Even so, if well invested, the IMF loan plus the crude oil sales at the 1991 windfall, about 12.4 billion dollars [5] would have gone a long way in salvaging the Nigerian economy. But like a seductive act to ruin a people, the true state of the Nigerian economy is still speaking louder than voice today. The loan had later fattened the Nigerian international debt index, only for the Nigerian government to keep servicing it with the oil revenue. So, how did ordinary Nigerians benefited from this business? How did the IMF money improve the local economy, create employment and alleviate the Nigerian poverty, for which reason the loan was granted in the first place?

Arguing further in his 2004 analysis, “Kano Political Economy: Reflections on a Crisis and its Resolution”, Sanusi said:

“All you need to do is look at all the South Asian countries that flatly refused to implement IMF policies in spite of all pressure and blackmail, and compare them to Nigeria today, to see the extent of the damage done to Nigeria by the Babangida government. Or to look at Botswana, the only African country that had the good sense to tell the IMF to "take a walk", as they say. Botswana is Africa’s fastest growing economy”

On the 28^th of January, 2010, a Zambian woman, Dambisa Moyo had her book published by Penguin Books International. The book was titled: “Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa”. [6] Due to the uncommon nature of the argument presented in the book, its popularity is still on the increase in the international audience. Among several academics on African political economy, this book has triggered many thought provoking debates, and interestingly, the arguments are only starting.

One of Moyo’s striking points is as follows:

“The notion that aid can alleviate systematic poverty and has done so is a myth. Millions in Africa today are poorer because of aid; misery and poverty have not ended but have increased… In the past fifty years, more than $1 trillion in development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Has this assistance improved the lives of Africans? No. In fact, across the continent, the recipients of this aid are not better off as a result of it, but worse—much worse” [7]

 

Judging from the average perception of many Africans, Moyo’s analysis must have been annoying and not without reason. For many years, a lot of Africans have become convinced that the social/economic development of their continent depends on the amount of aid richer nations are willing to send to African countries. In fact, many Africans politicians do beg for these aid even though it has been detrimental to their local economic development. Come to think of it, that some international aid donors do appear like Father Christmas doesn’t really mean they are? What if they are merely setting traps with a goat; will they not expect an animal bigger than a goat in return? Let’s face it.

  Looking at ‘Aid Giving’, it is not difficult to understand the exigency of some human beings who are willing to help other humans in need. Perhaps, NGOs and other aid agents do represent an example of man’s humanity to man, but all that glitter is not gold. While it is true that some people do travel several kilometres away from their homelands, all to lend a helping hand to the people they barley even know, it is equally true that aid giving and the NGO affairs are not limited to only those kind of people, whom in realty are quite few in number.

  Hiding in this noble human gesture is a powerful idea, an idea about total human domination and exploitation. An idea that do not talk, bleed or feel human agony; yet in its name, deeply rooted in commerce, the tears on the faces of Africans no longer count as evidence of human suffering. They have become means of earnings ^[8] for some interest driven individuals and corporate organisations. A means to exploit the pitiable situation many Africans have found themselves.

 

If only people can pay much attention, they will clearly hear the voices of NGOs’ like this:

 

“Help, help Africans, they are dying; they are dying of hunger and diseases…  Donate to save the lives of poor Africans; we are going to save Africa…!”

  Yet, the Africa and the Africans are never saved and those who are saving them are never tired. If I would interpret this equation rather unkindly, I would say that the people who are saving poor Africans without end are actually suffering from the same conditions as the poor Africans they are saving and are never really saved. 

  This can even be well understood from the human family. When a woman newly give birth to a child, it is normal that she would provide all the needs for the child, because the child cannot, yet, provide such things as food, clothes or even walk around for fresh air. But when the child has grown to a certain age, (adulthood) and his mother is still providing him with everything, it means that either, the child, the mother or both of them are suffering from a serious infirmity. It is not natural and most certainly not normal.  

 

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Drugs (HIV/Malaria) And The Aid Drama In Africa

Over the years, the word “HIV/AIDS” has become very famous with Africa and Africans. Sometimes, it does appear as if the disease is exclusively for the African people or worst still, a racial heredity. When combined with African malaria crisis, another nightmare, the African continent is easily qualified as the land of the living dead, therefore a good reason to be rescued by Western medical experts.

 

To be sincere, the awful images in manifestations are usually

convincing; some tiny human beings enclosed with powerful messages, all to drive home the African AIDS and malaria tragedy. From the United Nations to the European Union, ceaseless effort has been made to arrest the African disease predicament. As to whether there can be a different side to the story, however, you can only be a little patient.

 

For the claim that there is no cure for AIDS yet, we can better concentrate on malaria and the fame it has earned the African people, so far. But first we have to examine a practical situation in Africa. Forgive me if I just sounded overbearing, I’m only trying to make the case much simpler. 

 

Many African governments are yet to work out the right strategy to control malaria. [9] I will explain. With the studies that malaria is gotten through mosquito bite and the safe haven for mosquitoes are mainly stagnate water and unkempt environments, part of the solution can already be visible. Even though mosquitoes may never be eradicated from Africa, but something concrete can be done to control them. The condition under which they thrive can be discouraged, thereby reducing their population and the number of mosquito bite among Africans. That can be one small solution.

 

Another solution is the ‘help program’ from Western NGOs and their medical experts. In the name of helping Africa to control malaria, drug may be developed in the United States, for example and then taken to Africa to be distributed among the people. This ‘help’ can be a humanitarian gesture, and in the big picture, there is nothing wrong with it.

 

With all due respect, however, the only people who can truly benefit from such programs are the American pharmaceutical companies and the situation is this. As a capitalist system, an American pharmaceutical company cannot keep producing drugs and sending to Africans free of charge. That would mean the government of the United States is using the tax money of its citizens to pay for the healthcare of other people. And I am quite sure that those at the hem of affair in the United States are more intelligent than that.

 

Even in the assumption that it is possible to keep sending those drugs to Africa, free of charge, I still do not see why such strategy should be considered a reliable measure to control malaria in Africa. The reason is that, as long as Africans keep depending on other people to provide them with the type of healthcare they cannot afford on their own, they are directly enslaved to whoever is providing that healthcare. Therefore, it will be difficult to refer to such a program or any other activity as help, if the nature of the help has to tie the people at the receiving end to keep depending on it.

 

Another way to respond to the same situation is that since the United States and many European countries have more trained scientists and medical personnel than African countries, some selected scientists can be sent to Africa. With their African counterparts, they can all put their effort together and research for malaria drugs, using the available resources in Africa. [10] After all, the materials that are used to produce malaria drug in America are not gotten in the sky. So with the collaboration of these American and Europeans medical scientists, malaria drug can be produced in Africa for the African people. And the African governments through the sales of oil and diamonds can pay for the cost of production. Of course, the world health organisation can contribute, because it has been fighting against malaria in Africa for many years.

 

In this way, even when the American and European experts have returned home, an African pharmaceutical company will keep producing malaria drugs, thereby helping the African people to depend on themselves in controlling their malaria crises. This should have been the help or at least the objective in rendering a help to someone in need. Yet this is hardly the situation in Africa. Needless to turn the entire argument towards some Western pharmaceutical companies who have become fanatics in using the African people to test their new drug, ^[11] with all the risks it involves.

 

Just to name two instances, an American pharmaceutical company is still making headlines with a case where it was accused of illegally testing harmful drugs on young Nigerians, in 1996. And that testing eventually complicated the lives and even led to the death of many young Nigerians.

 

Below is the beginning of a summary in a work dedicated to the subject, the testing of drugs by Western pharmaceutical companies on poorer people, such as the Africans.

 

“One of the more recent trends in globalization is the increase of medicine testing abroad. Western pharmaceutical companies relocate risky medicine tests to resource-poor countries. Most of us will have the intuition that this relocation is not unproblematic, without immediately knowing what is wrong or why. I argue that ipso facto relocating medicine tests to developing countries is not intrinsically wrong; even more, it can even have beneficial effects for resource-poor countries. The problem, however, is the difficulty of distinguishing beneficial from harmful (or even exploitative) forms of medicine testing” [12]

 

Not least popular was another case involving a group of European medical personnel who were accused [13] of infesting children with HIV in Libya, in 1998. Thanks to the European governments who quickly intervened and rescued their own citizens from the death penalty already passed on them by the Libyan government. As for the political manoeuvrings and the detail of what actually transpired in El-Fatih Children’s Hospital in Benghazi, Libya, it can be left for the experts or better still for another time.

 

On the Nigerian situation, however, one source had it and I quote:

“A newly surfaced report alleges that in 1996, drug monolith Pfizer gave an unproven drug to Nigerian children and infants suffering from meningitis -- without the authorization of the Nigerian government. Completed five years ago and coming to light in a May 7 Washington Post investigation, the confidential report, written by a panel of Nigerian health experts, concluded that administering the drug Trovan to 100 patients suffering a deadly strain of meningitis was "an illegal trial of an unregistered drug." The drug was ultimately shown to be ineffective. A lawsuit against Pfizer claims some of the children in the trial died and others suffered brain damage…” [14]

 

The confusing drama is that these people usually come to Africa, claiming to help in the form of medical assistance. Therefore, since some of these helps are actually deceptive, it will be better if the African authorities can verify which of the helps are truly genuine and are beneficial to their people, instead of allowing poor Africans to be exploited in the name of help.

 

 

–NGOs’ Activities: A System For Self-Enrichment–

 

In June 2005, a New York based screenwriter and film director, Michael Holman decided to air his view on the aid business in celebrity show and he wrote:

 

“Behind the politicians and pop stars on display at the Gleneagles summit of the Group of Eight (G8) on 6-8 July, look out for another contingent of professionals: non-government organisations (NGOs). The aid agencies will be there in strength, promoting their solutions for Africa’s ills, rallying their troops and rattling collection-boxes. And the boxes will have to be big to contain billions of dollars in new aid money if the British hosts, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, get their well-intentioned way.

 

The aid business is booming. As Africa’s crisis has deepened and its problems have multiplied, so the number of foreign NGOs has risen. There were a few hundred in the 1960s. There are thought to be well over 25,000 today, their staff swelling the continent’s army of outsiders. They don’t come cheap. An estimated $4bn is spent annually on recruiting some 100,000 expatriates…” [15]

 

The truth be told, it is difficult for many Africans to accept that the majority of NGOs’ activities in the continent are merely games. [16] The local authorities have oftentimes failed to provide employment to their people. They have not been able to develop infrastructures and build trust in the local system. These have obviously made many Africans, especially those in the rural areas, the right target for this type of exploitation.

 

I did not say there is anything wrong in helping somebody in need. What I’m saying is that there is everything wrong in helping somebody to depend on a help rendered to him. This is because the latter can only make him a prisoner and he may never be free as long as his situation remains unchanged.

 

Below is the view of Marcelino Marrundo on NGOs activities, as a system for self-enrichment:

 

“I will rather say that Africans do not need to depend on other people’s projects, they need to plan for themselves. Most times, the money raised here for projects in Africa are never really used for those projects. About 80% of the total raised money usually remains here. Only some 20% do go to Africa and when it does, 10% will go to the staffs who in most cases are from Europe. In the remaining 10%, 5% will have to be paid to community leader. The 5% left will then be used for maybe a water pump. They will take a photograph of it and double it and say: “we have built ten, twenty pumps in different villages”.

 

NGOs are big multinationals in Africa; they have a deeply rooted network in the government. It’s like the old system, colonialism. The colonial masters sent the missionaries: “go and prepare the place, let them know that you want to save their souls then we will come”. Some people might be angry saying that the NGOs have built hospitals and fed ‘street children’ as they call them. That is true; but of the total money that was raised for the said project, how much was actually used?

 

If you do the right calculation, you will understand that the NGOs are not really helping Africans but helping themselves. ^[17] And since they are connected to the United Nations and the European governments, you simply cannot resist them. They receive money from these big organisations and these organisations are convinced that their money is rightly channelled to the needed people” [18]

 

Ernesto Che Guevara was an Argentine scholar and a revolutionist, military theorist and a major figure in the Cuban Revolution of 1959. On the 25^th of March 1964, he delivered a legendary speech at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), Geneva, Switzerland. And a great part of that speech was on the exploitation of poor nations by their rich counterparts. He stated:

 

“In contrast with the surging growth of the countries in our socialist camp and the development taking place, albeit much more slowly, in the majority of the capitalist countries, is the unquestionable fact that a large proportion of the so-called underdeveloped countries are in total stagnation, and that in some of them the rate of economic growth is lower than that of population increase.

 

These characteristics are not fortuitous; they correspond strictly to the nature of the capitalist system in full expansion, which transfers to the dependent countries the most abusive and barefaced forms of exploitation. It must be clearly understood that the only way to solve the questions now besetting mankind is to eliminate completely the exploitation of dependent countries by developed capitalist countries, with all the consequences that this implies” [19]

 

Recently, the idea that Europeans are saving poor Africans have become a little complicated, at least to some people. Unlike never before, the European community now have millions of young Africans in their midst. This would ordinarily have done the miracle but that is not the case, thereby provoking some hard questions. Why are the Europeans not recruiting this African army and turning them into wonderful tools, for the noble project they have been pursuing for centuries? Why are they not training some selected ones from these millions and making them doctors and engineers to be resent back to Africa? After all, they are part of the Africans that have always needed to be saved.

 

Instead, the news of exploit about these young Africans is extremely popular in various European countries, from Germany to France, Italy to Britain. Although this is not to say that every African migrant in Europe is treated badly or that all Africans in Europe are saints, the horrible news about African migrants in Europe is never in short supply. Whether by individuals or some corporate organisations, many African migrants have been physically and emotionally oppressed in several European countries. Some local politicians have deliberately swayed public opinions; all to incriminate these young people who have ran from Africa to Europe, with the hope of better lives. They may have heard of racism while in Africa, but they have only understood the meaning because they have come to Europe. These are the Africans, the same people that need to be saved by the international politics and financial games, the big show of helping poor Africans.

 

The most provoking insinuation accompanying the aid thing is that the process will open up the African economy, liberalizes trade and so on. But what does it really mean, ‘opening up the African economy and liberalizing trade’? Is it to flood the local market with American computers and textiles, the European machines and food products? In a simple analysis, these goods when in production create employment for Americans and the Europeans and when taken to Africa, it is definitely for consumption. It means that Africans as the final consumers of these goods would have to pay for the production cost and other logistics. At this point, it should be obvious that even if African countries were to be the richest in the world, their economies would still not survive this unjust arrangement.

 

Moreover, it is not help, sending the so-called European expatriates to do the same works that Africans can be train to do in their own countries. And there is no open market and trade liberalization until the highly infiltrated African governments are willing to create the enabling environment for the survival of local industries. In this way, the locally produced African goods can first of all serve the needs of the African people, and then the surplus can be exported to be sold in the European and American markets. Of course, the African economies cannot depend solely on raw petroleum and diamonds, which are strictly controlled by few local and international cartels. The economies in Africa must equally be active in the secondary production, whether of natural resources or agricultural [20] produces. Only by so doing will the African population being employed to grow their local economies and force the international aid donors to keep their dollars and Euros. In addition, it will help to discourage the deceptive system that has been set up for the sole aim of exploiting the African situation.