WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2011-07-25 Time: 15:00:01 Posted By: News Poster
By Sam Nda-Isaiah
A serious leader who really wants to build a nation to world standard starts with a take-no-prisoner war against corruption. Corruption stunts the growth and prosperity of a nation and then ultimately kills it. It is corruption that has brought Nigeria to its current very pitiable situation. And to prevent the sure death that Nigeria appears to be sleepwalking towards, we must change course immediately. Unfortunately, it does not even appear that those currently in charge understand the nature, implications and even prognosis of the scourge.
All serious countries that have emerged from behind to become leading nations had to frontally deal with the issue of corruption. Lee Kuan Yew’s first act as the leader of Singapore was to tackle corruption. China responds to corruption with execution by firing squad. Jerry Rawlings started the reconstruction of Ghana with the execution of past corrupt leaders by firing squad. And there are usually long and harsh jail terms for corrupt people, no matter how highly placed, in western nations of the United States, Britain, France and others. Remember the most recent story of a chap called Bernie Madoff in the United States? He is virtually serving a life sentence.
China’s improbable rise to global economic superpower without a massive military confrontation is unprecedented in the world’s history. The conventional wisdom used to be that a nation’s rise to world superpower status will have to be prefaced by a decisive military conquest. But China achieved its own peacefully. Today, China has been expanding at an annual growth rate of 10% when the growth rate of most countries have flattened at best. Today, there are five million cars in Beijing alone and an average of 2,000 new cars are purchased daily in Beijing; yet Beijing, the nation’s capital, is not even the largest city. It is the fourth largest. Shanghai is the largest city in China with one of the largest ports in the world.
Cities in China, therefore, have no choice but to curtail a looming disaster. Apparently, too much of everything, including economic prosperity, is bad. Therefore, to own a car in Beijing today, you will have to win a lottery that is conducted by the city from time to time; and, in Shanghai, the registration of a new car number plate costs as much as $70,000 (seventy thousand US dollars) for an average car. All these measures have probably helped control the situation. But by the end of this year, the number of cars in China would exceed 100 million, according to the China Machinery Industry Federation (CMIF).
With all these, only 30 million of China’s 1.4 billion people are actually integrated into the economy. Chinese leaders are working their heads and trying hard to incorporate the majority of its population into the mainstream, consequently improving the nation’s GDP. That is the level at which the world is moving and we are just loitering around.
Currently, the Chinese are the biggest creditors to the United States. With all its political braggadocio and “shakara”, the United States is indebted to China to the outrageous tune of $1.6 trillion. China’s foreign reserve, as at a month ago, stood at $3.2 trillion, and the bulk of that is in the United States. By the end of June, the number of Chinese internet users hit 485 million. This is 170 million more than the entire population of the United States. These figures must be scary.
Yet, only a few years ago, China was classified as a poor country. Apart from the rigorous enforcement of law and order, the harsh confrontation against corruption has contributed in no small measure to this attainment. Chinese companies or even government may be involved in corrupt business practices abroad as long as that will bring dollars into their country – and this is usually defined as national interest – but serious cases of corruption within the country are punishable by death. We were in China last week as part of the programme on Governance and Leadership I am currently undergoing at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore, and one of my Chinese colleagues even joked about it, saying that acts of corruption are usually settled by the government by only one bullet and that, even after that, the invoice of the cost of the bullet is sent to the family of an executed felon to defray.
Last week while I was in China, two former ex-mayors were executed for collecting bribes in the discharge of their official functions. They were executed after their appeals to higher courts had failed to upturn the judgement of the lower court. And, just two days ago, China eventually succeeded in a 12-year struggle to repatriate one of its citizens, a certain Lai Changxing, from Canada; he had been involved in smuggling activities. Lai is considered the prime criminal suspect wanted by the Chinese judicial authorities in the huge Xiamen smuggling case. Lai’s smuggling activities were said to have cost his nation $10 billion between 1996 and 1999. He was also accused of evading tax to the tune of $5 billion. For Lai, it is already R.I.P. In Nigeria, smugglers are the closest pals of presidents, governors and ministers. In many cases, they are also the biggest financiers of their election campaigns. We must really be clowns in this country!
What the economic power shift to Asia has shown is that the model of government matters less than the sincerity and vision of the leadership of a country. Just as democracy has led some like Brazil to prosperity, despotism has also led to humonguous prosperity in others like China. In many others like Ghana, military governments are the ones that made the difference, and in others like Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the monarchies did it.
Speaking at the South Asian Diaspora Convention last week, in a dialogue in which the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Mr. Kishore Mahbubani, was the moderator, Lee Kuan Yew said he did not think that democracy was the solution to South-East Asia’s problems. “It may be good, it may satisfy the curious, but I think what is required is good governance, eradication of corruption, economic development. That’s what’s going to make the difference,” he said.
Well, the former prime minister will have to contend with his many critics in the West. But Mr Lee should know. His own country, Singapore, at an average of 17% growth rate per annum, has the highest growth rate in Asia. I think that the only material advantage that democracy has as a model of governance – and here I mean real democracy without election rigging, the type we have in Nigeria – is that a leader that is not really performing can be removed in the next election.
Nigeria is always a case study worldwide in corruption. During the eight years of Obasanjo’s government, oil-producing countries all over the world, including Nigeria, witnessed an unprecedented inflow of petrodollars. During those eight years, oil price moved from less than $20 a barrel to more than $147 a barrel. That was unprecedented in the history of crude oil. All oil-producing nations prospered.
Except Nigeria, that is. Angola witnessed new prosperity. Equatorial Guinea flourished. Saudi Arabia built new cities while the hitherto impoverished Russia modernised and cleaned up. Only Nigeria declined in terms of the standard of living of its people during the period. During this period also, Nigeria – or, more precisely, Obasanjo and his coterie – expended $9 billion to increase our megawatts of electricity. The result is that we were worse off in 2007 when he was leaving office than in 1999 when he took over. In contrast, South Africa budgeted about the same amount to host the World Cup. With this amount, the country built five world-class stadia, a world-class electric speed railway, about 15 five-star hotels and hundreds of kilometres of road network. Those who knew the South African cities before and after the World Cup are still awed by what was achieved within so short a time.
Unfortunately, it is still the mores that Obasanjo left behind that are still in place. Both presidents Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan were not able or have not been able to break away. Nigeria must break loose from the Obasanjo legacy sooner than yesterday. If we don’t, not only shall we continue to punch too disastrously below our weight, we shall also fail as a country ultimately.
By the way, do we still remember that election rigging is the worst form of corruption?
Some state governors still complain that they cannot pay the minimum wage of N18,000. They complain that they do not have the money from their allocations to pay. First, any governor who sincerely believes that N18,000 is adequate to survive in today’s Nigeria does not qualify to be elected governor. Any governor who doesn’t have the N18,000 to pay from his monthly federation account should create the money. In more sinister terms, instead of waiting every month to share the national cake, which many of them expropriate anyway, they should strive to bake more cake so that more can go round.
In a more responsible clime, there is no state in Nigeria that cannot exist as a rich, independent country if push comes to shove. In the 19 northern states, there are tremendous opportunities for agriculture similar to what has made Brazil an agricultural superpower today. There are also tremendous mining opportunities for coal, iron ore, limestone, precious stones, gold, marble, granite, tantalite, uranium and sundry other minerals some of which have been responsible for South Africa’s prosperity. Also, there are several opportunities for tourism which no governor is looking at.
People should not be elected governors just to move into government houses, move around with sirens and simply share money. Public office should be much more serious than that. Yes, N18,000 is not even good enough for a decent living.
Original date published: 25 July 2011
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201107251101.html?viewall=1