Excuse me, friends, I must catch my jet I’m off to join the Development Set; My bags are packed, and I’ve had all my shots,
I have traveller’s checks and pills for the trots!
The Development Set is bright and noble
Author: CASADE
Owalabi Bakre.* Nigeria loses US$600 million annually to money laundering. Between the mid-1980s and 1999, Nigeria lost US$100billion to money laundering. In the so acclaimed democratic era, between 2001 and 2004, the country lost an estimated US$25billion to money laundering. Nigerians who specialise in international money transfer have also extorted about US$357,142,857 from overseas victims. However, such illegal inflow and outflow of huge amount of money that has contributed to the impoverishment of the Nigerian economy cannot be easily perpetrated, without the cooperation, collaboration or at the very least, connivance of the professionals, particularly accountants. Yet, the various statutory provisions,…
Editor’s choice of a must-read book for readers interested in African development. Analysis by Ifeoluwa Adedeji, Ohio University. “The main reason why Africa’s people are poor is because their leaders have made this choice.” Mill’s first sentence in the ‘introduction’ of the book succinctly lays out his central message. With a per capita income 50 percent less than that of the next poorest region (South Asia), sub-Saharan Africa’s growth has lagged since independence. Many reasons have been put forward for the region’s slow development – a lack of human and government capacity, poor infrastructure and trade access, the effects of…
Dan Banik and Nikolai Hegertun. How much are acts of generosity worth in international relations? For affluent countries, foreign aid has helped spread power and influence. Donors give foreign aid in part because it will benefit them. For example, political scientist Carol Lancaster finds that domestic politics and international pressures combine to shape how and why donor governments give aid, and that aid was initially based on “hard-headed, diplomatic realism.” The Trump administration’s proposal to slash foreign aid by more than one-third (including drastic cuts to global health and humanitarian aid) represents a major shift away from the goal of…
Ambassador John Campbell* The World Bank has recently released its Human Capital Index, part of the Human Capital Project. The index seeks to measure how much economic productivity per capita is being lost because of underinvestment in human capital. For example, the index estimates that in Nigeria, a statistically average child has an earning potential of only 34 percent of what it could be if the country were fully invested in human capital, which it defines as “the knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate over their lives.” The index therefore takes into account child survival, school enrollment, quality of…
On February 7, the Federal High Court in Lagos issued a warrant for the arrest of Ayodele Oke, former director general of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), and his wife Folasade following an application by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Just before they were due to appear in court, they apparently left the country for “medical treatment,” and the Nigeria media is not reporting where they are now. The EFCC has declared the couple wanted after their failure to respond to a court summons.
John O. Ifediora. Abstract. Female genital circumcision is a procedure that requires the excision of some tissues that form the female genitalia. It is an old tradition that exists predominantly in Africa, and has, of late, become a very contentious and controversial issue in the international community. There are various grounds for this controversy, one of which is the contention by rights advocates that female circumcision is gratuitous violence against women in the form genital mutilation, and should be abolished. Cultural relativists counter that female circumcision is a traditional ritual that defines cultural identity, and hence outside the competence of…
There are indisputably significant divergences in the degree of development of countries across the world. All countries do not experience the same rate of development process. Literature reveals that countries situated in some regions of the globe experience lower rate of development than others. For instance, people living in the sub-Saharan region of the African continent experience a lower degree of welfare than those living in Western Europe and North America. Does leadership have something to do with this? Literature suggests that political leaders have the potential to influence variables that have bearing on development process (Perkins, Shirley, Wint, 2008)…
Mervyn King. Mervyn King looks like one of those old-fashioned bank managers who cast a paternalistic eye on the nervous customer. Or he could be a GP telling you that you really need to exercise more and go easy on the carbs. It is in this vein that he probes the state of the global economy; his diagnosis does not reassure. Not for him is the Piketty-esque grand sweep. He avoids the hubris of the “I told you so” school (virtually none of them actually did tell us so ahead of time). He says he is not interested in the…
Just a few years back, calling a politician corrupt in Nigeria was synonymous to calling a kettle black. It was a given that Nigerian politicians seek elected offices to enrich themselves; the effort was never intended to be a selfless act or motivated by the will to serve the needs of the polity. Thus, the prevailing sentiment was summed up by general optimism that ‘today it is his turn, tomorrow I shall have my opportunity.’ Laws to curb corrupt practices were never meant to be taken seriously, for if they were, then the hopes of a generation of aspirants would…