Hi!
    This is another forward from Musa Ngum's homepage. Get your African news from: 

http://w1.853.telia.com/~u85309812/africannews.htm

Hope you'll find it interesting. Thanks.
                                                                                                            Buharry.
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Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International



This Day (Lagos)

September 19, 2000 

John Simpson
Lagos 

Poor Nigeria. For its president to be in London this week asking for financial help at the very moment that an international report listed Nigeria as the most corrupt country on the face of the Earth was not, let's face it, altogether good public relations.

One Nigerian friend described it, with the fine turn of phrase so many of his countrymen possess, as the final thrust of the matador to the dying bull.

There was a time, at the height of the Seventies oil boom, when Nigerians fantasised about becoming the United States of Africa. Nowadays, from South Africa to the Far East, people are more likely to associate Nigerians with organised crime than with national wealth.

Yet perhaps it is worth looking a little more carefully. Transparency International, the German-based organisation that produced last week's report, is meticulous in pointing out that it is an examination of people's perceptions of the venality of a country's politicians and public officials, not necessarily of objective facts.

These perceptions are pretty much accurate, it has to be said: Finland, New Zealand, Sweden and Canada are indeed the cleanest countries in the world in political terms. Britain, though only 10th, genuinely deserves to be above Germany, the United States, France and Japan.

But it must have been a big disappointment for President Olusegun Obasanjo that, a year after he had been elected on a promise to clean out corruption, Nigeria should still be at the bottom of the list. Mr. Obasanjo is, after all, a former chairman of Transparency International's advisory council, and he was jailed under the crazed and vicious regime of his predecessor, Gen Sani Abacha, for criticising the industrial-scale looting of the economy that went on in those days.

He can scarcely have been surprised, however. Since Mr. Obasanjo swept into office in 1999 the speaker of parliament and the leader of the senate have been forced to resign, and a report last July revealed huge misappropriation of public funds by members of the national assembly: scarcely the kind of conditions to persuade anyone that things have changed.

Nor has Mr. Obasanjo apparently got anywhere in his efforts to retrieve the Pounds2 billion his predecessor stashed away in the world's banks. The vast Ajaokuta steel works is a depressing monument to the looting. It cost billions of dollars, yet after 20 years it has never produced a single bar of steel. A colleague who went there the other day found goats and cows wandering among the rusty machines. Instead of the 10,000 who were supposed to find jobs at Ajaokuta there were just a few security men protecting the remaining plant from being stolen. Even if it had been finished, the technology would have been long out of date; it is cheaper for Nigeria to buy its steel abroad anyway.

Inevitably, there is opposition to Mr. Obasanjo's clean-up. The national assembly is resisting his plan for an anti-corruption commission that would have the power to tap phones and break into premises, and not just because of the civil rights implications. But it was noticeable that when it came to voting themselves a grant of Pounds20,000 each to buy furniture, the assembly's members were more enthusiastic.

Yet this naming and shaming business does have its effect. Who in Britain, for instance, feels satisfied that their country should merely be 10th in terms of corruption, rather than first? Even in the US, where the findings of Transparency International did not get much press attention, there have been stirrings of unease. In Nigeria, public opinion alas has traditionally counted for little - except, of course, in the 1999 election, which swept Mr. Obasanjo to power. But even there, where the famously active press has plastered news of Nigeria's position at the bottom of the corruption league all over the front pages, there is palpable anger and desire for change.

In recent years plenty of people have spoken out on what is being done in Nigeria. Some - Ken Sara-Wiwa, for instance - paid a heavy price; others, such as Mr. Obasanjo, have been rewarded for their sufferings. Some merely survive. The head of the anti- corruption panel, Dr Christopher Kolade, recently spoke of a senior civil servant who was asked by his minister to pay for a contract. He refused. Most civil servants will tell you that this would mean the heavens falling in. But he is still there in his job, and he can tell the story.

By such small acts of courage entire nations can change.

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