Borrowing to fund corruption (II)

approval to take is likely to end up in private pockets; raising billionaires among political thugs and by extension the National Confab chairman who have been assigned the “mandate” to ensure that the third term bid for Jonathan succeeds. After all,it is public knowledge that pilfering public funds is thehallmark of Jonathan’s administration. Remember that […]

approval to take is likely to end up in private pockets; raising billionaires among political thugs and by extension the National Confab chairman who have been assigned the “mandate” to ensure that the third term bid for Jonathan succeeds. After all,it is public knowledge that pilfering public funds is thehallmark of Jonathan’s administration. Remember that Daily Trust Newspaper in its August 5, 2013 edition exposed how government was paying revenue to a politician for no work done.The corrupt administration of Jonathan never felt obliged bysuch and other serious allegations against his cabinet men and women to investigate corrupt cases let alone prosecute the persons involved. This therefore gives credibility to the insinuation that the proposed $1 billion loan would be another juicy source for Jonathan to fund and empower corruption in Nigeria.
As promised in the first part of this discourse, we once morego back to Mr. Mike Omeri’s statement over the proposed loan which according to him, “is an arrangement involving governments”. Omeri and like minds should know that  it is through such well coordinated but deceptive ‘arrangements’ that countries are mischievously lured into signing multi-billion dollar projects which in effect mayprovide no solution to any of their socio-economic woes; with an ulterior motive by creditors to drain the resources of client-nations. Developing countries are equally intimidated to take loans that are tied to impoverishing conditionalities; to make them perpetually dependent on their ‘service providers’, the creditors.
The startling confessions by John Perkins in his book ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’ providehandyinsight in to the Machiavellianismand conspiraciesof ‘arrangement involving governments’. While defining himself as an Economic Hit Man (EHM),John Perkins writes in the preface of the book that “Economic Hit Men are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign ‘aid’organizations in to the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortions, sex, and murder”. Perkins said he was persuaded to stop writing the book; admitting that threats or bribes always convinced him to stop. “My decision to begin again was influenced by current world events”, Perkins explained and added, “This story must be told”. Perkins eventually published the book in 2004.
John Perkins stated that the oil embargo placed by Saudi Arabia and other gulf countries in 1973on the United States of America (for its complicity with Israel) forced the latter to recognize Saudi Arabia’s strategic importance to its economy. This further encouraged United States corporatocracy leaders to search desperately for methods to funnel petrodollars back to America. Almost immediately after the short but effective embargo that immensely impacted on the United States; Washington began negotiating with the Saudis which consequently resulted in the creation of the United States-Saudi Arabian Joint Economic Commission known as “JECOR”.
Perkins said he was summoned and told that the primary objective of JECORas an ‘arrangement’ was not the usual (i.e.to burden Saudi Arabia with debts it could never pay) but rather ‘to find ways that would ensure that a large portion of petrodollars found their way back to the United States’. In the process, Saudi Arabia would be drawn in, its economy would become increasingly intertwined and dependent upon that of the U.S; and presumably grow more westernized and therefore more sympathetic with and integrated into that of the United States. Today, four decades after the ‘arrangement’, the ulterior motives of JECOR have noticeably been successfully accomplished.
To do his job as an EHM, Perkins said he remembered when a diplomat once showed him a photo of Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia, in which he saw a herd of goats rummaging among piles of refuse outside a government building. When Perkins asked about the presence of goats,the diplomat explained that ‘goats were the city’s main garbage disposal system; because no self-respecting Saudi would ever collect trash.We leave it to the beasts’. Perkins said he thus came to think of the goats as an entry point into funneling Saudi money to the United States by replacing the goats with the world’s most modern garbage and collection system.
Under this formula, Saudis would take pride in this state-of-the-art technology and thus earmark huge resources for the project. Such a project would naturally require the construction of thousands of megawatts of electrical generating capacity, transmission and distribution lines, highways, communications networks, new airports, a vast array of service industries, and the infrastructure essential to keep all these cogs turning. And because the project would require continual maintenance, servicing and upgrading, Saudi Arabia would perpetually become dependent on the United States. Perkins confessed that they were also to arrange with World Bank or other debt-ridden methods for financing similar projects in countries that showed interest. What assurances do we have that the $1 billion loan proposed by Jonathan is notone EHM’s conspiracy to funnel Nigeria’s oil revenues to the World Bank in the name of providing military hardware in the same way that Saudi petrodollars were drained in the name of modern garbage disposal and sewage system?
The former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, described foreign loans as ‘Trojan Horses”,which developing countries must beware of; adding that ‘the World Bank is profitable only for the shareholders who are all rich developed countries’. We have seen from experience how the International Monetary Fund (IMF) interfered in the affairs of countries that borrowed its money. The IMF lends with conditions that will in effect result in total foreign control of the economy; directing the withdrawal of subsidies from essential services that ordinarily should be the social responsibility of government.
It does not matter whether the money would escape the intrigues and sharp practices of corrupt leaders. It is the popular view of Nigerians that going for the proposed $1 billion loanwould be suicidal for the country as it amounts to plunging the country into another phase of colonialism after over fifty years of independence. May Allah (SWT) guide our leaders as well as followers aright, amin.