FELIX ONUAH, Abuja | Monday
NIGERIAN President and former civil war commander Olusegun Obasanjo has painted a bleak picture of corruption, which he says is the biggest single obstacle to Nigeria’s development since independence from Britain, as the country marked 40 years of independence amid renewed internal strife.
”Nigeria is now perceived as the most corrupt nation in the world, and is so listed by an organisation that I co-founded,” he said, referring to a report last month by corruption watchdog Transparency International.
”Everyone entrusted with any funds, public or corporate, everyone but a few steals at every stage on the way, from paper clips…to outright plundering of the nation’s resources.”
Combating corruption and putting in place new measures to uphold accountability in public life has been Obasanjo’s number one priority since coming to office some 18 months ago, after 15 years of military dictatorship.
For most Nigerians the question of national unity and the increasing threat of a violent break-up of the country appears to be their biggest fear.
More than 1 000 people have been killed in renewed ethnic, communal of religious clashes since the end of military rule last year.
Obasanjo has termed the Muslim-Christian bloodshed this year over Islamic sharia law in the north the worst since the 30-month civil war over breakaway Biafra in which over one million people died in the late 1960s.
Despite the festivities, the mass circulation Punch newspaper took a dim view of Nigeria’s political and economic development, splashing the headline ”Nothing to Cheer”.
The latest World Bank report says about 70% of Nigerians still live on less than one dollar a day despite Nigeria being the world’s sixth oil exporter.
Standards of living and the state of social and essential services are inferior today to those of 20 years ago. A foreign debt of about $30bn hangs over the country with no sign of a breakthrough in debt relief talks. – Reuters