Tag Archives: Nigeria

a very nigerian affair

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The BBC reports that the Nigerian state owned oil company (NNPC) is insolvent, with a US $ 5 billion debt. Most of the money ($ 3b) is owed to the Federation Account a lootable cash cow that distributes money to different levels of government within the Nigerian state. The country is divided into 36 states (and one federal capital territory, Abuja) and 774 local governments, all of which have legally guaranteed claims to oil revenues.

The report also notes that: Despite Nigeria being a major crude oil producer, it must buy almost all the oil it uses on the international market because its own refineries are insufficient and dilapidated.

Recently the Nigerian government signed a deal with the Chinese that hopefully will result in the construction of an $ 8 billion refinery in Lagos to ease the country’s dependence on imported petroleum products. 80% of the cash will come from the Chinese and 20% from the Nigerians.

No prizes for guessing why on earth A LEADING INTERNATIONAL OIL EXPORTER should import almost all of its petroleum products or why it took so long for the Nigerian leadership to start thinking of expanding Nigeria’s refinery capacity…

Achebe’s assessment of the Nigerian condition in the early 1980s still rings true: “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.”

economic history… and some people’s lived experience

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I am currently doing some research on the economic history of medieval Europe and came across an interesting quote from one Francesco Guicciar commenting on 16th century Spain:

... poverty is great here, and I believe it is due not so much to the quality of the country as to the nature of the Spaniards, who do not exert themselves; they rather send to other nations the raw materials which grow in their Kingdom only to buy them back manufactured by others, as in the case of wool and silk which they sell to others in order to buy them back from them as cloths of silk and wool

The quote reminded me of the thoughts I have whenever I buy Nescafe in Kenyan supermarkets or read about Nigeria importing refined petroleum products.

the political economy of food aid

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Aid Watch has a piece on this very important subject, check it out.

Other stories worth checking out this Friday include Jina Moore’s and the IRIN piece on the food situation in the Sahel.

failed states index

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Foreign Policy, in its July/August issue has 2010’s failed states index. The Continent has 12 of the top 20 worst performers on this index, with Somalia, Chad, Sudan, Zimbabwe and the DRC being in the top five respectively. Kenya is 13th on this index, performing worse than Niger, Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone, among other basket cases. The substantive meaning of the rankings aside (I’d rather be in Kenya than in Sierra Leone on any day), the index is a grim reminder of how badly governed the Continent is. The best ranked mainland African state is Ghana, at number 54. Mauritius leads the Continent at number 30, out of 177.

Also in the FP issue is an exposé of Bozize’s Central African Republic. I used to think that he was doing a relatively good job. Turns out he is full of bucket-loads of horse manure:

“Bozizé has fared no better than his predecessors, ruling a territory the size of Texas with a GDP significantly smaller than that of Pine Bluff, Arkansas.”

And don’t miss out on Ayittey’s ranking of the world’s worst dictators. Our good friend Rob is second only to the crazy guy who runs North Korea.

Lastly, I must say something about my favorite punching bag Idriss Deby’s Chad. Idriss Deby is a study in ineffectual leadership and is on the list of Africa’s many ‘wasted dictatorships.’ In 2006 he successfully conned his way out of the World Bank brokered plan to use revenue from the Chad-Cameroon pipeline to reduce poverty among his country’s extremely impoverished 10.3 million souls. He now uses most of Chad’s oil revenue to fund his poorly-run security forces that remain vulnerable to any rebel group that can land its hands on a technical. But with over 1.5 billion barrels in reserves and a world thirsty for oil, it appears that this Zaghawa “warrior” is here to stay, his incompetence notwithstanding.

The HDI numbers tell it all. The literacy rate in Chad is at a dismal 25%. Life expectancy stands at 48 years. 80% of Chadian’s live on less than a dollar a day. The growth rate of the economy, -1% last year, -0.2% in 2008 and 0.6% in 2007, cannot keep up with the population growth rate of more than 2% (despite a rather high infant mortality rate of 97 deaths/1000 live births) – which means that Chadians’ living standards will continue to decline into the foreseeable future.  The bulk of Chadians (more than 80%) make do with subsistence agriculture. Oil, cotton, cattle and gum arabic are the country’s main export commodities.

sources: FP and The CIA World Factbook

“the town seemed to exist only for sickness and death”

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Time has this story about the “most malarial town on earth,” Apac in Uganda. The pictures tell it all, life in Apac appears to be singularly harsh.

The story also reports that malaria steals away 1.3 percentage points off Africa’s annual growth rate. It is encouraging, though, to know that the fight to eradicate malaria is not yet lost because “the logistics of such a plan are less complex than they seem, because while malaria affects half the world’s countries, just seven — the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, southern Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda — account for two-thirds of all cases.”

As is the case with most failures on the Continent, failure to eradicate malaria can be attributed to bad leadership and state incapacity. Time reports:

What do these failures have in common? Bad government.

To paraphrase Achebe, the trouble with Africa is STILL simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the African character. There is nothing wrong with the African land or climate or water or air or anything else. The African problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership . . . . in the meantime, millions on the Continent continue to die of treatable illnesses while tens of millions more live like it’s still 1600.

legislators’ salaries

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Annual compensation of members of parliament in US dollars:

Nigeria 224,000

United States 174,000

Kenya 157,000

South Africa 66,080

Uganda 39,960

Ghana 33,120

The disparities are mind-boggling. It is a shame really that Nigerian parliamentarians should be making the kind of money they make, given the level of their per capita GDP. Ditto the Kenyans. Although there is a strong case to be made for such high pays to make MPs less dependent on the executive for handouts (as has been argued by Barkan and co.), such measures should be tempered by the respect for the lived experience of a country’s citizenry.

the world cup

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African football is on the ropes. Of the six teams in the tournament in South Africa only Ghana has managed a victory, and even that only through a penalty kick. With Cameroon out (they crashed out today against an arguably weaker Danish team) the best African team in the tournament is Cote d’Ivoire. But the elephants got dealt a bad hand and find themselves having to struggle against Portugal and Brazil if they are to advance. If I had it my way I would have a CAF inquiry at the end of this tournament to determine exactly what it is that continues to perpetuate mediocrity in African football.

The organization of the World Cup tournament by the South Africans has been superb but going by the comments on facebook, among other websites, many are hugely disappointed by the lackluster performance exhibited by the Continent’s representatives at the tournament.

great idea

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African nations have finally woken up to the threat of the ever advancing Sahara. The “great green wall of Africa” will be several kilometres wide and stretch from Senegal to Djibouti. Whoever is funding this project should condition cash transfers on need level (aridity, terrain and what not) so we can have a way of measuring state capacity (and thus name and shame the laggards) across the many Sahelian states that will be planting this wall.

Yar’Adua passes on

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Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua died today. According to the Nigerian constitution Goodluck Jonathan who has been acting president will formerly assume office as president of the federal republic. Mr. Yar’Adua had had problems with his kidneys going back to his days as governor of Katsina state. May he rest in peace.

Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel laureate had this to say about Mr. Yar’Adua’s passing on:

“What passes for the Nigerian nation is nothing more than a tragic arena, and Yar‘Adua is only the latest tragic figure. The vampires, including those within his own family, turned him into a mere inert resource for their diabolical schemes. They have a reckoning with their conscience, assuming they know what the word means. One can only hope that, while mouthing sanctimonious platitudes such as ‘Power belongs to God,’ they have now learnt that the politics of Do-or-Die cannot guarantee who does and who dies. They must stop playing God. I pray for the repose of the soul of their latest, much abused innocent victim.”

Development and how to achieve it

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A while back I argued for a move away form small scale, “pro-poor” development strategies to more robust development strategies aimed at economic innovation and large-scale job creation. This is not to say that micro-development should be neglected. What I am saying is that jua kali kiosks will not increase Africa’s per capita income to 10,000 USD. The most they do is enable people to cope without really changing their standard of living.

Alkags, a blog I just discovered, deals with this debate.

Aid watch also has videos from a conference at the Yale law school on development. Chris Blattman and William Easterly are some of the featured development experts. Blattman makes some interesting comments about micro-finance, industrialization (medium to large farms) and development.

Quoting Blattman: “I think we have gone too far in the pro-poor direction…… we don’t necessarily have trade-offs. Factories are pro-poor.”

abuja is sleeping on the job

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The Nigerian government has failed its people in so many respects that we have come to not expect the men and women in Abuja to deliver much. That said, this is too much. At the risk of sounding religiously intolerant, I am gonna go out on a limb and say that this should be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

sectarian violence in nigeria getting out of hand

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The BBC reports that at least 500 people were killed in a massacre carried out on Sunday morning by machete wielding men near the Nigerian city of Jos. This Day, a Nigerian daily, puts the number at 200. The attacks were in response to similar killings that took place in the same area in January.

This latest incident highlights the ineptitude of the Nigerian security forces. Most of the villagers were hacked to death with machetes. In an age of cell phones it is unbelievable that the Nigerian police could not have arrived soon enough to stop this madness. It must take quite some time to kill more than 500 people with machetes. The slow response of the Nigerian security forces is unpardonable. And in any case how can such a plot be planned and carried out in an already volatile area out without the knowledge of the Nigerian intelligence services?

So far 95 people have been arrested. This is not enough. Abuja should move ahead and identify the planners of this abhorrent act and serve them justice. Anything short of this and the international community should move in and try those involved for crimes against humanity. Over 350 people were killed back in January when this sort of madness descended on Jos. The January attack in Kuru was just as ghastly. Several bodies were dumped in wells. Abuja should stop the killings ASAP and then attend to the problems that force people to commit such heinous crimes in the first place.

kibaki should not waste this opportunity to punish corruption

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The Kenyan Education Minister Prof. Sam Ongeri is not among the big fish in Kenyan politics. Neither are his assistant and the Ministry’s permanent secretary. Firing them and making them face the law will not have any awful political consequences for the president and his non-existent party. But it will serve Kenya. I think that this is a wonderful opportunity for the president to demonstrate that there are sacred programs that should never be compromised with – like the free primary education program, or healthcare.

Several months ago I thought that the president and his premier would punish those who stole government maize for re-export even as Kenyans starved to death. No one has been punished yet. Word on the street is that bigwigs in the Agriculture Ministry and perhaps even the premier’s son were deeply involved, plus a number of MPs. Now almost SHS 200 million has disappeared from the Ministry of Education. This is money that was intended to finance free primary education. Kibaki cannot afford to turn a blind eye to this.

In other news, the UN wants Guinean dictator Capt. Moussa Camara (and his henchmen) to be tried for crimes against humanity following the massacre of over 150 protestors in late September. Mr. Camara is currently recovering in a Moroccan hospital following a botched assassination attempt. The attempt on his life is believed to be a result of infighting within the junta over who should take responsibility for the September massacre.

Elsewhere, the president of Nigeria continues to rule in absentia. President Umaru Yar’Adua has been ailing in a Saudi hospital for a while now, prompting calls for his resignation. Nigerian politics aside, I echo these same calls. Nigeria is the undisputed leading country in West Africa. The chaos in Guinea and to a lesser extent in Guinea-Bissau and the Ivory Coast require mediation and regional engagement. Nigeria can provide leadership on this front, plus it can send troops (to Guinea especially) to keep the peace. The region needs Nigerian leadership (yes, I know I just said that). And that means having a strong and engaged Nigerian president.

internally displaced people in Africa

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“There are other questions too. Should IDPs stay in rural areas or be resettled in towns? Providing the right amount of assistance is tricky as well. Too much, and an African government risks turning camps into subsidised slums. Too little, and people die.”

The above quote is from this weeks Economist Newspaper. As I have argued before, I think that the move to come up with a framework to protect IDPs on the Continent is a charade. I don’t get how the likes of Mugabe (one of the chief displacers of people on the Continent) are supposed to be entrusted with protecting the same people. Having UNHCR do the job sounds good but is riddled with huge moral hazard problems – as illustrated by the above quote.

Meanwhile, this is the kind of life that many an African autocrat (and soon the effects of climate change) forces his fellow citizens to live.

some good and bad news

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The good news first. According to UNICEF, the global under five mortality dropped by about 28% between 1990 and 2008. In other words, 10,000 less children are dying daily worldwide than was the case in 1990.

But that is as good as it gets. The sorry fact is that millions of children under the age of five still die every year from treatable illnesses – malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea being the top child-killers. Last year alone saw the loss of 8.8 million children under the age of five. India, the DRC and Nigeria were the worst hit – together reporting 40% of all under-five deaths. Africa and Asia, combined, reported 93% of global under five deaths.