UK cannot lecture Nigeria over corruption

Tackling corruption is probably one of the highest priorities many African nations face and are confronting including Nigeria.

But being lectured by the Prime Ministers with such pejorative statements -‘Nigeria and Afghanistan are the most corrupt countries in the world’ - is not only unhelpful but also doesn’t even begin to tell the duplicitous story of the UK’s own global corruption challenges.

In an unguarded comment to the Queen, he explained about today’s anti-corruption conference before stating that Nigeria and Afghanistan were ‘fantiscally corrupt.’

This morning the Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, told the BBC that the 30 year worn torn nation he inherited was ‘moving in the right direction’, adding that it took the UK many decades to move away from its empire days of ‘global corruption’.

And the Nigerian President Muhammadu Burahi responded to the PM’s slur, by arguing that:

I don’t want his apology, I would rather have our nation’s assets returned by former corrupt Nigerian politicians who have been able to spirit billions away in tax havens via London.”

It is estimated that about 37 billion dollars stolen by Nigerian politicians has passed through London.

UK’s past and present corruption status is not a million miles apart. Back then they invaded countries stole their resources and enslaved its people to forced labour for centuries.

The more civilised way of a maintaining the status quo is to have global secretive financial entities in which the super rich including the mafia can maintain their iron grip on the world stage, whilst at the same time look down on others nations including Nigeria and Afghanistan in a truly colonial way.

Let’s not also forget that only a handful bankers have been prosecuted in the regards to the 2008 banking crash, the PPI and the Libor scandal. This was corruption that nearly brought the world economy to its knees.

And if you think we’re done then you’d be wise read the findings of the Economist most Crony Capital nation in the world . Crony being another world for corrupt. In European league table of cronysim, the UK came first, and amongst the world’s richest the UK are 14th, in front of Brazil and not too far behind China.

We cannot begin to have a world of greater equality whilst both the colonial mindset, coupled with the globally skewed financial institutions persists. Western leaders have no right stomp around with a colonial air that suggests, ‘we’re so much better than them’, when their own wealth comes from a very dark history, coupled with a present day financial infrastructure which is inherently rigged to favour for them and against the poor nations.

Simon Woolley