NIGERIA’S
controversial management of its stupendous oil wealth over the years would form
one of the important themes of discussion for G-8 leaders in June, when they
meet in Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, according to diplomatic
sources.
Already, the presidency of the
summit for this year under United Kingdom is currently reaching out to
other G-8 leaders and an international consensus is said to be quietly
formed to demand transparency from leaders and governments of developing
countries, whose huge resources and wealth are being frittered away.
International donors, including
private foundations and agencies, are also concerned about the perception of
increasing wealth but decreasing living standards of the people.
For
instance, US Billionaire, Bill Gates, in an interview during the week, said,
“Nigeria really needs to think that, relative to its level of wealth, it is
really far behind…”
The G8 Summit, which holds
annually, is a gathering of presidents and prime ministers of the top eight
advanced economies of the world — the US, UK, Germany, France, Canada, Italy,
Japan and Russia.
The Summit, which normally
holds about the mid-year and focuses on global economy and socio-political
issues, is presided over in turns by its eight-member-countries.
For 2013, UK holds the
presidency and Prime Minister David Cameron is said to be forming the issues
the summit should focus on this year.
Sources said before Prime
Minister Cameron’s speech last week in Davos, where he made mention of
Nigeria’s oil wealth and its management, he had intimated other G-8 leaders of
the need for an agenda that brings such issues of financial accountability and
transparency to the fore in a country like Nigeria.
A January 2 letter written by
the British Prime Minister to all G-8 leaders, including US President Barack
Obama, revealed that this year’s summit would stress trade advancement, tax
compliance and transparency.
Nigeria’s example is said to be
agitating the minds of the G8 leaders, just as there is controversy over the
seeming squandering of past oil windfall.
After Cameroon wrote the other
G8 leaders hinting on his intent to pursue the issue of transparency
aggressively as president of the summit, he then proceeded early last week in
Davos to publicly pin-point Nigeria as a case in point, where transparency
issues have made some progress but corruption and mismanagement of huge oil
wealth still continues to deny the nation’s people of their prosperity.
In
a speech that has been so widely and globally received, Cameron said just
last year alone “Nigeria oil exports were worth almost a hundred billion
dollars. That is more than the total net aid to the whole of sub Saharan
Africa. So put simply: unleashing the natural resources in these countries
dwarfs anything aid can achieve, and transparency is absolutely critical to
that end.”
He went on to say the
G8, under his presidency, would be more aggressive on how governments of
such countries like Nigeria spend the money from such huge returns, declaring
that the western and Japan’s leaders are “going to push for more transparency on who owns companies; on
who’s buying up land and for what purpose; on how governments spend their
money; on how gas, oil and mining companies operate; and on who is hiding
stolen assets and how we recover and return them.
“Like everything else in this
G8, the ambitions are big and I make no apology for that.”
According to Cameron, who said
he had no apology for his stance, “I want this G8 to lead a big push for transparency across the
developing world, and to illustrate why. Let me give you one example. A few
years back a transparency initiative exposed a huge hole in Nigeria’s finances,
an $800 million discrepancy between what companies were paying and what the
government was receiving for oil - a massive, massive gap.
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