H14065
Headlines : GovernmentBig Men, Big Fraud and Big Trouble
With angry voters pounding at the door after the last election, Nigeria may be facing an election re-run. This could mean huge problems for the fragile system of the country that has yet to stabilise.
Corruption is rife in Nigeria, what with party politics being diluted by organized crime as well as interference from neighbouring nations. The recent anti-corruption laws and agencies that have been set up may just be too little too late for an electorate that increasingly do not believe that their votes count.
[Posted By mercenary]Republished from The Economist
EVER since Sani Abacha expired in the arms of two Indian prostitutes, possibly from an overdose of Viagra, in 1998, Nigerians supposed that their worst days were behind them. The “coup from heaven”, as Abacha’s death was called, seemed to release the country from three decades of increasingly ruinous military dictatorships that had brought Nigeria diplomatic isolation and economic collapse. In 1999, the country made a fresh start with a new elected civilian administration led by Olusegun Obasanjo, the outgoing president. He has been lauded in the West for his economic reforms and his drive against corruption.
But the organised vote-rigging and fraud that characterised the state and local elections on April 14th, as well as the parliamentary and presidential polls on April 21st, suggest that Nigeria may be sliding backwards again. Nigeria’s own independent observers’ group has called them a “sham”. The European Union, normally a master of nuance in these matters, baldly stated that the whole electoral process “cannot be considered to have been credible”, and remarked that its report was the most damning it had ever issued anywhere in the world.
Posted by mercenary
Exiled from Dubai to Vancouver, I cite media, politics, and of course, the meaning of Liff. I've been a media student, a Lit. undergrad, a radio host and a few other things to pass the time. Been around the third world, as well as a bit of the first. And it...
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Hugo, the Economist thinks you’re “pesky”, LOL, now that’s just cute.
From Economic Hit Men The Sequel (Chapter 6 : Mercenaries on the Front Lines in the New Scramble for Africa )
OPEN QUOTE
. . . oil is the lifeblood of the [Nigerian] government, accounting for more than 80% of its revenues, 90% of the county’s foreign exchange earnings, and 40% of its GDP.
Nigerian oil and gas are core assets for Shell as well as American companies Chevron and ExxonMobil . . .
To operate effectively in a country as corrupt as Nigeria, Shell, its subsidiaries, and its contractors have to maintain extremely close contacts with several layers of government and different branches of Nigeria’s military. That is the only way of doing business. Sometimes this closeness manifests itself as a revolving door between corporation and government. At other times it takes the form of a financial relationship between the corporation and the Nigerian military of Mobile Police Force (MPF). Fore years Shell denied that any such financial relationship existed but now it admits it. Nigerians often see no difference between Shell and the military, just as they see no difference between Shell and its contractors. To the people they are all part of the same governing alliance of interests.
END OF QUOTE
Andrew Young, former sidekick for Martin Luther King, now bagman for corporate greed in Africa (Nigeria in particular)
see also
Fooling people some of the time
In short, OPEN QUOTE
Obasanjo has done nothing about corruption in the country with “as much as $*600 billion in ill-gotten gains sitting in foreign bank accounts* while the rural farmers live on less than one dollar a day.”
. . .
He established an anti-corruption commission. But the record shows that his friends were exempt and his enemies were investigated whether or not they had dirt on their hands.
END OF QUOTE
I guess that explains why the other two candidates had convictions on their records. The Economist piece tells us that Obasango’s groovy anti-corruption commission recovered as much as $5 billion of the suspected $600 billion. So that calls for a Nobel Peace Prize, don’t you think?