Nigeria: 'Poor Governance and Corruption, Cancer of Devt Process'

from All Africa

This Day (Lagos)

By Abimbola Akosile
Lagos

President of the World Bank, Mr. Paul Wolfowitz, has claimed that poor governance and corruption, is a cancer on the global development process, even as he revealed that there are currently over 300 million people, around half of the population of the African sub-continent, living in extreme poverty.

The Bank boss, who said the figure (300m) signified a doubling of the number in extreme poverty 20 years ago in Africa, spoke at a World Bank International Conference on Improving Governance and Fighting Corruption, which took place in Brussels, Belgium, earlier in March.

He however claimed that African member countries, including Nigeria, have made giant strides in tackling corruption, which has been described as one of the root causes of poverty.

At the two-day event organised by Government of Belgium, the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, Wolfowitz also called on rich nations to step up their assistance to developing countries on the issues of fighting corruption, claiming it was more of their responsibility to do so.

Speaking in tandem with the conference theme, 'Improving Governance and Fighting Corruption: New Frontiers in Public-Private Partnerships', Wolfowitz however claimed there is real progress on the continent, with 17 African countries representing about the third of the population of the sub-continent now achieving 4% real growth consistently over 10 years.

Best Practices

Hailing former Nigerian Finance Minister, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala's efforts at successfully recovering $500 million of stolen Nigerian assets from Switzerland, the Bank President claimed it was important, not only as a matter of justice of getting assets back to the people they belong to, but also as an important potential to turn to large scale corruption.

The conference, which was declared open by Mr. Karel De Gucht, Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, explored the potential of a three-way partnership of donors, developing partner countries and the private sector to improve governance and fight corruption.

According to Wolfowitz, "the fight for good governance and the fight against corruption is truly the front line, and it is truly dangerous work. Where we are today is in a much more hopeful position for Africa than we were 10 years ago. We are all too familiar with the tragedy of poverty in Africa and the accompanying tragedies of HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, children and young adults dying early in life, children growing up without any education".

"We are seeing real progress, we are seeing 17 African countries representing about the third of the population of the sub-continent that now have achieved 4% real growth consistently over 10 years. Again, that's not good enough, but it is good and I think one of the reasons that we are seeing this improvement is a much greater attention by African governments and by the people themselves and it's an interactive process, much more attention to the challenge of governance".

The forum explored various dimensions of the governance debate to identify policy recommendations that would build further on work done by the European Union, the World Bank Institute and the OECD in the area of governance.

It also brought together more than 400 representatives of governments, international organisations, the private sector, NGOs and the academic community.

Other speakers at the intense forum included Mrs. Oby Ezekwisili, Minister of Education, Nigeria, Mr. Louis Michel, European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Mr. Graham Baxter, Vice-President, Corporate responsibility, BP and member of EITI International Advisory Group (Extraction Industry Transparency Initiative), and Ms Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of the Republic of Liberia.

To Wolfowitz, "More and more African countries taking on the challenge of corruption. Former Finance Minister of Nigeria (Iweala) led the fight in her country. One of her colleagues Nuhu Ribadu is here, head of the Economic Crimes and Anti-Corruption Commission in his country and one of those people with his life on the line".

Anti-corruption Drive

The Bank leader added, "for the World Bank group, corruption and governance are such important subjects. Yes they are moral issues and the moral dimension has got to be kept in mind, but from our perspective they are development issues, they are poverty issues. Poor governance, corruption, is a cancer on the development process and a cancer that is unfortunately the cause of a good deal of the poverty that we have seen and particularly in Africa. Improvement in governance is the reason why we are seeing things begin to change".

"We are in the process of refining the governance and anti-corruption strategy that we presented to the Development Committee in Singapore. As part of that process, we consulted broadly not just with governments, although we have consulted with some 40 governments, but with representatives of civil society, parliamentarians, the private sector, total of more than 3000 individuals have participated in the consultation on the strategy. And there are five major messages that have emerged from that consultation".

According to the Bank President, the five messages included calls for the World Bank and other donors to stay engaged even in those environments where there are severe challenges of corruption. "As many people said, 'don't make the poor pay twice', to pay for both in having a corrupt government and in having the donors withdraw because of it. There are ways to find; it is difficult and it is challenging but ways to find to work even in those environments and it is important to do so", he said.

"Secondly, one of the ways of doing so is to work not only with governments, though those are our primary counterpart; but also critically important to engage with the private sector, with civil society, with the media and with parliamentarians and to scale up those efforts. The private sector will also send a very strong message that integrity is good for business and that it's important for us to work with the private sector to combat corruption".

Critical Messages

Other messages from the consultation, according to Wolfowitz, included the donor countries and partners working to strengthen systems in the concerned countries rather than trying to create parallel systems that bypass and in the process, weaken indigenous systems; monitoring progress as partners; and the need for the various donors to work together or harmonise their efforts in the process.

"Improving governance is certainly about fighting corruption, although it is also about much more than fighting corruption. When we talk about fighting corruption, I don't think we can emphasise enough that this is a responsibility of the rich countries just as much as the poor ones. In fact, I would almost say it is a responsibility even more of the rich countries; they have less excuse", he said.

To him, "the rich countries have a big responsibility to deal with that and perhaps equally important, maybe more important when it comes to large scale corruption, large scale stripping of assets from people to whom they belong. Those assets invariably end up in banks in rich countries, and I think there is a big obligation on the international community to figure out how we can do a better job of helping countries recover their assets".

Between Governance & Commitment

"But governance is about more than that. It's about having transparent governments, accountable governments. That is why parliaments are so important as a check on the executive, that is why the free press is so important as a vehicle for conveying information to the society, that is why civil society and the private sector is so important because increasingly governments are responding to the pressures that come from their own people.

But it is also about improving the competence of governmen. "The most honest government in the world isn't giving you good governance if the members of that government can't administer a simple contract, for example, which is a challenge in many places.

So, building capacity is an important part of what we need to do to improve the climate for doing business".

According to him, a strong private sector creates jobs and also creates opportunities for people to improve their own lives and even more importantly the lives of their children in honest work rather than in corruption. "I think we have seen that over and over again around the world, the growth of the private sector is aided by good governance, but a strong private sector also can help governance progress".

"It is a virtuous circle where good governance leads to stronger development and stronger development leads to stronger governance, but it is very much, I think, at the heart of the poverty agenda", Wolfowitz added.

The conference also further delineated an agenda for action and explore what steps can be taken both now and in the near future. The conclusions of the conference are to help to pave the way for follow-up sessions at the Spring Meetings of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund in April, as well as the meeting of the OECD Council at Ministerial Level scheduled for May.

Debate Focus

According to reports, the debate about good governance and corruption in developing countries has largely focused on donor financing and the impact of donor resources on the public sector. While the public sector and donor funds play a critical role in shaping the governance climate, foreign and domestic investors also play a decisive role in shaping the way decisions are made, transactions are handled, and governance reforms are carried out.

The dramatic growth of foreign direct investment over the last decade suggests the influence of the private sector is only set to increase. Yet alliances among developing countries, international donors and the private sector have been relatively unexplored, despite a number of indisputable common concerns.

Such a partnership calls not only for stronger attention to the assistance strategies used by international donors and strong leadership by developing countries, but also for renewed consideration of the third leg of the triangle: the reinforcement of a competitive, responsible private sector.

Concerned Personalities

Among others at the conference were Prince Philippe of Belgium, Mr. Armand De Decker, Belgian Minister for Development Cooperation, and Mr. Angel Gurria, the Secretary-general of the OECD.

Twenty countries originally signed the Convention on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on 14 December 1960. Since then a further ten countries have become members of the Organisation, among them the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, and the Czech Republic.

Others include Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey.

What Next?

The gauntlet has been thrown to the concerned governments to clean up their acts of corruption and poor governance, even in this critical period of democratic transition in some of the nations, including Nigeria.

But without a nation-wide political will to eschew corruption and promote good governance, beginning from the leadership down wards, the clarion call may well remain a call only, backed by little or no action.

Steps taken now by committed leaders may well determine the future of the countries under them, democratic transition not-withstanding. The warning is for all.