₦airaland Forum

Looted for 106 years.

rosskiti:
Look at the criminal British looters calling Nigeria a ''failed state''.

The cheek of them.

The sheer audacity of them.

Are you aware that Nigeria did not have a single power plant at independence after 70 years of British rule?

Our first power plant was Kainji Dam, commissioned in 1964 by the Balewa administration.

Before independence, the British simply imported large industrial generators to power the GRAs where their officials lived.

The rest of Nigeria lived with candles and lanterns.

Our first university was commissioned in 1962.

University of Ibadan.

Today we have 200 universities, compared to ZERO at independence.

Literacy rate is 70% today compared to 5% at independence.

Were it not for independence, the overwhelming majority of you would be illiterate, barefoot village farmers or hunters of rabbits and cockroaches just like your grandparents were under colonialism.

At most you'd be a tailor, or shoemaker, or barber. Or palm wine tapper.

Certainly not one of the doctors, lawyers, engineers, software developers, industrialists, and bankers we have today, courtesy of independence.

The British colonialists invested next to nothing in public education.

So there was mass illiteracy across Nigeria in 1960.

Only when indigenous Nigerian rule began did literacy rates rise, as govt built THOUSANDS of public schools across the federation.

That is why your parents are educated, and were able to educate you.

It was because of INDEPENDENCE and indigenous rule.

We may have corruption today.

But the corruption we have today is CHILD'S PLAY compared to what went on during colonial rule.

Today, in a really bad year of corruption, we may lose 30% of our annual income to looters.

Under colonialism, we lost 95% of our annual income to British looters and embezzlers.

That was why at independence, after 70 years of British rule and export of Nigeria's resources, Nigeria was an undeveloped bush with naked, malnourished children walking the streets, no industries, no electricity, virtually no roads or infrastructure, and an illiterate population.

SO BRITAIN....do us all a favour, and..SHUT UP.

Continue to live in the past

Every single person and nation have every right to criticize Nigeria

But you clap for the when they condemned GEJ. Stupid hypocrite

spy24:
Continue to live in the past

Every single person and nation have every right to criticize Nigeria

Their duplicity is not ''the past''.

The trillions of dollars sitting in UK banks looted from Nigeria and Africa are not ''the past''.

The money is still there and has not disappeared.

Until you pussycat Africans, very expert at attacking each other's ethnicities at the slightest suspicion of misdeeds, but strangely turn silent pussycats whenever there is evidence of the ''white man's'' involvement, understand that ALL RACES ARE EQUAL, and that it is your RIGHT and DUTY to demand LOUDLY that they return your stolen wealth, and quit interfering in your internal affairs, politics, and economics, AND STOP THEIR BANKS ACCEPTING AND HARBOURING STOLEN AFRICAN WEALTH, you will continue being ensnared in what has always been an INTERNATIONAL IN SCOPE racket of African subjugation.

The west always send their houseboys like ''blue3k'' and ''Ruud vanisteroy'' to you, and their job is to bamboozle you into thinking that the problem of Nigeria is really just down to what the local leaders do, which is a HUMUNGOUS LIE.

The looting of Nigerian wealth is an INTERNATIONAL RACKET, and has ALWAYS been an INTERNATIONAL RACKET.

By focusing SOLELY on the local players, you will NEVER end corruption and capital flight.

Just like the drug problem in the US.

What you people do is equivalent to the US fighting its drug problem by harassing the local street dealers of the drugs while ignoring their foreign connections.

The US DOES NOT DO THAT. To fight their drug war, they target the local drug runners, but their MAIN FOCUS is on the CRIME LORDS in Mexico, Colombia, Panama, Cuba, etc, who finance the trade, produced the drugs, train the couriers, and provide banking support for the syndicate operations.

(Do you guys know that whenever a person is elected to high office in Nigeria, representatives of western banks travel down here to teach them how to siphon money? You didn't know that, did you?)

The US send in special forces to take out the drug lords, they fight for their extraditiion to the US to face trial, they pressurise the govts of those countries to investigate and apprehend them etc etc.

THAT IS HOW THEY ARE ABLE TO HALT THEIR OPERATIONS.

They don't say ''oh... don't blame foreigners for our drug problem... let's just face the people here alone who are causing the problem''.

AFRICANS, WAKE UP AND STOP BEING SCARED AND DUMB.

You have been condemning your leaders on Nairaland and elsewhere for decades.

Has it ended corruption?

NOPE.

Has it ended capital flight?

NOPE.

But if you develop the balls to storm the streets, in Nigeria, Africa, and the west, in protest against WESTERN BANKS storing your stolen money in London, Switzerland, and Paris, and DEMAND they return the wealth, and STOP receiving and harbouring stolen wealth from Africa, you will make a GREAT DENT on corruption. You will start to see results. GUARANTEED.

In the meantime, continue in your grand foolishness of not wanting to 'blame the white man' for your problems, while your wealth disappears before your eyes.

Ridiculous people.

orisa37:
Looted for 106 years.

Thanks for the correction.

Will rather not type what's on my mind.

rosskiti:
The west always send their houseboys like ''blue3k'' and ''Ruud vanisteroy'' to you, and their job is to bamboozle you into thinking that the problem of Nigeria is really just down to what the local leaders do, which is a HUMUNGOUS LIE.

Lol its the foreigners fault your worthless leaders rob you blind because you cant say no. They set the policy for them obey like the natural born slaves they are right? The solutions to this mumus is crying the evil oppressors to have mercy instead of telling the worthless idiots to straighten up.

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WHERE ARE AFRICA'S BILLIONS?

By Transparency international

This report makes it very clear that corruption is an INTERNATIONAL RACKET, and that only by addressing both LOCAL and INTERNATIONAL operators of this racket can Africa rid itself of corruption.

In other words, focusing SOLELY on local operators will change NOTHING.

https://www.transparency.org/en/news/where-are-africas-billions#

rosskiti:
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WHERE ARE AFRICA'S BILLIONS?

By Transparency international

This report makes it very clear that corruption is an INTERNATIONAL RACKET, and that only by addressing both LOCAL and INTERNATIONAL operators of this racket can Africa rid itself of corruption.

In other words, focusing SOLELY on local operators will change NOTHING.

https://www.transparency.org/en/news/where-are-africas-billions#

Dont be stupid nobody said dont address both mumu . You're the only one dumb to pretend its all the white mans fault your worthless leaders are corrupt idiots that despise their people. Anytime some points the lens locally you act like they're saying praising the foreigners. If Nigerian authorities caught them before they moved the money overseas this wouldn't be an issue.

The UK already cooperates to get the billions your worthless leaders dump in their banks after proving the money was stolen. The Abacha loot is the biggest example. Lol what else do you want them to do for you just stop stealing from your people and selling them out any chance you get.

[img]https://i./1hWc.gif[/img]

^^^
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Blue3k, You are not a Nigerian.

I have proven that.

You are a criminal foreign impostor and a liar who is here to defend western interests.

I've nothing further to say to you.

Get lost and STAY lost, you FOREIGNER.

The West and the Narrative of ‘African corruption’

Writer and activist Lee Wengraf exposes some of the myths about corruption in Africa. The notion of “African corruption” persists despite the reality of widespread and established practices of illicit activity in the West, and, crucially, the contribution and culpability of Western corporations and governments to ‘African’ corruption.

By Lee Wengraf

“The corruption and cronyism and tribalism that sometimes confront young nations — that’s recent history.” – U.S. President Barack Obama, address in Kenya, 2015

On February 13, newly-elected U.S. President Donald Trump signed a legislative order repealing a section of the Dodd-Frank Act that required disclosure of any funds received from foreign governments for deals in the extractive sector. Widely condemned as undermining transparency and anti-corruption efforts, Trump’s move facilitates corporate accumulation in oil, gas and mining; as the Economist notes, “[t]he major beneficiaries of the rollback” are oil majors like Exxon and Mobil. At the same time, however, the Dodd-Frank disclosure rules assume “African corruption” is the source of the problem, a phenomenon, as Obama implies peculiar to these “young nations.”

The U.S. and other Western countries readily condemn the supposed “lack of transparency” of African regimes. In reality, multinational corporations operating in Africa benefit from the weak regulatory infrastructure inherited from colonialism and reinforced by neoliberalism alike. Corruption on the part of local elites rationalizes international policies and regulations imposed on African states but camouflage ongoing exploitation and the legacy of those weak states.

“African corruption” rooted in siphoned oil wealth, for instance, has generated incessant handwringing by Western public officials and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Human Rights Watch, for example, launched a campaign in 2011 demanding the Angolan government provide an explanation for $32 billion suspected “missing” from the state oil company, Sonangol. Certainly Angolan government spending priorities have been dismal: its 2013 budget allocated 1.4 times more to defense than to health and schools combined. And undoubtedly African rulers and officials in oil-rich countries have accumulated vast amounts of wealth.

Yet the emphasis of international campaigns on “African corruption” and “transparency” initiatives have distorted possibilities for social change for ordinary Africans. Development economist Paul Collier, for example, offers a host of organizational and policy “solutions” such as reforming the tax system and building institutional capacity to manage the process.[1] However, the narrow focus of such policy approaches paper over the impact of historical forces such as the ability of African states to build that “capacity” and how that past has produced the conditions of “corruption.”

Inherited laws and policies have facilitated the theft of tax revenues and outward capital flows, illicit and otherwise. Grieve Chelwa of Africa Is a Country, for example, describes, “Malawi has a 60-year old Colonial-era Tax Treaty with the U.K. that makes it easy for U.K. companies to limit their tax obligations in Malawi. The treaty was ‘negotiated’ in 1955 when Malawi was not even Malawi yet. Malawi (or Nyasaland, as it was known then) was represented in the negotiations, not by a Malawian, but by Geoffrey Francis Taylor Colby, a U.K. appointed Governor of Nyasaland.”[2] Other historical examples include the longstanding case of U.S. oil companies in Nigeria whose “anti-tax campaign contributed to the regional and ethnic tensions that led to the outbreak of [civil] war.”[3] And African states – with legacy of colonial-era development patterns – tend to have weak infrastructure to enforce compliance.

Nicholas Shaxson argues that the year 1996 marked a “turning point” inside the World Bank, when its president, James Wolfensohn, put the issue of corruption on the “development agenda.”[4] Major organizations such as Global Witness established a transparency framework with early reports on human rights and blood diamonds, as well as the oil industry, and in 2002, they joined with George Soros to launch Publish What You Pay, a program to introduce legislation in Western nations compelling oil companies to disclose payments to host governments.

More recently, official circles have offered a broader understanding of “corruption” and its roots. A U.N. report from 2016 on governance and corruption in Africa argues, “Accounting for the external and transnational dimension of corruption in Africa facilitates strategic decision-making that is holistic and helps to tackle the problem of corruption at its root. Foreign multinational corporations often capitalize on weak institutional mechanisms in order to bribe State officials and gain unwarranted advantage to pay little or no taxes, exploit unfair sharing of rents, and to secure political privileges in State policies.”[5] They continue, “anti-corruption projects and initiatives all focus on cleaning up corruption in the public sector, which is often regarded as incompetent, inefficient and corrupt, while the private sector is portrayed as efficient, reliable and less corrupt. This view has been influenced by neo-liberal economic perspectives, which argue that the private sector is the main engine of economic growth and perceive Governments as being obtrusive.”[6]

......

This narrative shift is likely a response to the staggeringly high levels of corruption and criminality by Western and other non-African firms. In a high-profile example, the oil-services company Halliburton was convicted by a Nigerian court for corruption carried out while none other than former U.S. vice president Dick Cheney was at the helm.[7] In a report on “cross-border corruption in Africa” between 1995 and 2014, virtually all cases (99.5 percent) involved non-African firms.[8]

The economic and historical weight of the “weak institutional mechanisms” – from privatization and the disinvestment of state power — is extraordinarily high. For one, budget cuts undermine the ability of states to collect taxes and enforce compliance. As the Tax Justice Network-Africa writes:

[T]he Kenyan Revenue Authority (KRA), employs approximately 3,000 tax and customs officers, to serve a population of 32 million. Meanwhile Nigeria, with its 5,000 tax officials, cannot engage in a meaningful tax dialogue with its 140 million citizens. The Netherlands, as an example of an [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] OECD country, employs 30,000 tax and customs officials for a population of 10 million. … This extraordinary lack of personnel is a product of decades of failed tax policy in Africa, where the role of tax administrations was squeezed as part of austerity programs prescribed by the international finance institutions including the [International Monetary Fund].[9]

Khadija Sharife’s investigative reporting describes the range of tactics built into extraction contracts as incentives to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), from tax dodges to “trade mispricing,” that is, the manipulation of prices to avoid payment of taxes. In Africa’s largest copper producer, Zambia, “[the] copper industry is largely privatized, previously hosting one of the world’s lowest royalty rates (0.6 per cent) with a corporate tax rate of ‘effectively zero’ according to the World Bank…. Despite Zambia since increasing copper royalty rates to 3 per cent, after missing out on the five-year commodity boom, Zambian [former] president Rupiah Banda has ruled out windfall taxes and generally opposed measures designed to prevent mispricing and other forms of revenue leakages.”[10]

In 2012 Charles Abugre writes in Pambazuka News that approximately 65-70 percent of the upwards of one trillion dollars that have exited the continent in illicit capital flows are due to trade mispricing and other “commercial activities.”[11] The Tax Justice Network-Africa has also noted that structural adjustment-dictated changes to African tax codes have facilitated corporate accumulation, eased tax rates for the export of primary commodities and set favorable tax rates for African elites.[12] As a result, the average tax revenues in African states, at approximately 15 percent of GDP, are significantly lower than in the world’s wealthiest nations (OECD; average 35 percent) and the European Union in particular (39 percent of GDP).[13]

Some multinationals adopt “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) measures enabling them to secure what Padraig Carmody has called a “social license to operate”: a minimum level of consensus to pursue the extraction of profits.[14] “Today most western institutions are preaching the values of good governance and democracy,” the Financial Times describes. “Turning a blind eye to corruption and the abuse of political power is a recipe for political instability.”[15] Yet despite such “best practices,” corporations routinely ignore any obligations, often without repercussions.

The distortions and hypocrisy of Western leaders is stunning with regards to the issue of “corruption.” As Sharife and her co-authors describe in Tax Us If You Can:

Business concerns tend to dominate thinking about corruption. For example, Transparency international’s Corruption Perceptions index (CPI) draws heavily on opinion within the international business community, who first raised the alarm about the perils of corruption. While the CPI provides an invaluable ranking for investors trying to assess country risk, it is of little use to the citizens of oil-rich states such as Chad, Equatorial Guinea or Angola, to know their country ranks low.[16]

Meanwhile, as Tom Burgis’ account of Africa’s “looting machine” shows, “blue-chip multinationals” such as KBR, Shell and Willbros are blatantly corrupt, for example, attempting to leverage the Nigerian oil industry through multimillion dollar bribes.[17]

“Good governance” regulations are notoriously weak in their enforcement capabilities, and may in fact smooth over any reputational problems for multinational corporations. For example, in 2008, the Ugandan government approved the National Oil and Gas Policy outlining objectives on environmental regulation and investment of revenue derived from extraction. Yet as Jason Hickel points out in 2011 in Foreign Policy in Focus,

the National Oil and Gas Policy is dangerously vague and absolutely toothless. The framework does not bear the authority of law, and includes no mechanisms that would make its proposed regulations mandatory. Even if the framework’s proposals were to end up as actual legislation, it includes nothing that oil companies would not ordinarily promote in their attempts to erect a façade of legitimacy and burnish the image of an industry beleaguered by PR nightmares. In fact, the framework pays far more attention to creating a favorable investment climate for foreign companies than it does to ensuring the welfare of Ugandans…[18]

African neoliberal leaders have also embraced this emphasis. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD’s) – the African Union’s “development” arm – focuses on “governance” for the implementation of “NEPAD priorities,” to include, among other practices, “handling of misuse of resources” and for “public officials to commit themselves to codes of conduct that negates corruption.”[19] Ironically, some studies have found an inverse relationship between governance measures and FDI.[20] Others have pointed out that there is no consistent relationship between such measures and actual growth. Yet the notion of “African corruption” persists despite the reality of widespread and established practices of illicit activity in the West, and, crucially, the contribution and culpability of Western corporations and governments to ‘African’ corruption. Understanding this reality begins the process of challenging the “corruption” narrative… and its hypocrisy.

Lee Wengraf writes on Africa for the International Socialist Review, Counterpunch, Pambazuka News and AllAfrica.com. Her new book Extracting Profit: Neoliberalism, Imperialism and the New Scramble for Africa was published by Haymarket later in 2017

rosskiti:
Look at the criminal British looters calling Nigeria a ''failed state''.

The cheek of them.

The sheer audacity of them.

Are you aware that Nigeria did not have a single power plant at independence after 70 years of British rule?

Our first power plant was Kainji Dam, commissioned in 1964 by the Balewa administration.

Before independence, the British simply imported large industrial generators to power the GRAs where their officials lived.

The rest of Nigeria lived with candles and lanterns.

Our first university was commissioned in 1962.

University of Ibadan.

Today we have 200 universities, compared to ZERO at independence.

Literacy rate is 70% today compared to 5% at independence.

Were it not for independence, the overwhelming majority of you would be illiterate, barefoot village farmers or hunters of rabbits and cockroaches just like your grandparents were under colonialism.

At most you'd be a tailor, or shoemaker, or barber. Or palm wine tapper.

Certainly not one of the doctors, lawyers, engineers, software developers, industrialists, and bankers we have today, courtesy of independence.

The British colonialists invested next to nothing in public education.

So there was mass illiteracy across Nigeria in 1960.

Only when indigenous Nigerian rule began did literacy rates rise, as govt built THOUSANDS of public schools across the federation.

That is why your parents are educated, and were able to educate you.

It was because of INDEPENDENCE and indigenous rule.

We may have corruption today.

But the corruption we have today is CHILD'S PLAY compared to what went on during colonial rule.

Today, in a really bad year of corruption, we may lose 30% of our annual income to looters.

Under colonialism, we lost 95% of our annual income to British looters and embezzlers.

That was why at independence, after 70 years of British rule and export of Nigeria's resources, Nigeria was an undeveloped bush with naked, malnourished children walking the streets, no industries, no electricity, virtually no roads or infrastructure, and an illiterate population.

SO BRITAIN....do us all a favour, and..SHUT UP.

Do us a favor, and shut you know what.
When struggling history teachers suddenly find a job in a corrupt Buhari administration, the result becomes clear.

The history of British involvement is legendary, much more so, because of biased "educated" class like you. When raise alarm now?

Where were you when they imposed Buhari on us?

eagleu:
Do us a favor, and shut you know what.
When struggling history teachers suddenly find a job in a corrupt Buhari administration, the result becomes clear.

The history of British involvement is legendary, much more so, because of biased "educated" class like you. When raise alarm now?

Where were you when they imposed Buhari on us?

What is this one talking about?

Where were YOU when they ''imposed Buhari on us?''

Where were YOU when they imposed Jonathan on us?

Where are YOU now that they provide safe harbour to Jonathan's corrupt officials like Diezani?

Your problem is mere ethnic animosity, not the yearning for Nigerian success. That is why you fail to realise that BOTH Jonathan and Buhari and the others that came before them are ultimately puppets of the west, who work to western-generated scripts.

But will your ethnic hatred for your fellow African allow you to see the reality, and recognise who your real enemy is?

rosskiti:
What is this one talking about?

Where were YOU when they ''imposed Buhari on us?''

Where were YOU when they imposed Jonathan on us?

Where are YOU now that they provide safe harbour to Jonathan's corrupt officials like Diezani?

Your problem is mere ethnic animosity, not the yearning for Nigerian success. That is why you fail to realise that BOTH Jonathan and Buhari and the others that came before them are ultimately puppets of the west, who work to western-generated scripts.

But will your ethnic hatred for your fellow African allow you to see the reality, and recognise who your real enemy is?

The fallacy and bogus nature of your argument is that Britain all of a sudden has no input in Nigeria's affair, because some prominent Britons have criticized your darling president Buhari.
You know it's false, but truth means nothing to you and BMC once Buhari is favored.

The sad ugly truth of British involvement in Nigeria, mostly favorable to Fulanis can't be disputed, and all of a sudden, you want to preach to us about Britain?

Go teach your fake history lesson to people who can't read and write.

eagleu:
The fallacy and bogus nature of your argument is that Britain all of a sudden has no input in Nigeria's affair, because some prominent Britons have criticized your darling president Buhari.
You know it's false, but truth means nothing to you and BMC once Buhari is favored.

The sad ugly truth of British involvement in Nigeria, mostly favorable to Fulanis can't be disputed, and all of a sudden, you want to preach to us about Britain?

Go teach your fake history lesson to people who can't read and write.

Again, you've made it doubly clear that you don't care about Nigeria. All you care about is your ethnic bigotry and hatred for Hausa Fulanis and Buhari. That's really pathetic. This thread is for people who think on a higher level.

rosskiti:
Again, you've made it doubly clear that you don't care about Nigeria. All you care about is your ethnic bigotry and hatred for Hausa Fulanis and Buhari. That's really pathetic. This thread is for people who think on a higher level.

Sure, I am a very proud Igbo man, any day, anytime

Unlike me who's open about my bias, you start off trying to convince people that you are an unbiased history scholar.

Honesty would be when you tell them your bias; tell them that you are a supporter of APC, islamic crusading- jihadist, working full time to make Buhari's plan of dipping his koran into the Atlantic ocean a reality, and by force too.

Tell them who you are before discussing any more of your slanted history topics.

eagleu:
Sure, I am a very proud Igbo man, any day, anytime

Unlike me who's open about my bias, you start off trying to convince people that you are an unbiased history scholar.

Honesty would be when you tell them your bias; tell them that you are a supporter of APC, islamic crusading- jihadist, working full time to make Buhari's plan of dipping his koran into the Atlantic ocean a reality, and by force too.

Tell them who you are before discussing any more of your slanted history topics.

Why are you accusing me of being all that?

Based on what?

rosskiti:
Thanks for the correction.

They were looting before they amalgamated the so called BODEJO SARS BADEJO.

rosskiti:
Thanks for the correction.

They were looting before they amalgamated the so called BODEJO SARS BADEJO. So it's actually more than 106 years.

rosskiti:
Why are you accusing me of being all that?

Based on what?

Just review your own contributions to this website, and the answer will hit you like a ton of bricks!

rosskiti:
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You have to shake your head in amazement when you see Nigerians. barely a generation removed from stone age existence, whose direct forbears were village illiterate peasants with zero knowledge of what it meant to have ''portable water, 24 hrs electricity, good roads etc'', courtesy of colonial misrule and looting, now pompously standing in spiteful demand that they are ENTITLED to it all today.

Did your grandfather under British rule even know what electricity was, never mind ''24/7 power''?

Was it not palm oil lamps he used daily?

Did he know the meaning of ''health care for all''?

Under colonialism, it was ''herbalists for all'', not ''health care for all''.

Did he know the meaning of ''roads'', never mind ''good roads'' and ''sewage systems''?

Was it not because BLACK NIGERIANS came to power and began providing all those things that you know what they mean today?

Now, because they have not managed as of yet to provide it to ALL 200 million of us, it means they have ''failed''. They are ''useless''. And we are a ''failed state''.

The audacity of you.

The temerity of you.

Did your grandfather or grandmother know what a ''state' was never mind a ''failed state?

Was it not because of the EDUCATION provided you by BLACK NIGERIANS that you know what that even means?

Instead of you to thank God for little mercies, and for the progress thus far made under indigenous rule, all we hear daily is negativity and disgruntlement.

Hopeless people.

If you do not show gratitude for how far you've come, you do NOT deserve to progress any further.

Country is in deep comma
You are a part of the problem, no Matter your message you are not been diplomatic or portraying the true art of been a learned scholar..
Good message bad presentation.

oilking:
Country is in deep comma
You are a part of the problem, no Matter your message you are not been diplomatic or portraying the true art of been a learned scholar..
Good message bad presentation.

Thank you. Glad to know another person is watching our "great history scholar " make a fool of himself with partisanship.

eagleu:
Thank you. Glad to know another person is watching our "great history scholar " make a fool of himself with partisanship.

He's just talking without breathing hence, rubbishing what ever message he intends passing.

orisa37:
Looted for 106 years.

This is huge. You can imagine if Nigeria have started witnessing a bit of development from this time(like it was in SA), we wouldn't have been in this present state.
Our development started in 1960 after our political liberty. 60 years to 106 years has a great difference. If atleast the colonalist has our illiteracy rate to around 50% before they departed, our development would have been rapid and faster. We started to have our development at all round in 60s.

But we cannot continue to be on the blame game for eternity, we have our nation now. I think it will be more important to shift our attention to the country and those piloting the affair.

WoundedLamb:
OP, nice write-up but but I have a slightly different view. You're comparing colonization and leadership, and I believe the comparison is wrong both in terms of time and in terms of concept.

The colonial masters didn't scramble for Africa with the aim of providing leadership. They fought for Africa in order to enrich their respective countries, they didn't go there to build nations. As at that time, it wasn't termed "corruption", it was more like a way of life. Europeans nations exploring the world to bring home wealth was seen as one of the genuine means through which a country could expand its territory and increase its wealth. Just like people who took home war loots in the bible, Europeans conquered Africa and took home your resources, they were your colonial masters and not your leaders. It was wrong, inhuman but not against the law as far as civilization was concerned.

What you have in Nigeria is far different. Your leaders are not colonial masters. Your leaders are your own people whom you've entrusted with the task of building your nation and who have promised to do just that. But then they turn around to steal from you. They started behaving like your conquerors. And instead of calling them out, you're saying they haven't done as much as your conquerors who never even had the task of taking care of you. It's like comparing the way your father treats you and the way your master treats you (assuming you were sold to slavery). The reality is that the British people didn't fail you as you never gave them any mandate and they didn't promise to build your nation. But I think it's safe to say your leaders failed you. If you want to compare these guys and your leaders, compare how they lead their country and how your leaders lead your country.

You may not agree with my perspective but we should both agree that if Nigeria tending towards being failed nation is a fact, then it shouldn't matter who said it. The US, Canada, Australia, etc. were all colonized this same British but we don't see them always holding on to that subject as a shield against criticism. It's not forgotten but the fact is that the world has moved on and we can't keep using our past as an excuse. I think the question should be, is Nigeria really becoming a failed state or not? Comparing our present leaders with the Europeans of the colonization century is, to me, a frantic attempt at shying away from reality.

Just an opinion.

what the fvck are you talking about....??

wasnt it them that mentioned that nonesense called protectorate....??

how is it that they protectorate hongkong better than any other black nation....??

their is no way to defend white people for what they did and are still doing....

its either you see it for what it is or you will have issues with other blacks too....

many blacks are gettin very angry at blacks like you always kissin white butts although they never did you any good....