perfidy

Saturday's Telegraph tells the tale of just where a good chunk of the world's aid dollars have gone, specifically focusing on Nigeria, Africa's largest, natural-resource-richest, and most populous country. $220 billion, down a rathole in the last 40 years, just in Nigeria.

A taste:

The stolen fortune tallies almost exactly with the £220 billion of western aid given to Africa between 1960 and 1997. That amounted to six times the American help given to post-war Europe under the Marshall Plan.

British aid for Africa totalled £720 million last year. If that sum was spent annually for the next three centuries, it would cover the cost of Nigeria's looting.

They've got 35 billion barrels of proven reserves there, and I'd suggest they get to work digging them up, because more money from other peoples' pockets doesn't look like it's ever solved a problem in Nigeria.

Sani Abacha was one of the worst, as detailed in this add-on story, but his kleptocracy was unique only in its absolute size, and would have been far larger if he hadn't died of a heart attack under the ministrations of three Indian prostitutes after only 5 years in office. You see, even at the high end of his estimated thievery, he was responsible for only 1.5% of the total aid money wasted in Nigeria. And Nigeria wasn't the only failed experiment in assuagement of white guilt - it was just one part of the roughly 100% failure rate among African nations who've received aid.

Sometimes, a rational guilty white man just has to say "If at first you don't succeed, try, try... aw @#!?% it!". And perhaps, in some small way, some Nigerians might agree:

Mr Obasanjo will travel to the G8 summit to press the case for debt relief. Nigeria is Africa's biggest debtor, with loans of almost £20 billion, because previous rulers not only looted the country but also borrowed heavily against future oil revenues.

The G8 has refused to cancel Nigeria's loans, despite writing off the debts of 14 other African countries this month.

Prof Pat Utomi, of Lagos Business School, said that was the right decision. "Who is to say you won't see the same behaviour again if it is all written off?" he said.

I'm thinking "Nobody", that's who.

[wik] For other views, not all at odds, see the first three letters to the editor in the June 25, 2005 Houston Chronicle.