discussion we have had above. First, there is no
debt. We have to insist on that because a lot of our money is in Europe
and America. Second, if they have their way and insist that we have a
debt, let them either cancel it and not regard it as a favour done us or
they compel the Nigerian government to hand over to them all of those
leaders who took these loans. What most of them did with these loans is
obvious and obviously, let them take responsibility. Let the G8 people put
pressure on Nigeria to hand over those who took these loans the way
America breathes down Obasanjo�s neck over Charles Taylor. They should
stop harassing us over funds that did not impact positively on our lives
and which we do not know much about.
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