Corruption Haunts Every Nigerian Presidency

According to the final vote tabulation on February 27, 2019, President Buhari, who had promised to fight corruption, won re-election by a wide margin. He asked his voters not to gloat, since victory was prize enough. As expected, his opponent, Mr. Abubakar, claimed the vote count in some areas was suspect, and he said he would contest the election in court.       

     Nigeria's February 16, 2019 presidential election had been rescheduled to February 23. Leading candidates, current President Muhammadu Buhari and wealthy businessman Atiku Abubakar, both Fulani Muslims from northern Nigeria, blamed each other for the delay as an attempt to rig the election in their favor. The National Election Commission claimed weather conditions prevented all the ballots from reaching Nigeria's 120,000 polling places.

     There was general agreement that either winner would have to deal with: Boko Haram terrorists determined to eliminate Christian influences, conflict between cattle herders and farmers, restructuring representation to provide greater balance between Muslims in the north and southern Christians, unemployment over 20%, economic hardship from volatile oil export revenue,  crushing public debt, and corruption.

     Buying votes and rigging elections are features of local, governor, party primary, and presidential elections, but they are far from the only sources of corruption in Nigeria. The state-owned Ajabkuta Steel Company, which has received $8 billion and "employed" 10,000 over a 40 year period, has never produced any steel, according to The Economist (February 9, 2019). Carnegie's Endowment for International Peace identified corruption as the greatest obstacle preventing Nigeria, with Africa's largest economy and population, from achieving its enormous potential.

     Contract fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, bribes, and other forms of corruption siphon off billions from every economic sector: petroleum, trade, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, energy, banking, and the environment.
Bureaucratic corruption channels funds into questionable departments. Nigeria has three space agencies that only have managed to launch five satellites into orbit.

     Politicians also pocket funds meant for hospitals and clinics. In the areas of health, education, and humanitarian aid, corruption prevents international organizations from providing development and emergency assistance.

     Authors of books on trust in business, Barbara Brooke Kimmel and Charles H. Green, note "the most powerful form of trust is personal." They know words require backup by action. Nigeria may lay claim to democracy, security, and progress, but these words have no meaning as long as corruption undermines every personal transaction.

2018-2019 Struggle for Human Rights

No struggle for human rights around the world is ever complete. The record that I began in the earlier post, "Hope for the Future," needs to be updated with some  positive and negative developments.

     Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered by a military death squad in 1980 because he spoke out for unions and poor peasant groups against the grip of prosperous coffee growers and capitalism in El Salvador, was declared a saint of the Catholic Church in 2018.

     Vietnam released and exiled "Mother Mushroom," Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, who had been jailed for writing about the country's corruption and pollution.

     Boko Haram continues to kill and kidnap innocent victims in Nigeria and the Cameroon.

     North Korea has re-education camps for thousands, and China also holds Muslim Uighurs in camps because their religion is said to undermine peace and security. In March, 2019, Kazakhstan would demonstrate an effort to maintain good relations with its Chinese neighbor by arresting Serikzhan Bilash for supporting Uighurs detained in Xinjiang's camps.

     Russia tried unsuccessfully to poison a spy in the UK in 2018, and it continues to hold political prisoners, such as Oleg Sentsov and Oleg and Alexei Navalny. In February, 2019, Russia would arrest Michael Calvey, a U.S financier, which is reminiscent of the expulsion of Browder, whose tax expert, sometimes called his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in a Russian prison.

     For criticizing the regime of King Salman and his son, Muhammad bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi Arabian journalist and US resident, Jamal Khashoggi, was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Turkey in October, 2018, but in the same month, a Turkish court released a US pastor, Andrew Brunson, who had been in prison there on false terrorism charges for two years.

Impact of Corruption on Terrorism

In some respects, you can't blame government leaders for adopting the self-serving, often corrupt, methods of the colonial administrators they followed after their countries became independent. Nonetheless, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry pointed out in remarks in Sokoto, Nigeria (8/23/2016), bribery, fraud, inequality, humiliation, and poverty play into the hands of terrorist extremists.

     In terms of government interference and corruption, when the World Bank's "Doing Business Index" and the "Corruption Perceptions Index" rank Nigeria as a worse offender than 89% and 82% of the other countries in the world, Nigeria gives a terrorist group like Boko Haram a recruiting argument and an excuse to engage in its own looting, killing, and kidnapping.

     Citizens need to feel people in power work for them. Government funds need to be used to provide health care, educate their children, build roads, provide clean water and electricity, support agriculture, and attract investment and business, not head overseas to the secret bank accounts of crooked politicians.

(Also see the earlier posts, "Corruption Has Consequences," "Cheating is Easy, but...," and "Warning to Students: Don't Cheat.")

Nigeria's New Beginning

It was said that General Muhammadu Buhari's election as President of Nigeria on March 31, 2015 was a repudiation of the corruption and cronyism of Goodluck Jonathan's administration. So it was, but it also showed voters are able to overcome the constitutional changes and intimidation that leaders have used to retain their positions and power. Buhari's victory was a profile in persistence, since it took him four tries and 15.4 million votes to be the first candidate to defeat an elected incumbent, since Nigeria became an independent country in 1960. To his credit, Jonathan, who lost with 13.3 million votes, kept his supporters from launching a bloody protest over the election results.

    The Buhari-Jonathan presidential race was the latest challenge in Nigeria's troubled political history until Buhari began suffering from an undisclosed illness that has kept him away from his office for long periods of treatment twice in 2017. Nigeria's new tradition of alternating eight-year presidential terms between northern Muslim leaders and southern Christians would be tested if Buhari, a northern Fulani Muslim, were defeated by another northerner who would be eligible for an eight-year term. That would keep southerners out of the presidency for 12 years.
 (Richard Bourne's book, Nigeria: A New History of a Turbulent Century, provides a good description of Nigeria since independence.)

      Buhari served as Nigeria's military head of state until he was overthrown in a 1985 coup' He was committed to protecting his people from the Boko Haram terrorists who kidnapped nearly 300 teen aged girls and killed thousands of villagers. As Boko Haram was being driven out of Gwoza in the Borno State of northeastern Nigeria, the militant Muslims massacred captured wives and old men. Local citizens expected the group's departure was only temporary. They were right. Just hours after Buhari was sworn in as Nigeria's new President on May 29, 2015, an attack by Boko Haram killed 13 people in Maiduguri, the provincial capital of northeastern Nigeria, before government troops forced the Islamic rebels to retreat. Buhari announced plans to set up a military command center in Maiduguri. Nonetheless, during the Muslim holy period of Ramadan in 2015, over 200 Nigerians were killed. Some 44 people also died in two July 6 bomb attacks in Jos, a city targeted by Boko Haram in the past. In early 2016, only a little over a month after Buhari announced Boko Haram was "technically defeated," the Islamic terrorist group killed 80 people in the village of Dalorl, near Maiduguri. A new abduction of another 100 teen aged girls by Boko Haram occurred in the northeastern Yobe state in February, 2018.

     Although Nigeria's oil and natural gas reserves, production, and exports are among the world's best, problems have plagued the industry. To counteract the loss of government revenue from collapsing crude oil prices, in October, 2015 the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation announced plans to renegotiate contracts with oil producers in order to get a bigger share of revenue from their deepwater fields. At the same time, oil corporations, also suffering from declining crude prices, are threatening to cut development spending on new deepwater projects in Nigeria. Sagging revenue from falling oil prices is just the latest problem for a government that has faced multiple oil-related challenges: pipeline sabotage resulting in oil spills that have contaminated water, farm land, and air; uncertainty about OPEC's regulations on production; underutilized refinery capacity; lack of capital for deepwater drilling and the infrastructure needed to capture natural gas burn off; and protests by southerners who have never felt they fully participated in the wealth generated by oil fields in the Niger Delta. Bille and Ogale, fishing and farming communities in the Niger Delta, are suing Shell for failing to protect oil pipelines that have caused two oil spills in the past five years. Although Shell agreed to clean up water and land in the contaminated area, the Anglo-Dutch firm has delayed compliance.

     Out of Nigeria's 170 million population, 110 million, including college-educated young people, are said to be unemployed. With nothing to do all day and lack of funds, free time leads to pregnancies that produce even more poverty.

     The government is committed to re-energizing Nigeria's agricultural sector which was the backbone of the country's economy prior to the 1970s oil boom. The attention Akinwumi Adesina paid to the agricultural sector when he was Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development in Jonathan Goodluck's administration is credited with helping to reduce food imports by a third, to increase food production by 22 million tons, and to generate millions of jobs.  By providing electronic vouchers for purchases of fertilizer and seed from private suppliers, the administration worked to move farmers beyond subsistence farming in order to diversify the economy and reduce dependence on oil.

    As of May, 2015, Adesina, the son of a Nigerian farmer and PhD degree holder from Purdue University in the US, became the new President of the African Development Bank.

The Continuing Struggle between Good and Evil

Kayla Mueller's message of hope after she was kidnapped in Syria in 2013, like that of Anne Frank, and the story of Kayla's life, like the life stories of Nelson Mandela and Maximilian Kolbe, will live on long after ISIS is, at most, a footnote of history. But that is not to minimize the horror of Kayla's 18-month captivity. As a hostage, she was the slave property of ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Because she feared her American appearance would lead to their recapture, she refused to escape with non- Western female captives and was killed in an air strike in February, 2015.

     Coupled with news that Shiite attacks on government buildings in Yemen's capital have caused the US, UK, and France to close their Embassies is the regret Yemen's Muslim women have since they are no longer allowed to wear the colorful veils that used to identify their home villages. Shrouded in black veils, women are no longer free to express any individuality in public. Few remember when no women covered their faces 30 years ago and how, at the sea, some even wore colorful two-piece outfits with long skirts, bare midriffs, and tops with sleeves.

     Taliban captors in February, 2015 released Father Alexis Prem Kumar, who had been serving as director of Jesuit refugee services in Afghanistan when he was abducted. Despite violence and turmoil, women at the ARZU (the Dari word for "hope") Hope Studio, founded in the Bamyan region of Afghanistan in 2004, have continued to come together to carry on the weaving tradition that has produced lush rugs for centuries. Located in central Afghanistan, Bamyan's arts and architecture have been influenced by diverse Greek, Persian, Turkish, Indian, and Chinese cultures. In 2001, however, it was the site of the Taliban's destruction of three monumental Buddhist sculptures carved into a mountain in the fifth century. Yet, women at the ARZU Hope Studio persevere, incorporating wartime imagery and biblical verses into their woven panels, earning an income, maintaining a community garden, and funding a preschool, health care, and community centers.

     Boko Haram finds it unnecessary to recruit followers. Like their earlier abduction of more than 200 young women in Nigeria, the group continues to TAKE girls and women as wives, cooks, and suicide bombers and young men and boys as soldiers. These little soldiers will be facing about 300 former soldiers from the South African Defense Force who, according to the Financial Times (March 27, 2015), have gone to Nigeria to fight terrorists.

(The earlier blog post, "Hope for the Future," mentions some of the successes that help remind us past problems have been solved.)

 

Discover Africa

The African continent is three times the size of the United States and nearly three million square miles bigger than Europe, including the Asian portion of Russia. By 2100, the U.N. estimates Africa will have 3 billion more people than it has now. Future opportunities in this vast and growing continent need not be overlooked because of the world's somewhat warped historical viewpoint. A new guide, Emerging Africa, by Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu dispels some of the assumptions about lack of development on the continent. And in 2015, one of the discussions in the Foreign Policy Association's Great Decisions program will feature "U.S. Policy Toward Africa."

    Headlines do not tell the whole story of what is happening in Africa. News reports rightly warned that the Ebola virus was out of control in West Africa. In April and May of 2014, the world heard that over 200 teenage girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group in northern Nigeria. Since then, the group has taken additional girls and women as wives, cooks, and suicide bombers; young men and boys have been abducted to serve as soldiers. On January 15, 2019, al-Shabab terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda would kill at least 21 in an attack on a hotel/office complex in Nairobi, Kenya. In April, 2015, jihadis from al-Shabab killed 147 in a raid on a Kenyan university. Earlier,  terrorists attacked at a Kenyan mall.

     Europe's scramble to colonize the continent between 1876 and 1912 left independent African countries in the 1960s with an uneducated population, some leaders who exploited their people in imitation of former colonial administrators, disease, and transportation ties to Europe rather than each other. To this day, Fastjet is still having trouble launching its plan to provide affordable African flights.

     But just like Pablo Picasso in 1907, when he first saw the African artifacts that caused him to create a new form of art, young people are in a position to look at Africa in a new way. Beginning with the book Ashanti to Zulu, kids can learn the alphabet and 26 African traditions at the same time. With the help of ePals.com, classrooms can connect with African students in several languages by email, Skype, and project collaborations.

     Students need not see Africans only as impoverished children who can live on 50 cents per day donations. According to trendwatching.com, 65% of Africa's 8- to 18-year-olds have access to a mobile phone. In Gambia and Ghana, trendwatching.com reports entrepreneurs run solar-charging kiosks where the public can charge their mobile devices for a fee. In addition to social contacts, mobile devices are facilitating education and job-hunting in Africa. By 2060, trendwatching.com expects there will be 1.1 billion middle class Africans. Already, the SABMiller bottler and Coca-Cola have joined forces to profit from Africa's growing middle class.

    Africa's growth is attracting $24 billion in foreign investment this year. In fact, the Financial Times (April 4, 2014) reported that return from private equity investments in Africa is comparable to the return on investments in China and Latin America. No wonder the Rothschild Fund is looking to invest $530 million in African projects that have a long term social development aspect to them. And the Swedish risk capital firm, Swedfund, is investing in a partnership between the H&M retailer and Ethiopian textile firms that manufacture according to high social and environmental standards. (Also see the later blog post, "Never Too Young to Invest in the Future.")

    Forbes magazine listed 27 billionaires in Africa. Today's richest African is Aliko Dangote of Nigeria, who makes his money from the cement used for construction throughout Africa. Recognizing the potential for African construction, Dubai has invested $300 million in Dangote Cement. Other riches have been made in areas, such as oil, sugar, flour, banking, media, telecommunications, luxury goods, diamonds, supermarkets, and pharmaceuticals. Looking past the current drop in oil prices, Dangote increased his oil refinery investment from $9 billion to $11 billion in December, 2014. (Nonetheless, his estimated $21 billion fortune has taken a $5.4 billion hit due to sagging oil prices.) Stephen Saad of South Africa, founder of Aspen Pharmacare, is making his fortune by manufacturing generic drugs. Isabel dos Santos, Africa's first female billionaire, a former head of Angola's state oil group, and the daughter of Angola's president, is a major player in the banking industry. She seeks to block Spain's CaixaBank's attempt to assume full control of the Portuguese bank, BPI, where she is the second largest investor. As an alternative, she has proposed a merger of BPI and Portugal's Millennium BCP bank to reinforce their presence in Africa's Portuguese-speaking Angola and Mozambique. (As of President Joao Lourenco's election as President of Angola, Ms. dos Santos no longer heads Angola's national oil company and the former president's son has been charged with fraud for transferring $500 million out of the country.)  Bob Diamond's Atlas Mara, founded to invest in Sub-Saharan African financial institutions, continues to expand with its latest interest in a 45% stake in Banque Populaire du Rwanda.

     African startups also are winning outside support. IBM's "Project Lucy" coordinates the work of local universities, development agencies, startups, and others who want to create ventures that solve key African issues. BiztechAfrica reports that, as part of its 4Afika Initiative, Microsoft has made five innovation grants to the following startups: Uganda's access.mobile, which facilitates information sharing in the fields of agriculture and healthcare, Kenya's Africa 118, a mobile directory service, and Kytabu, which rents textbooks on tablets (A US entrepreneur just found funding for a similar project on the TV show, "Shark Tank"), and Nigeria's Gamsole, which creates games for Windows, and Save & Buy, which facilitates e-commerce purchases.

     In a long entry in March, 2014, " trendwatching.com's African" described how African governments and developers are facilitating areas, like Ghana's Hope City, Nigeria's Eko Atlantic, and Kenya's Konga Techno, that invite entrepreneurs to set up shop. Better than being  unemployed, business-minded young adults are responding by using crowdfunding platforms, such as Globevestor; developing tech applications, such as Nigeria's bus travel website (bus.com.ng); entering competitions (South Africa's First National Bank holds an "Ideas Can Help" competition for inventors, Yola sponsors a build-your-own website contest, there's a Anzisha Prize and a TechCabal Battlefield prize); and formalizing Africa's informal economy of outdoor markets, street hawkers, and resellers. Kenya's e-commerce Soko platform, for example, now connects global shoppers with local jewelry artisans who use natural and upcycled materials. FirstBank Nigeria is one of the firms that facilitates secure online payments.

      Projects involving the rich history of Egypt are already a staple of school curricula. Tracing Mansa Musa's religious pilgrimage from Timbuktu, the West African city in Mali, to Mecca in 1324 introduces an African mogul who distributed gold on his journey and returned with an architect to build a great mosque and scholars who created the Sankore University. A video about Shaka Zulu can introduce students to a military genius.

     Looking back through previous blog posts, Africa is mentioned in a variety of contexts.

• There are T-shirt designs from Swaziland and a U.S. artist who studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa ("Global Drawing Power")
• Somali children were featured in Asad, the live action short nominated for a 2012 Academy Award ("See the World at the Movies")
• Paul Simon's "Graceland" recording incorporated the township rhythms of South Africa ("Music of the Sphere")
• Ghana's kente cloth was mentioned in "The World of Fashion" and Ghana's chocolates tempted taste buds in "Pizza, Plantains, and Moo Goo Guy Pan."
• In 2004 Wangari Maathai of Kenya won a Noble Prize for mobilizing a campaign to fight global warming by planting trees and launched the U.N. project to plant a billion trees around the world ("Hope for the Future" and "A Healthy Environment")The website, About.com African History, has a list and description of Africa's 25 Nobel Prize winners. 
• Students located the African countries that produced the products they found in their scavenger hunt bags ("Games Children Play")

Just like the missionary, David Livingston, who happened to come upon the African falls he named for Queen Victoria, Africa still is open for discovery. China has discovered Africa's many minerals, such as iron ore and copper, and is building railroads to transport them to ports for export. French-speaking Chinese students have followed Chinese companies to work for them in former French colonies. Oprah Winfrey has founded a school for girls in Africa. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has set out to help eliminate malaria and HIV in Africa. George Clooney sent up a satellite to watch for atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan. And, like Alexander McCall Smith, the author of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Botswana, there's still the possibility of finding riches by writing one of Africa's fascinating stories.