Leave Ghana alone? and yet we shout against corruption!

Charities are already gearing up to resist and expose it.

President Obama is banning the use of tax havens. Gordon Brown has written to tax havens to clean up their act. OECD, G20 all are speaking out against the use of tax havens.

Yet, the stupid africans who are the most victims say; leave Ghana alone?

Tufiakwa!

The point is not whether the inhabitants of off-shore havens enjoy a better life. But that money launderers are able to 2exploit off-shore financial centres and tax havens to perpetrate their act to provide safe havens for proceeds of crime; drug money, looting of government money.
nigerian politicians have stashed about $107 billion overseaa according to the estimates.

Money launderers use tax havens because they provide an impenetrable layer of protection around the ownership of assets. They have few commercial or financial justifications, except to conceal the origin and destination of goods in international commerce, to circumvent arms control laws and to evade taxes and hide their loot.

Ghana is already gaining notoriety as a drug trafficking route into Europe and the United states

The UK Barclays Bank plans to turn Ghana into Africa's money laundering haven. The establishment of a fully operating tax haven so close to Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea could see huge mineral wealth in West Africa vanish into it from poverty-stricken countries' coffers.

http://www.elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=726:turning-ghana-into-africas-money-laundering-haven&catid=25:politics&Itemid=37

In the Guardian interview Yar’Adua declared:  “You see, these former governors are my colleagues. We had worked together for eight years. Because I am the President, I cannot just jettison people I know, if that is what people want to use to judge whether this government is fighting corruption or not (i.e. his relationship with corrupt former governors and his treatment of Ribadu and El Rufai), then that it is unfortunate” (i.e. he doesn’t care!).

Just like McCain later realised, someone should tell Yar’adua that the appearance of his association with the corrupt former governors was wrong. It's a wrong appearance when a group of former governors, who have been indicted for corruption but was known to have contributed funds towards Yar’Adua’s electioneering campaign to appear in a meeting with the current president, because it, conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do.

http://www.elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=721:president-umaru-yaradua-and-his-friends&catid=25:politics&Itemid=37

The general trend in the stock market generally is that the recession has bottomed out. The recovery would be slow and gradual.
As for the Nigeria Stock Market, only God knows. The price of oil and the seriousness of the Yar'Adua government to create a favorable investment climate will dictate which way the tide flows.

Nigeria -The allocation of equities in its Nigeria portfolio was raised to 30 percent at Renaissance Capital, which said the world’s worst-performing stock market in 2009 is poised for a “solid recovery” helped by mergers.
http://elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=707:nigerias-stock-market-set-for-solid-recovery&catid=30:the-economy&Itemid=41

When President Barack Obama made a phone call to Ghana’s president, John Evans Atta-Mills, on Friday, April 10, 2009, the Ghanaian media
and Prof. Atta-Mills’ National Democratic Congress (NDC) made quite a lot of capital out of such call. But was Obama's call a congratulatory
message or a diplomatic warning?
http://www.thenigerialaw.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=234:obama-for-africa-a-force-for-democracy&catid=37:democracy-a-human-rights&Itemid=56

Yes my fellow countrymen, is the current president of Nigeria, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua; a thief, a usurper, or my President and commander-in-chief of the Federal Government of Nigeria, whom we should respect and honour as “His Excellency”?
 
This question applies not just to Yar’Adua but to all the men that have been privileged to occupy the government house; from Dodan Barracks to State House Marina to Aso Villa.

Nigeria presently have six living ex heads of state, these have been honoured as members of the Council of State, with hefty pensions for life, state provided protection and security, and other appurtenances of power - all at our expense. 

But, should I really revere Gowon, Buhari and Babangida as my ex leaders bearing in mind their manner of ascension to power? Where the constitution of Nigeria expressly provides that: “The Federal Republic of Nigeria shall not be governed, nor shall any persons or group of persons take control of the Government of Nigeria or any part thereof, except in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution”. (Chapter 1) does that not make these men criminals?

Our criminal codes criminalise robbery – it goes ahead to define stealing as: “A person who fraudulently takes anything capable of being stolen, or fraudulently converts to his own use or to the use of any other person anything capable of being stolen, is said to steal that thing”. (Chapter 34) 
So if the evidence shows that Babangida stole 12 billion dollars from the Gulf Oil windfall, does that not make him a thief? Does that not make him liable to imprisonment in harmony with Section 390: “Any person who steals anything capable of being stolen is guilty of a felony, and is liable, if no other punishment is provided, to imprisonment for three years”? – Instead of a seat at the National Council of States?

Moreover, seeing that he forcefully took over the government by the use of armed soldiers, thus forcefully acquiring the keys to the vaults of our central Bank, is he not an armed robber? Shouldn’t he be condemned as such and made to face the firing squad?
If time does not run against crime, and we are now in a democracy and the rule of law, should the National Assembly allocate these hefty material and sundry benefits to these ex heads of state; rewarding them for their acts of brigandage?

Ok, alright; many Nigerians believe that Obasanjo did not win the 1999, and 2007 elections, and yet he served for 8 years as president. In the end, CALCOL have submitted evidence of criminal acts perpetrated by Obasanjo while in power, should I really be offended and come to his defence when a BBC journalist suggested he is a corrupt president?

Should I respect him as my president, even as he is now implicated in the Halliburton scandal?
And now to our man of the moment; Does Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has the mandate to be the president of Nigeria. He himself admitted that the election that brought him to power was fraudulent.
Would the fact that the Supreme Court legalised his election make it legitimate? What about reports that the presidency bribed the Supreme Court Justices to get the judicial result and sources (very reliable sources) even mentioned the hands through which the bribe money was channelled. 
The source added that in fact the legal fee for Yar’Adua’s solicitors was in the neighbourhood of 1 Billion Naira! 1 Billion Naira of our money, and that the money was delivered in cash? If the payment was legitimate, why pay in cash?

Is Yar’Adua aware that he should not use government money to pay the legal fees for his election tribunal case? That if he does that, he is stealing? And that it makes him a thief and a robber? 
So is Yar’Adua a thief then? If so, should I still regard him as my president? Should a robber, who stole our collective property, be honoured as my leader? If he illegitimately bought and rigged an election to become the president, does that not make him a usurper, and if so, should I respect him as my president?

At the inception of Yar’ Adua’s presidency, many Nigerians decided to give him the benefit of doubt, not just because we are powerless to change the situation, but also because of his antecedents as an ascetic simple man, less prone to corruption.
If fact, during the first years of his presidency, I called a friend in Nigeria to complain that Yar’Adua seems so slow, he agreed but prefers him still. He reasoned that it is better for Yar’adua to be there and do nothing instead of allowing the “PDP thieves” to loot the whole money.
I also believed Yar’Adua when he proclaimed at his inauguration that he will maintain a “zero tolerance to corruption”. 

Quote: “What is interesting is not that Umaru Yar’adua is deeply steeped in corruption, but the way he goes about his corrupt activities”, they claim that “regarding crude oil lifting contracts, Yar’Adua methods of enriching himself closely resemble those of the late General Sani Abacha”.- Saharareporters

You may choose to disregard Saharareporters on this, that is your call but look at the men surrounding Yar’Adua, his AG Aondoakaa in particular. 
When Saharareporters alleged that Aondoakaa has collected bribes to compromise the Pfizer case, I sniggered. But recently other sources who should know are confirming the story. The source asserted also that a compromising agreement would soon be reached, but most unfavourable to the interest of the country. Lo and behold, the news came around that the Federal Government has reached agreement with Pfizer!
Would we go on about Siemens, Willbros and now the Halliburton scandal?

What is most nauseating about the latest case is not just that this administration winks at corruption but treat us like a bunch of idiots; they are pretending to investigate the case by setting up a stupid panel, making a fool of us?  pocketing more money on top of the Halliburton scandal and having a laugh at our expense!

Have PDP honoured Nigerians if they disregarded my vote, took away my right as a Nigerian citizen to elect my president, and arrogantly gave it to Yar’Adua?

Quote: “Umaru Yar’Adua’s fraudulent ascension to power and his use of financial inducement to the judiciary to enable him to keep a mandate secured under the most corrupt, if not bizarre, electoral circumstances, has given him away as a greedy and shameless scammer”. -Saharareporters. 

If successive Nigerian leaders dishonoured me by stealing us dry, mismanaged our commonwealth and made me a second class citizen in my own country, Should I honour a thief even if he is the President?

from www.elombah.com

@ode remo
It was Shakespeare that said that Life is a stage, all of us are mere players, we come and trut our stuff and away we go.
No one is inviting OBJ back. However, in relation to OBJ, Yar'Adua is a horrible, disgusting disappointment to say the least.

At least, OBJ fought corruption, even if vindictively, Yar'Adua hugs corruption. He is not only corrupt, but surrounds himself with the corrupt.

On top of that he humilliates us and treats us like goats, just look at the macabre dance called the Halliburton inquiry. before Halliburton we had the Siemens and Willbros scandal.

Do you remember when obj was accused of buying 2million Transcorp shares? Do you remember how he handled it? the extent he went to deny it?
Do you remember what OBJ does if any of his apointees are accused of corruption?

Now compare that with how Yar'Adua handles corruption allegations. Yar'Adua behaves as if he doesn't care.

Please do get me right, OBJ is no saint, but if you must steal my property, don't treat me like a fool, just don't add insult to my injury.

That is the essence of this article: http://elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=669:how-should-i-view-my-president&catid=25:politics&Itemid=37

ka Chineke mezie okwu!

But the EFCC is still there today and no politician is being prosecuted for corruption!
Without Obasanjo's support do you think Ribadu would have been able to do anything?
Don't you see what happened to him immediately OBJ left the scene?
Let's give honour to whom honour is due abeg!

On their website, the UNODC notes that attitudes on corruption are changing. It claims that as recently as ten years ago, corruption was only whispered about. But today there are signs of growing intolerance toward corruption and more and more politicians and chief executives are being tried and convicted.
But the assertion that corruption was only whispered about 10 years ago is not true with regards to Nigeria; Nigeria had long realised that corruption is one of the greatest impediments to the development of the country. Chinua Achebe gave corruption a prominent place in ‘The Trouble with Nigeria’.
In his January 15, 1966 coup speech, Chukwuma Nzeogwu warned against “bribery and corruption” and proclaimed; “Our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low places that seek bribes and demand 10 percent”.
Since then, the entire coup d’états had always mentioned corruption as one of the reasons why they struck. Murtala Mohammed made the war against corruption the centrepiece of his administration.
The name of Muhammadu Buhari is synonymous with the ‘War against Indiscipline’. Shehu Shagari and Ibrahim Babangida professed to battle against corruption. Even the goggled one, Sani Abacha, executed a “war against Indiscipline and corruption”. Yet corruption remained an intractable problem.
Come The Economic and Financial Crimes commission Establishment Act (2004). The EFCC Act sought to free the prosecution for corruption from the constraints of due process and similar old-fashioned ideas of protection against overzealous state intrusions by focusing on disruption and on situational strategic prevention of money laundering. 
As pointed out by Ribadu, money laundering is an umbrella and sort of covers all sorts of corruption and financial crimes. And ‘corruption certainly is a predicate of money laundering’.
The Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2004 gave sweeping powers to the EFCC to have unfettered access through the banks and other financial institutions, to the financial details and other activities of any individual or organization under its investigation.
Armed with EFCC, Nigeria’s anti-corruption drive took a life of its own. Corruption ceased to be a vague, omnibus characterisation of public officials’ malfeasance. When you accuse someone of being corrupt, there follows a detailed outline of the offence backed by hard facts, with time, place and figures.
It is interesting that since the sacking of Ribadu, there is no more news of suitcase packing randy governors being arrested at Heathrow Airport with millions of cash. We had believed it was the Metropolitan Police getting fed up with Nigerian politicians turning London into the money laundering capital of the world. Now we know better!
Nigerians got to learn that rather than saying for example; Rufai Garba is corrupt; he looted the funds of Anambra State; he sold off government vehicles to his family, friends and cronies; he decorated his abode in Benue State with gleaming cars the way you landscape your compound with flowers.
No, through the efforts of the EFCC, Nigerians now say that Diepreye Alamieyeseigha is corrupt because he was a Director of an offshore company named Solomon & Peters Ltd (two middle names) and there are four (4) London properties he bought and registered in the company's name. These properties are:
247, Water Gardens, London, W2 2DG, which is the registered address of Solomon & Peters Ltd. This property was purchased for £1.75million on 20/8/2003,
14, Mapesbury Road, London, NW2 4JB. This property was purchased for £1.4million on 6/7/2001. He also has a multi-million US Dollar oil refinery in Ecuador.
This current reality is being demonstrated on two forums I came across last week. On Nairaland (https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-259676.0.html), a posting of the face of corrupt politicians seek to let the world know the face of the men and women that have been raping the country and keeping the citizens in perpetual penury. Their motto is, "Let the world identify our corrupt leaders, and know that Nigerians are leery of their own leaders. Let their future generation know that their progenitors are armed robbers, thieves and pen rogues".   
But the display on thenigerlalaw.com (http://www.thenigerialaw.com/forum/index.php?topic=79.0) goes even further. In keeping with the tradition of the EFCC; it does not only display the names and the faces of the ‘corrupt rulers’, it backs the charge up with hard data.
This is an appropriate response to the epistle according to Michael Aondoakaa that where there is no convincing evidence or information about the case to warrant the prosecution of anyone, the government is handicapped. For added effect he said: “All these names you get, let me make it clear to you, government does not prosecute out of the newspaper reports”.
As pointed out today by Simon Kolawole of ThisDay, “No matter our misgivings with ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo and his anti-graft war, he did what no head of state had ever done: sack an Inspector-General of Police, remove ministers and prosecute ex-governors all for corruption. You can say he was selective or vindictive, but for as long as no innocent person was persecuted, the vindictive argument would remain tenuous”.
However, as the two effort mentioned above shows, on fighting corruption in Nigeria, it appears the initiative is being taken away from the hands of the government. http://elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=629:olusegun-obasanjo-gave-us-efcc&catid=25:politics&Itemid=37
from www.elombah.com

Please whoever loves this man should tell him to go home!!!!!!!!!!!

Who is tutoring Yar’Adua?- www.elombah.com

Mallam Umaru Yar’ Adua’s sole ambition after his stint as the governor of backward Katsina state was to go back to the classroom- he said so himself. But ‘solely by good fortune’, he found himself as the president of Nigeria.

Machiavelli compared his situation to those to whom some power is given by the favour of someone else who bestows it, just as emperors who acquired empires by the corruption of the soldiers, from being citizens came to empire hence not by their own prowess.

He added, “Such stand simply upon the goodwill and the fortune of him who has elevated those— two most inconstant and unstable things. Neither have they the knowledge requisite for the position; because, unless they are men of great worth and ability, it is not reasonable to expect that they should know how to command”.

From what we have seen of Yar’Adua so far, it is evident that he ‘neither has the knowledge requisite for the position, nor does he knows how to command’.

Today, if we are ready to tell ourselves the truth, the administration betrays a terrifying incompetence in the handling of even basic issues and its grasp of the enormity of the tasks that faces Nigeria remains very suspect.

In fact, Alhaji Abubakar Iro Dan Musa summed it up nicely when he lamented that Nigeria appears to be too complex for Yar'Adua.

At the inception of this administration, Yar’Adua captured the nation’s mood when he explicitly proclaimed that the election that brought him to office was fatally flawed; tacitly admitting that he came into power fraudulently. He immediately promised to reform the electoral process and to be guided only by the rule of law. In Nigeria’s hard core politicking, that betrayed weakness.

So Yar’Adua needed to go back to school, he needed to be educated, to be enlightened on the use of power. For understanding his weaknesses and deficiencies, Yar’Adua is a great man.

So who would Yar’Adua hire this time around? How would Yar’Adua, a reputed ideological pupil of the late talakawa leader Aminu Kano, who had once exhibited reluctance to assume the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP); His quiet mien and manner of governance bespoke weakness; he appears hostage to some forces beyond his control; he seems afraid of his shadows. How would this supposedly weak man survive and dominate the shark infested waters of Nigerian politics; In a Party “that is a basket full of scorpions each venomous, primed to sting the other lethally”?

But first let’s go back to Machiavelli – ‘Princes (read Politicians) that rise unexpectedly, then, like all other things in nature which are born and grow rapidly, cannot have their foundations and relations with other Princes (politicians) fixed in such a way that the first storm will not overthrow them; “unless, as is said, those who unexpectedly become princes are men of so much ability that they know they have to be prepared at once to hold that which fortune has thrown into their laps, and that those foundations, which others have laid before they became princes, they must lay afterwards”’.

Let me interpret. Since Yar’Adua rose “unexpectedly”; he has yet no foundation on which he would withstand any coming political storms.

So to whom does he run to educate him on the ways of power and its use? Here
http://elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=638:umoru-yaradua-goes-to-school-part-2&catid=25:politics&Itemid=37

The Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) on Thursday accused President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua of witch-hunting persons opposed to his style of governance, saying that instead of treating the opposition as crucial partners in the nation's fledgling democracy, he has labelled them enemies of government.
http://elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=611:nba-accuses-yaradua-of-witch-hunting-opposition-&catid=3:newsflash&Itemid=57

A former Minister for Information in the NPP administration in Ghana and member of Parliament for Okere constituency, Hon. Dan Botwe says he has noticed a coup detat ahead in the country as indicated by what ex-President J. J. Rawlings has said publicly things are not moving on in the right direction so action must be taken.

In an interview with Peace FM, Botwe referred listeners to 1981 when ex president Rawlings organized a coup detat against Dr. Hilla Limann after similar complaints just as he is doing to President Mills now. To make his analyses more concrete, Hon. Botwe reminded Ghanaians not to forget that ex-president Rawlings brought Dr. Limann to power, just the way he helped to bring Professor Mills to power.

According to him, this shows that the former President expects people he brings to power to kowtow him, so if president Mills fails, he could use all means to overthrow him like the way he did to former President Limann in 1981.

Dan Botwe was speaking in reaction to former president Rawlings statement that President Mills is slow and weak in governing the nation. The former President had also gone further to say that President Mills is not ensuring a dynamic government and was not putting things in their right perspectives.

According to the former President, even some people in the NDC administration were against President Mills style of ruling. Expressing his deep fear for the situation, Hon. Botwe appealed to the Christian Council, Muslims and National Peace Council to intervene because as a person who experienced what happened in 1981, I am very much afraid. He added that ex-President Rawlings can do anything for power.
from GhanaWeb

Ghananians are asking; Who really is our president?

http://elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=601:who-is-the-president-of-ghana&catid=45:from-ghana&Itemid=27

Jerry Rawlings, Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Are we still in "ONE NIGERIA"?

How times change. It all seems like a different era when Soludo was being praised to the high heavens for his concerted programme aimed at stabilising the financial sector. He was garnering awards and being feted by Institutions all over the word as the world’s master banker. Everyone now indulges in the favourite pastime of vilifying him for the hiccups in the economy. That policy for which he was praised to high heavens - the consolidation of the banks, now supposedly is the source of our current economic woes.
http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/danny-elombah/who-would-perform-better-than-professor-so.html

For a region that have produced 9 out of 12 Nigerian heads of state and government that is a disgrace. One would imagine that the statistics proved that these leaders worked for the generality of Nigeria without favouring their people; far from it. The Northern Leaders have failed the nation and their people.

The reality is that these rapacious leaders ravaged Nigeria resources but concentrated the wealth in the hands of their families and their cronies.

I was brought up in Northern Nigeria; In Kontagora, Niger State to be precise. So I am an eye-witness of the gross social inequality and wealth imbalance that exists in the region. The massive gulf between the haves and the have-nots is appalling.

Nothing excites the average Hausa Alhaji more than having hundreds of his brethren trooping to his enclave in order to hail him and greet him ranka dede each morning. He distributes salaka; have them eat from his crumbs while he indulges in the yearly hajj to ensure that he enters Al-janna.

Like one Garbe Mohammed said, "It is difficult to find the suitable adjectives to describe the peculiar and depressing characteristics of the Northern part of Nigeria without sounding too offensive or condescending".

Northern Nigeria is the poorest and most backward part of Nigeria, and it is getting poorer and more backward! An Article by one Garba Mohammed in the Nigeria Village Square quoting Prince Obasi shows that The NAPEP figures on the incidence of poverty in the six geo-political zones in the country shows that In the North-West, 74 percent of the people are poor, that is they live on less than one dollar a day; in the North-East the poverty rate is 78 percent; North Central, the figure is 70 percent.

By contrast the South-West has about 28 percent; the South-South 30 percent, while the South-East, from where Soludo (lucky him) comes from, turned out to be the wealthiest part Nigeria with a poverty rate of 23 percent.

Garba went on to say that Obasi did not add, because he didn’t need to add, having used the portrait of a wretched beggar and his son to illustrate his views, that in addition to its poverty or may be because of it the North also has the highest concentration of beggars, of all ages, than anywhere else in the world; it has the lowest literacy rate in and the lowest per capita, or income per head in the country. It has its fair share of moral depravity too; from Kaduna to Kano and Sokoto, cases of 60-year old men defiling 14-year-old girls are rampant; in some cases fathers have been known to impregnate their under-age daughters!

Reading this one would be tempted to imagine that the other regions that are better-off in Nigeria have cornered the resources for themselves to the deprivation of their brothers in the North. I stand to be corrected, but I believe that Northerners have produced the highest number of billionaires in Nigeria.

Talk of the Dantatas’, the Dangotes’, the Babangidas’ and numerous others. As I said above, These greedy men have simply cornered the commonwealth to themselves.

I blame the Northern leaders, the backward northerners themselves and a religion that have conspired with the socio-political system in the North to consign the northerners to poverty.

Efforts to lift their people out of stupor have failed, their religion and social system have forced them to adopt a fatalistic outlook to life: “Allah zai ya kawo”;” Iko alla ne”; “Ba Mai yi, Sai Allah”

When I was schooling in the North, I paid my school fees as a non-indigene, while my fellow students not only enjoyed free education, but have free supplies of books and stationeries. Yet when I went back to visit a few years later, my old friends were busy selling gworo (kola nut) in the market; some already had 3 wives, with loads of children for good measure. When I told them I was still unmarried, they laughed incredulously.

Well, their appalling state serves quite well the interests of their leaders; after all, someone would have to supply the fodder for the incessant riots; to rig the elections and the thuggery that goes with it. for the full story, go here
http://elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=555:nigeria-30-of-northern-youths-are-almajiris&catid=25:politics&Itemid=37

Shoot the looters!

Atiku versus Atiku

Obasanjo has proved once again that you underrate his political acumen at your own peril. He obviously flirted with Atiku Abubakar so as to increase his bargaining power with Yar’Adua when the chips are down. That Atiku fall for it calls into question the political sagacity of a purported ‘strategic politician that received his tutelage under Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, the master tactician’.

full story here: http://elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=544:atiku-versus-atiku&catid=25:politics&Itemid=37

Pictures of Obasanjo himself spraying Naira notes on women who danced to the music played at a recent birthday ceremony in Abeokuta; a deliberate violation of Section 12 of the CBN Act 2007 which was signed into law by Obasanjo himself in 2008 says his critics.
http://elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=37&Itemid=60

Yes, we as Nigerians are good people. Forget the worldwide negative attitude toward anything called Nigeria; that our businessmen are seen as crooks internationally; that we are permanently stereotyped as drug mules; our reputation for fraud, and that thousands of fellow countrymen and women are rotting in Thai, British and German jails. They are mere victims of the likes of our weeping president.
Read at http://elombah.com/

Is Oluchi Onweagba the most beautiful girl in Nigeria?
check here http://elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=238:oluchi&catid=46:naija-gossip&Itemid=64

for related items: http://elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=46&Itemid=64

Oluchi Onweagba - Oluchi is not the most beautiful girl in Nigeria since the likes of Agbani Darego are still in existence but she’s definitely hot-hot.

Someone should please advice these super beauties to share their experience to all Nigerians so that Nigerians can also radiate with fresh beauties in a black way.









Link

As far as Africa is concerned, the highlight of the invasion of Europe by the Obama juggernaut this week was when he declared: “My father was from Kenya. And when I travelled to Kenya -- I had just been elected to the United States Senate -- everybody was very excited and they greeted me as if I was already a head of state, and there were people waving and lining the streets. I went to speak at a university and I

had to be honest, which was, America has an obligation to provide Kenya help on a whole range of issues, but if Kenya doesn't solve its own corruption problem, then Kenya will never grow. It will never be able to provide for its own”.

Obama was responding to a question from a member of the audience in his Town Hall Meeting in France. The questioner had asked what the G20 would be doing to help the less developed countries cope with the economic crisis. Obama then went on to explain that the developed world promises to “open up our markets to trade from poor countries, but that we will also insist that there is good governance and rule of law, and other critical factors in order to make these countries work”.

He added, “We spend so much time talking about democracy -- and obviously we should be promoting democracy everywhere we can. But democracy, a well-functioning society that promotes liberty and equality and fraternity, a well-functioning society does not just depend on going to the ballot box. It also means that you're not going to be shaken down by police because the police aren't getting properly paid. It also means that if you want to start a business, you don't have to pay a bribe. I mean, there are a whole host of other factors that people need to -- need to recognize in building a civil society that allows a country to be successful.”

Corruption is endemic in the rest of Africa

Corruption in Kenya is legendary, corruption is worse in Nigeria; Corruption is endemic in the rest of Africa. Every in country in Africa is hugely endowed with God- given resources, whose natural resources – oil, gas and timber – are in great demand by the world’s developed and rising economies. The revenue from this Natural resource offers a potential way out of endemic poverty prevalent in the continent.  These are countries which by rights should have significant natural resource revenues to spend on development. Instead they are impoverished, institutionally corrupt, and prone to violent instability.

In these countries, the national resource wealth has been captured by unaccountable African leaders, whether for personal enrichment, to maintain an autocratic personality cult that violated human rights, or to fund devastating wars or some combination of these. Resource revenues that should be spent on development are misappropriated or looted by senior government officials, or are used to prop up regimes that oppress their own people.

Countries like Nigeria, Angola and Congo are rich in oil but majority of their citizens can barely afford to live at all. Seventy per cent of the population live on less than a dollar a day and one in ten children dies before their fifth birthday. In Congo, in 2006 oil revenues reached around $3 billion.

African Kleptocratic elite

The African Kleptocratic elite’s overriding aim is self-enrichment.  The amount of the illicit wealth involved is catastrophic for the continent’s economy. Nigeria is believed to have earned close to $350billion in oil exports over the past forty years and much of that is generally believed to have been mismanaged. A recent UNDP survey and corroborated in a study by Professor Collier of Oxford University, stated that Nigerian nationals have over $107 billion stashed in foreign accounts globally.

This asset stripping is not just an economic crime, its real effect occurs in the social destruction that follows when such vast amounts of capital are siphoned off into overseas private bank accounts and/or used to go shopping in Paris, London and Dubai, the money is spent on Dolce & Gabbana, Aubercy Bottier- a high-end bootmaker, shoes at Aubercy and designer handbags in their favourite shoe shops.

Nigeria in particular provides the most egregious examples of the ‘resource curse’ in action. In Nigeria It has become a norm in for people enter government house as paupers, at best as average citizens, but leave richer than the country itself, or state or local government as the case may be.

President Olusegun Obasanjo has been a public servant all his life, first a military officer with a splendid career that culminated in his becoming head of state, albeit by default. He would later return to be president. But this does not adequately justify his current financial status. He is the proud owner of many farms, houses, schools including a university.

What of IBB, the famed Maradona. By the time he left office, a lot has happened to this handsome military officer from Minna. His house in Minna alone is an insensitive poster for ostentation in a land where millions of people still survive on less than $1 per day. During his tenure, the nation got hefty $12 billion excess cash from the projected price of crude oil courtesy of the Gulf War global oil price surge. Up till now, nobody can account for the money. He, too, is a proud owner of many mansions, business concerns and a private university licence.

The late General Sani Abacha stashed hundreds of millions of dollars away in foreign banks. He was so rich, he could hardly remember all his bank accounts, where they were and what they were worth. And he was not a businessman or entrepreneur.  He was just a stealth military officer who stole the powers of government from Ernest Shonekan. The rest of the story is aptly captured by what is now known as "Abacha Loot". But it is all so because Abacha is dead. Somehow, some day, we may have "IBB loot” or Obasanjo loot".

Today, every governor in Nigeria is a proud owner of at least a house in London, US, Germany or any other country that mattered. It is no big deal. In fact the big deal is if you don’t have one mansion in a choice neighbourhood in any of these countries. Add to that healthy foreign bank accounts and of course another bank, may be vault, inside the comfort of these marble homes.

Former Nigerian governor Joshua Dariye was caught on the streets of London with £10,000 in their pockets; offshore bank account bleeding with over £2 million; £1.8 million in cash money stacked in apple-pie order in one corner of a  room in a London home plus houses in the US and elsewhere.

Bayelsa State Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha’s involvement in money-laundering led to his arrest and investigation by officers of the Metropolitan Police, London, culminating to his trial on charges of money-laundering in the United Kingdom.

He was investigated for grave and damaging allegations of fraudulent and corrupt self-enrichment by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and other appropriate security agencies in Nigeria.  His charges included Maintaining foreign bank accounts while in office in the following banks viz: (i) Barclays Bank Plc, London (ii) National Westminster Bank, London (iii) Royal Bank of Scotland (iv) Commerce Bank, London.

The former Inspector-General of Police for just two years Tafa Balogun became richer than most European leaders combined. More than N18 billion (Over £70 million) was traced to him. That’s his wage for minding national security for two years.

Dr Bukola Saraki, the governor of Kwara State has never been known as an entrepreneurial whizkid. Except that he was a director in the badly run and now moribund Societe Generale Bank of Nigeria and later an aide of Obasanjo, he has not done any other big "job". But he owns a £4.35 million (N1.06 billion) mansion on Bourne Street in South West London.

full story here http://www.elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=504:barack-obama-and-the-corruption-of-african-leaders&catid=25:politics&Itemid=37

The Group of 20 Vultures
We are the ‘vultures, nestling lovingly together after feasting on a corpse. We picked the eyes of a swollen corpse in a water-logged trench and ate the things in its bowel. Full gorged they chose their roost, keeping the hollowed remnant in easy range of cold telescopic eyes, In every germ of that kindred love is lodged the perpetuity of evil’. - Chinua Achebe
We are gathered in London like vultures, ‘nestling lovingly together after feasting on a corpse’. We would dine and wine with the queen. Have our balls, share jokes, wild laughter and anecdotes. The mismatch between the gravity of the current global situation and the limited awareness among us of how much needs to be done is not lost on you.
Should you feel any enthusiasm about the prospects for our having any meaningful achievement where we further contribute to global warming by flying into Heathrow airport, driving in our dozens of Limousines with hundreds of security apparatchik?
What began as the unwinding of complex financial services companies has eaten deep and turned into a scary spectre of Armageddon? Yea, we know you believe this crisis resulted from our massive failure of governance, the failure to see the wood for the trees; the failure to take appropriate action.
Don’t worry, at these moments of great uncertainty and rapid change, old alliances and old antagonisms collapse. Whether from the developed or developing world, at our meeting at our London, we share a common commitment to the existing financial and economic order.
We will save the world - "stabilise financial markets", "reform and strengthen the global financial and economic system", and "put the global economy on track for sustainable growth".
Tell me something new! Do you think we would easily break with the orthodoxy of the last decades - even though it has now brought the world to the most severe crisis you have ever known?
In our naiveté we believed the financial markets are ‘rational and self-correcting’. To our dismay we discovered it’s merely an “exaggerated faith” in the global banking regulation. “Market discipline of individual banking strategies” is a mirage.
Quote- “in addition to the economic and environmental imbalances that lie at the heart of the crisis, there is a political imbalance, which is represented in all the major international institutions whose representation is skewed towards the old powers”.
Why must the very poor co-exist with the extremely wealthy? Must poverty accompany riches? A few meters from the white house are the extremely poor of Washington DC. The beauty of Rio de Janeiro overlooks one of the world’s worst slums. “A third of the global poor now reside in India”- The World Bank.
Income inequality in India, Mexico and China is increasing, yet they are now supposedly one of us; the G20 Vultures. Yes, extreme wealth is built on extreme human misery.
Poor African countries were being pursued by international hedge-fund creditors seeking to turn a profit on old debt they had bought at a discount. Where is the international action to protect Africans from these “vulture funds” whose pursuit of highly indebted countries was “nothing short of scandalous”. We “picked the eyes of a swollen corpse in a water-logged trench and ate the things in its bowel”.
In 1945 after the Great War, we sat around huge mahogany tables at Breton wood and fashioned the next world order. We first had our Marshall plan and then imposed economic policies on the global south that seriously jeopardise the future of the planet. We called it the Washington consensus; you call it the IMF orthodoxy.
And what does the consensus say? To obtain loans, the developing countries must ‘dismantle trade barriers, privatise key sectors of the economy, reduce the role of the state, remove all exchange restrictions and adopt an export-led model of development’.
Yet when these turn to the IMF in search of debt relief, we still peddle the same tired recipes. The fund in November 2008 for the Seychelles is conditional on economic reforms including the removal of all exchange restrictions and the floating of the rupee.
The results? “As many as 53 million more people will be sucked into poverty this year”; The destruction of the means of livelihood of billions of people in the “third world”; hundreds of thousands of peasant families, practising environmentally and socially sustainable mixed farming, being driven off the land.
In Mexico, peasants, have been unable to compete with cheap imports from the United States of industrially produced maize. In Argentina and Paraguay, small farmers, have been forced to make way for huge Soya plantations. Yes, we pauperized the poor.
Yet when Iceland wanted same loans, they got them before you could finish spelling l-o-a-n.
Quote- “The London summit is dedicated to taking concrete actions to protect the poor and vulnerable: to support free trade, promote investment and reform the international financial institutions…support the creation financing facility for the vulnerable managed by the World Bank and a global vulnerability monitor led by the UN to manage the impact of the crisis and increase international accountability to the poorest people in the poorest countries.”- David Milliband
Yet like we did in the 19th century, we still swoop down scanvegously, buy up arable lands in Africa and Asia to grow food crops. The Saudis spent $1.3bn in land in Indonesia, largely for rice monocropping for our cash crop needs. They are also looking for similar deals in Pakistan, Sudan and Ethiopia.
Doesn’t it profoundly shock you to see very poor developing countries, which are failing adequately to feed their own people, allowing us rich foreigners to come into your land to produce food for export, even when you don’t have enough to eat?
We are not talking morality here for “we don’t do God”. What does it matter if in the process we thereby endanger the universe? We replaced your traditional model with industrial agriculture which is heavily dependent on fertilisers, pesticides and farm machinery, and does far more damage to the local ecosystem and to the global climate than your traditional farming systems it is displacing.
Don’t worry we have got the Amazon rainforest and all those thick forests in Indonesia. That was what we thought, except that today, the same Amazon was proving more vulnerable to climate change than we had previously thought. So what?
Who is that fool that told the US government to divert a large part of its maize production into biofuels; to use Sugarcane to produce ethanol instead of sugar? Why were they surprised when food prices skyrocketed? As usual the poor suffer more because we forced many poor developing countries to dismantle tariffs and other tools that they had previously used to protect local food production. Millions went hungry as a result.
While many of our commodity prices have fallen in the early months of 2009, the local food prices in most sub-Saharan African countries are still higher today than they were a year ago. See what I mean?
Is there an immutable law that says you should all engage in a massive exodus from the rural areas onward to the cities? Who says the poor countries must be deprived of their brains to maintain our pampered living? We stole your nurses, doctors, engineers and scientists so we can live better life. What does it matter if you are left to die out? You call it, ‘brain drain’; we call it ‘brain gain’!
Quote- “the £6 trillion promised by governments to bail out banks would be enough to end extreme global poverty for 50 years. Diverting a ‘tiny fraction’ (about £405billion) of this money could make a ‘massive difference’ to the worlds poor by providing safety nets and health services’ - Oxfam
Hundreds of thousands of families living in shanty-towns would leap at the chance to return to the land, provided they received adequate financial and technical support. Their environmentally friendly way of mixed farming would help to cool the planet. Together with more local food systems and a return to peasant farming, it could eliminate as much as 40% of all greenhouse gases. But who cares? Full gorged they chose their roost, keeping the hollowed remnant in easy range of cold telescopic eyes
Don’t blame us, blame the ‘masters of the universe’- the new vultures! They moved into new areas in a relentless sales and investment spree. Their investment in commodities futures rose from $5 billion in 2000 to $175 billion in 2007- Creating financial instruments whose risk profiles were not properly understood; financial innovations of little or no value.
‘We could never predict what our actions would lead to; for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction’.
New fanciful words entered everyday parlance: sub-prime mortgage explosion; credit crunch; Quantitative Investment Strategy; Leveraging; derivative financial instruments; securitised products; toxic assets; Counter cyclical capital buffers! Private equity where there is nothing equitable in their dealings.
Hedge fund? A hedge or hedgerow is a line of closely spaced shrubs and tree species, planted and trained in such a way as to form a barrier or to mark the boundary of an area.
Bonus schemes got fanciful names: Option plans; mandatory bonus; bonus deferred plans; co-investment plans; share match plans; restricted stocks; forfeitable shares; conditional share award.
They have enjoyed their years of prosperity, assuming their salaries will increase year in and year out. Assuming their bonuses (bonus plans that are not properly documented and whose employer enforcement rights are so unclear) will grow ever large. They became addicted to wealth; celebrating their massive awards in bottles of Dom Perignon.
Shylocks! They forgot the fundamental purpose of banking - achieving global prosperity. One called itself Goldman Sachs. Pray which Gold-man ever dresses in sackcloth? Citibank; is it for only the urbanites? Lehman Brothers; leave that one, it’s dead! Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; lol, what a scrappy name! AIG; too big for its pants!
For every major company that hit the headlines, thousands of smaller businesses will simply vanish; Innocent bystanders that neither adopted rash business models nor over-reached themselves. They might have been sceptical of the boom, yet they have discovered the carpet pulled from under their feet.
Who worries about them? Their employees might be devastated when they lose their jobs; their supplies might be left unpaid; their owners might lose everything; they might be caught in a vicious circle; their owners might go bankrupt; yet they remain below the radar, their passing unmourned!
You blame everyone else but yourself. Yet the truth is the financial chaos is not only a ‘massive failure of governance’, it is everyone’s failure; from board of directors to risk managers to the shop-aholics, we all shared the common commitment to the existing financial and economic order. “In every germ of that kindred love is lodged the perpetuity of evil”.
We were all part of a culture where everything is measured by money; we all worshiped money and sex- greed is good! It’s a religion. What else, fame. Everybody wants to be a celebrity, it’s a sad culture, we lived in frenzy, work all the time and make money to buy things to impress our peers.
We pay our footballers more than we do our engineers and doctors; our actresses more than our nuclear scientist and teachers; and our news presenters more than our molecular biologists and nurses. Everyone is measured by what they have, living without God.
Celebrate the end of an era. Shock is never easy; you must change your lifestyles
What began as the problem for the financial services companies has eaten deep into every sector. Today’s events are now only imperfectly predictable and uncontrollable. The severity of the recession means we feel a sense of doom and gloom. But what can we do? We are powerless.
We are gathered in London like vultures. Far from wishing to challenge the status quo, our main and only wish is to get a better deal for our countries. “Don’t worry we will save the world”, "stabilise financial markets", "reform and strengthen the global financial and economic system", and "put the global economy on track for sustainable growth", “take concrete steps to protect the poor and vulnerable”, “support free trade, promote investment and reform the international financial institutions”.
Hah! The very blandness and predictability of those words loudly declare the absence of any new vision.
At the end of the day, the only agreement we might reach would be our “distaste of tax havens” for nothing appeals to us as the possibility of a cartel that can impose its policies by disciplining those that cheat us out of taxes.
Out in the street are more reasonable voices, it would be one that will be heard in the streets among the protesters rather than in the G20 meeting itself; where we are busy “nestling lovingly together after feasting on a corpse”.

“WALL STREET GOT DRUNK, AND WE ARE ALL SUFFERING FROM THE HANGOVER”; WE ARE ALL VICTIMS!

afamefuna@elombah.com
At www.elombah.com