Misplaced Nigerian Euphoria over Possibility of a Nigerian World Bank President – By Philip Ikomi

Posted by admin Africa & World Politics, Articles, Columnists, NNP Columnists, Philip Ikomi, Women Politics Saturday, March 24th, 2012

By Philip Ikomi | NNP | March 24, 2012 – A sizable number of Nigerians, especially in the Nigerian press announce with gusto and optimism the nomination of Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala for the next World Bank President. Yes, she is highly qualified for the post. She served in the Bank and has served and is serving Nigeria as a minister. That said, why is euphoria misplaced here? One has to know the unspoken reason the World Bank was set up in the first place. Back in the 1940s when the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) were being set up, World War II was still raging when the Western powers met in Bretton Woods to decide the future of humanity in most of the underdeveloped world. They had decided, based on the clamor for independence that was beginning to be heard in their imperial quarters, that they were going to give the independence, but the newly independent entities would be held ransome, controlled and impeded, in their progress toward ultimate independence through manipulation of the international finance system. Thus from the very beginning, the dye had been cast; the purpose of the bank was not to help bolster development, but to help retard the development of the developing countries. Thus an examination of the performance of the World Bank in developing countries will be instructive here.

No developing country that has religiously followed the prescriptions of the bank for managing their economies has ever succeeded. Country after country has undergone structural changes of all sorts with high hopes of getting out of underdevelopment and failed to make it.People in these countries have undergone all manner of economic deprivations and sacrifices being goaded along by their partially blind and unsuspecting governments and their officials. The case of Argentina a few years ago brought it all to light when the country that was the darling of the World Bank and its sister the IMF was unable to pay her creditors. Argentina decided to deal with it in her own way and came out smelling like roses. Argentina was among the few countries that still had its head above water in the last recession that swept across the world. Agentina is still thriving in spite of doom’s day predictions by elements that are bent on placing everyone in the hands of the World Bank and its promoters. The economist, Ha-Joon Chang has written in his “Bad Samaritans” how the only countries that have become developed are those that pursued avenues to development that kept out the World Bank and IMF while working on their own.

Were Dr. Okonjo-Iweala to become the next President of the World Bank, does anybody think that she will change the policies of the bank? Unfortunately, it is not likely. Back in 1984 one of the World Bank’s conditions on loans to Nigeria was that Nigeria should stop funding university education beyond the undergraduate level and concentrate on basic education. By all accounts, Nigeria under Buhari and Idiagbon complied fully beause this writer was one of those about to be denied graduate education as a result of that conditionality on the World Bank loan. The Nigerian Central Bank would not release funds for graduate school for me because Buhari and Idiagbon were enforcing this ridiculous and self destructive conditionality on the World Bank loan to Nigeria. In hind sight, a large deficit in the number of Nigerians with graduate level education must have resulted from the imposition of this dictate of the World Bank on the Nigerian state. Both Buhari and Idiagbon apparently knew no better and so did not reject the loan or the conditions placed on it. This behavior is typical of all Nigerian leaders. They have tried their utmost best to carry out whatever the World Bank and IMF threw at them, hook, line, and sinker. General Obasanjo was equally a follower of the impositions of the World Bank and IMF as evidenced in the suffering of Nigerians under the yoke of IMF. Some of us still remember the structural adjustments and Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) and other tactics used by Obj in the service of foreign loan sharks.

IBB rushed to devalue the Naira and to open the flood gate of imports from anywhere because the World Bank and IMF had the liberalization of importation and the devaluation of the Naira as conditions for loans to Nigeria. The World Bank and IMF were the ones that said they would not fund Ajaokuta Steel Complex as it was cheaper for Nigeria to get her steel products from imports rather than making them domestically. Babangida who had requested the funding said that in that case, he would go ahead with the steel complex without their loan and today we know how that went. (Steel is the mother of industrialization and if a country could make steel products, that country is half way to being industrialized. Hence it should be clear why the World Bank and IMF would not want Nigeria to make its own steel). A few years ago, an old classmate told me he was a consultant to the World Bank (WB) in their loans to state governments to build rural roads to farms in order to bring out produce. You might think that this is a great idea until you ask about the produce that is to be carried on the roads. The fact is that many Nigerians have left the rural areas for the towns and cities and Nigerians are not farming. There is therefore no need to build roads that will lie unused for years to come. That has hapapened in my village, now a local government headquarters. This local government headquarters has a road well constructed but not used and grass is growing all over it.

What should be done is for the government to start a campaign to move the youth back to the rural areas and when that has succeeded, they can start the farms and then construct the roads. It is a waste of funds for roads to be available without their being used. However, because the World Bank has been rejected elsewhere in the world (countries in South America especially), they started concentrating their efforts on Nigeria and other less fortunate countries with gullible leaders. They can say that they are making their loan targets as people like my former class mate would be happy saying that they are WB consultants and receiving money to throw away and pile debt on Nigerian children yet unborn. In fact, my classmate pointed out that the loans were being disbursed directly to those doing the work because the Nigerian government was too corrupt. Corruption is the fall guy. Corruption has been used to hoodwink Nigerians while all manner of chicanry is carried out by the World Bank, IMF and foreign politicians. If any NIgerian still thinks that the World Bank and IMF are working to promote development in developing countries, he should think again. The only benefit of Okonjo-Iweala’s appointment as President of the WB would be her salary’s inflow into the country. But of course, she would not be living in Nigeria and therefore we cannot even hope for that.

Philip A. Ikomi is a Retired Airline Pilot and Professor of I/O Psychology
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