17th August, 2012
Lagos lawyer, Femi Falana, has accused the World Bank of being responsible for the endemic corruption in Nigeria.
Falana, who was reacting to the recently released report by the World Bank that 80 per cent of Nigerian businesses offer government officials bribe to facilitate deals, said the international organisation failed to mention the root cause of corruption in the country just because it knows that the hydra-headed problem arose when it started granting loans to the country.
In a lengthy opinion written by the lawyer, he said: “no doubt, there was corruption in Nigeria up to the 1980s. But it was not so prevalent at the time because the state funded the welfare of the majority of the people, provided social services at affordable costs and created jobs for the unemployed.
“Education was virtually free while health services were affordable. The naira was higher than the United States dollar in the foreign exchange market.”
He added that during this period, the Nigerian government placed emphasis on the building of an egalitarian society in line with the extended family system of the African people.
“However, the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme which was instigated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund ruined the Nigerian economy completely and destroyed the morality of the society.
“With retrenchment of workers, abolition of marketing boards, commercialisation of social services, sale of the assets of the nation, trade liberalisation, currency devaluation and other dangerous components of SAP mass poverty became the order of the day.
“The middle class was wiped out while the manufacturing sector became extinct. In the process, corruption became the directive principle of state policy under the Ibrahim Babangida junta. Successive regimes have since then consolidated on official corruption,” he added.
Falana further alleged that apart from condemning corruption, the World Bank and the western governments including the Barack Obama administration have continued to insult the African people on the issue of corruption after milking the continent and being accomplice of the politicians who stash the country’s money in overseas banks.
“With respect to corruption in Nigeria, why has the World Bank not condemned foreign companies like Halliburton, Wilbros, Siemens, Julius Berger and others which have been indicted and penalised for perpetrating large scale corruption in Nigeria?
“The NEITI has just disclosed that foreign oil companies have duped Nigeria to the tune of over $2 billion. Instead of assisting Nigeria to recover such huge fund the World Bank would prefer to package jumbo loans for the Federal Government with fraudulent conditionalities.
“Let the World Bank stop writing hypocritical reports on corruption emanating from the neo liberal policies being sheepishly implemented by the federal and state governments at its own behest.
“Let the Goodluck Jonathan Administration be told that no government which operates an economy on the basis of market fundamentalism can curb corruption. This is the basis of the virtual collapse of the economy of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain (the “PIGS”) which has defied the prescriptions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund,” Falana stressed.
—EROMOSELE EBHOMELE