For the benefit of an average Nigerian, The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to governments of low-and middle-income countries to pursue capital projects. The Bank was established along with the International Monetary Fund at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference.
Regrettably, The World Bank in its latest ‘Nigeria Development Update’, (NDU), themed, ‘Staying the course: Progress amid pressing challenges’, painted a grim picture of how policy inconsistency and contracting the oil sector conspired to lower the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita by about one-third between 2015 and 2022.
The WB further stated that between 2015 and 2022, Nigeria witnessed a reversal of economic gains, as recorded by Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua, and Goodluck Jonathan between 1999 and mid-2015.
“Income gains from 2000-2014 were partially reversed from 2015. Inconsistent macroeconomic policies, the contracting oil sector and external shocks lowered GDP per capita by about one-third between 2015 and 2022, while comparator countries continued to prosper,” it explained.
Also, during the Mohammadu Buhari era, the report said fiscal deficits widened and Ways and Means of financing by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) skyrocketed, forcing a rapid increase in debt pressures.
While the Bank acknowledged the economic and social hardship attributable to President Bola Tinubu’s reforms, WB refused to take cognisance of challenges that the PMB administration faced throughout its 8 years term.
It is on record that Buhari’s administration from 2015 to 2023, faced significant fiscal challenges, including falling oil prices, reduced oil revenues, 2 recessions, and COVID-19 19 Pandemic among others.
Consequently, the adoption of ‘ways and means’ by the PMB administration had become an inevitable way out as soft landing step towards addressing a number of financial challenges it faced at the onset of the administration in 2015.
It is an undisputable fact that the bank’s statement is nothing other than an attempt to blackpaint Buhari because he refused to do their bidding to surrender the future of the country to them. Moreso, WB is by its unjust, unfair and self-centred statement only justifying the hardships they have imposed on Nigerians under the present dispensation of PBAT with very questionable and suspicious loans.
The long and short of it is that the claim of ‘reversal of gains recorded by previous governments in the countries’ is simply because PMB rejected those suicidal offers to Nigeria.
It is on record that the recently sacked Minister of Women Affairs in Nigeria, Mrs Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, had raised a ‘red flag’ which Nigeria will ignore to its perpetual peril. Following the standoff between her and the National Assembly, she alleged the real cause of her harassment by the lawmakers as her refusal to sign a $500 million World Bank loan request. Her reason: “All the loans they collect, including World Bank loans, are you aware that the same World Bank staff in Nigeria take back 40% and call it consultation fees. Why should anybody give us a loan and you still direct us on how to use the loan?”
Speaking in an interview with Thisday newspaper before her sack, Mrs Kennedy-Ohanenye said, “Now my life is at stake because I refused to sign the $500 million loan. Let me tell you, if I sign that loan today, I’m entitled to five per cent of the money but I refused to sign. And that 40% they take is a secret; I found it out. It is part of why the National Assembly and all of them are after me.”
According to her, she also objected to another multimillion-dollar loan meant to train women on how to save money, saying “I told them $100 million is too much to use to teach our women how to save money. We can teach them. Let them bring the $100 million and give it to those women to use it to know what to do with their lives.”
These testimonies and many more are aimed at drawing the attention of gullible Nigerian government officials as to the questionable loans WB and IMF give to poor countries like Nigeria as loans.
On this note, one needs to stress the need for EFCC and ICPC to step in and investigate these allegations seriously.
It will be recalled that a columnist, Sulaiman A Sulaiman, with the Daily Trust Newspaper in an article titled ‘Nigeria Is Now A World Bank Colony’, described the situation as ‘conquest. Complete conquest,.’ He added: ‘This is about the only way left to understand and explain the relationship between the Federal Government of Nigeria on the one hand, and the World Bank/International Monetary Fund, on the other.
According to him, the ‘analogy is fitting too because today and in recent years, the political behaviour of the Nigerian state in relation to these Bretton Woods Institutions, BWI effectively approximates that of a conquered nation, a colony, or a country that has lost its sovereignty.’
He explained that the federal government has outsourced its policy and decision-making powers as a sovereign nation to the World Bank and IMF in ways that are effectively a recolonisation of Nigeria.
Indeed, the WB has been economical with the truth for describing the PMB administration as having ‘partially reversed income gains of the country from 2015- 2023 and putting inconsistent macroeconomic policies in place’.
Simply put, the WB’s report about the PMB’s 8 years is unjust, unfair, biased and outrageous given the empowerment, human resource and infrastructural development agenda of the country undertaken.
MUSA ILALLAH, A public Affairs analyst can be reached on
