Highest Paid Politicians With Odious Loans Is it not strange that a country with the highest number of poor people in the world pays politicians with collateral secured loans from foreigners? We are not talking about paying teachers or civil servants, these are the highest paid politicians in the whole wide world. When asked why they go into foreign debt again, it is because there is not enough in the budget to pay looters and vultures that refused to pay civil servants so that they can loot treasury.
It still remains a mystery why these politicians keep on receiving mega salaries for years from the budget supplemented by foreign loans since the country is broke. The poorer the country gets, the richer these politicians get and the louder the celebration by the masses for their mediocrity. Instead of resigning to crooks probing crooks, we want angels with equity to probe.
Odious loan serve as an incentive not only for despotic government but also to corrupt democratic elected governments whose leaders benefit most from these loans by paying themselves outrageous salaries, fabricating foreign contracts payment most of which goes into their pockets as borrowers with complicit overseas lenders charging huge “service” fees
Loan embargo or suspension on the other hand, would protect the people’s interests without the obligation to repay the accumulated debts until they get rid of their corrupt governments. As it is, most of the stolen loots returned to African countries without special monitoring of projects and purpose go back into the hands of new set of corrupt leaders diverting it into their foreign banks in the name of the people and infrastructure.
Of course the questions of trust and patronizing developing countries by lender countries have been raised. Both parties can be transparent by forming a committee to watch how the funds are released, for what particular projects it is used for, with emphasis on local development and training and modest service fees that are not duplicated. In most cases, lender countries demand goods and services from their countries when it can be sourced locally and much cheaper.
Some have come out and boldly stated they are out to milk the country to death so that every region or each ethnic group can go its own way. In the meantime, they will remain parasites until the country is completely paralyzed. Indeed, some military/politicians have wondered out loud why the country has remained standing despite looting the treasury mercilessly.
We have seen this picture before and it is not that difficult to envisage again. All we have to do is look at how Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan were destroyed by ethnic rivalry, experimental laboratory to test and carry out weapon of mass destruction and how superpowers were invited to claim their spoils of wars.
Since the country has not burnt down, they will continue to borrow using the land, the people and its resources as collateral until it is auctioned off in pieces to foreigners! So they owe the Europeans, the Americans, the Chinese and the Russians. By the end of the lease, term or maturity of all the loans, there will be a scramble for Nigeria; exactly the way it was for Africa.
Therefore their hatred for Nigeria is out of spite, hate and vengeance running from the North to the South. Contrary to the most parroted opinions, it is not that the youths are stupid, selfish or insensitive, some just want to burn the country as their leaders and mentors preached message of hate. The generation that built the country is gone. This generation wants to destroy it.
When you hear politicians say they are willing to die for Nigeria, they mean as long as there are more milk and honey still flowing their way. The day honey and wara stop, that is the day everyone would retire to their tents. They all have castles built in foreign countries where they think they and their families can never be rejected as outcast, no matter how filthy rich they appear to be. A fool and his castle built in the air will part sooner than later.
These same Vagabonds In Power had paid off odious loan nobody could vouch for how it was spent, except wasted on foreign inflated projects that might not have existed. This is money that could have been expended on needed infrastructure, schools and poverty reduction to support the working poor. It’s filtered away to foreign countries to pay foreign property and school taxes while ours at home are left to deteriorate.
In a country where sane and rational folks cannot form a quorum, prodigal and philanderer politicians are praised and celebrated by starving supporters until elections when they give bags of rice away, bought from salary stolen from them. Folks’ mentality and reasoning have been compromised; leaving them and their children praying to God for manna from heaven.
Indeed, instead of facing political and economic realities, they pray to gods and for divine intervention to solve their problems. Even the pastors and imam, aware of their vulnerability, exploit them, by promising miracles. They ask God to pick up their call!
No reasonable African up to the sixties would have thought African could be so destructive and indifferent to the plight of their new generations in a world where they are already despised for not building a single country that others could be proud of. Those who cry for Africa sometimes wonder and ask: if Africans cannot help themselves, who is going to help Africa?
Source: Farouk Martins Aresa
Published: Sunday, July 22, 2018
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