* Wants more grants for Nigeria From Oghogho Obayuwana and Segun Ayeoyenikan, Abuja
THE Special Adviser to the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Professor Jeffery Sachs, yesterday faulted the recent $18 billion debt pardon granted Nigeria by the Paris Club of creditor-nations.
Sachs, who is on a three-day official visit to Nigeria, told reporters in Abuja that Nigeria deserves between two and three billion dollars grant yearly from the creditor-nations in order for it to meet the jointly set targets of the MDGs.
Speaking with passion about the glaring injustice in the relations between the developed and underdeveloped sections of the world, Sachs said that the much-vilified Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) embarked upon by African governments some decades ago "was a huge mistake where the rich ones were simply trying to squeeze and squeeze from your economies. The last 25 years had been a disastrous period. The imposed adjustments (SAP) enabled people in the other parts of the world, the creditors to turn away from the sufferings here without doing anything...You did not invest in the 20 years of SAP. They were merely saying you have a problem, well its your problem. You have to pay your debts...you are paying so much for this or that services, cut the expenses there, pay up. Don't complain about it. Like it!"
According to Sachs who was in the country last year to lend weight to the Federal Government's renewed drive for debt repudiation, the developed partners ought to be doing more than the $18 billion debt pardon given to Nigeria early this month.
"When I proposed that Nigeria's debt be cancelled for reasons I will explain now, I was laughed at in every of the creditor country that we went...Now this $12 billion is a lot better than the status quo. A victory for Nigeria...but it is a deal that is worse than the creditor nations could have given and so we are asking why demand that the country pays $12 billion cash just as you are giving off $18 billion."
By the estimation of Sachs, Nigeria is indeed a poor country despite huge oil reserves.
" $50 barrel plus of oil is good in Nigeria if you use the money well. Only $300 million or so of Nigeria's annual income goes into the health sector in the budget. Yet, these creditor-nations need to become donor countries and they are not presently...the creditors are obtuse, they do not know the realities down here or they do not care enough. Nigeria receives the least development assistance in the whole of Africa, just two dollars per person. The average in the continent is $25 per person, but it ought to be $70 per person"
He continued: "The creditors are saying that Nigeria is a rich country that has wasted its oil wealth. But I say no, Nigeria is a poor country that has wasted its oil resources. Nigeria is getting too little per person because there are so many people here. It is just 60 cents per day with all the oil money. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) produces about the same mount of oil as Nigeria with a far lower population."
He continued: They should now stop seeing Nigeria in terms of oil wells (wealth) and start seeing the country in terms of peoples' needs. Eight million people die yearly around the world because they are too poor to stay alive... I do not believe Africa is getting ahead of the curve right now. I do not believe that Nigeria is on its own getting ahead of the curve either."
Maintaining that even the pattern of grants to Africa must not be such that are dysfunctional, Sachs said $7 billion has now been recommended yearly for the poorest countries in the world as the appropriate amount to be spent on research on produce such as sorghum, cassava, and millet.
The United States he said only does research currently in wheat, maize and cotton.
Sachs affirmed to the Civil Society/Media Round-table that his visits to major Nigerian villages showed that majority of Nigerians are still farmers. These people he said are poor, and disconnected from the benefits of oil exploration.
The UN official would not agree with the World Bank recommendations that the market forces of the public utilities like electricity, water, public transportation systems , health should be handed over entirely to the private sector.
He told the gathering that "for now, the market forces and its dictates for
resource allocation could not operate in Nigeria until the government had provided all the basic amenities that can make the creativity of the citizens to come alive and their potentialities fully developed
"I do not believe in the market forces providing essential services for the poor. The market forces is not designed for the poor but for those who have money."
He also spoke about HIV/AIDS in Nigeria: "A lot of technologies and drugs are already existing outside the African continent, helping the poor stem the problems of the diseases, but the problem is that the drugs could not just get to the people simply because of the inimical trade system that currently operates in the global system."
Sachs affirmed that the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) was a mistake because it was grafted on wrong assumptions.
One of such assumptions, he explained, was that Africa as a poor continent was responsible for its woes and should therefore be prepared to tackle its problems.
He trace the failure of SAP to the governments of African countries stopping spending monies on basic infrastructure as advised by the creditors.
This, he said, was not the case in the developed economies. Public health, education, agriculture and others are still being heavily funded by governments in Europe and America.
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