Nigeria

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 6:32 pm on 18 April 2006.

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Photo of Lord Lea of Crondall Lord Lea of Crondall Labour 6:32, 18 April 2006

My Lords, I very much welcome this debate, and I, too, extend my good wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, who cannot be here this evening.

From 1 to 8 April, I was privileged to be a member of the UK branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association delegation, who were guests of the Nigerian branch of the CPA. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the leader of the delegation, Roger Berry MP, and the secretary, Andrew Tuggey, for ensuring that the visit ran smoothly. I also thank Martin Shearman, our acting High Commissioner in Nigeria, and the political secretary, Alisdair Walker, for their indispensable assistance. They and their Nigerian colleagues put together a very impressive programme.

Meetings in Abuja were held with parliamentary and government leaders, trade unions and other civil society organisations, and with the independent Electoral Commission chairman as a counterpoint. In Lagos, meetings were held with the very lively editorial department of a newspaper and with the west Africa vice-president of Shell. Shell, incidentally, provides about half the revenue of the federal government. Last but not least, meetings were held with the staff of DfID and the British Council, who in some ways are the unsung heroes of the UK effort. They arranged an encounter with Debbie, an extraordinarily dedicated teacher from Peckham, who put a group of boys and girls of all ages through their paces on a football pitch beside a derelict school.

In Kaduna, we had a very interesting meeting with an inter-faith group, the Anglican Archbishop and a group of Muslim representatives, one of whom was a public health professional. Our discussions were very wide-ranging, and it was clear that the 2002 Kaduna declaration had been a very useful document after the riots that year. A couple of years ago, I had the privilege of chairing a meeting in the Moses Room after an address given by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who emphasised the importance of the Kaduna and Alexandria declarations. After the Danish cartoon affair earlier this year, there was no doubt in Kaduna that the procedures put in place for the fire brigade helped to nip the situation in the bud and that it could have been much more difficult without them. So we thought that that was a very important meeting.

Some of the social, political and economic difficulties require a slightly longer view to be taken. I worked in west Africa briefly 40 years ago. I was therefore struck by the following sentence on the World Bank website about Nigeria:

"GNP per capita, at about US$390, is below the level at independence forty years ago".

That is $390 per head per annum. It continues,

"About 57 per cent of the population now falls below the poverty line of roughly one dollar a day. Economic mismanagement, corruption and excessive dependence on oil have been the main causes of poor economic performance and rising poverty".

On corruption, I will give noble Lords just one figure: President Abacha embezzled $5 billion. He is up there in the first division league. Also with $5 billion to his credit, or discredit, is President Mobutu of Zaire. Of course, Abacha was not the only one. It goes on. In the words of the DfID briefing note,

"years of military rule, corruption and weak accountability have prevented the development of a social contract between Nigerians and their government".

It goes on to say:

"By 1998 approximately 70 per cent of private wealth had been taken out of Nigeria".

The fundamental problems of Nigeria include one of the fastest rates of urbanisation, at 5 per cent per annum, accompanied by economic stagnation rather than growth. Lagos has been growing at 10 to 15 per cent per annum and if this growth continues it will be the third largest city in the world by 2020. It is already a city throttled by infrastructure deficiencies and decades of neglect. Life expectancy of 49 years in 1991 fell to 45 years in 2002 and it is falling still.

I have to conclude from that that the Foreign Office and DfID need to give far greater emphasis than they currently give to the questions of excessive population growth and lack of jobs growth. There are approximately 140 million people in Nigeria today; the census is trying to find out exactly how many. Growth of 2.5 per cent to 3 per cent means that there will be 180 million Nigerians by 2015 and 275 million by 2030. That is a rise in share above a quarter of Africa's population. So my speech could be entitled, "Too Much Population Growth, Too Little Jobs Growth". In the old days in Africa it was not a question of unemployment in the subsistence field, but with urbanisation we have to think in terms of normal industrial country concepts of unemployment rates. That is one of the keys to the crisis of Lagos, I would think.

At the moment on EU Sub-Committee C we are looking at European Union strategy on Africa. It is obvious that there is a cluster of three key issues: security, governance and development. They are all interconnected. If private wealth through corruption leaves the country, that has an impact. I will come back to the delta question in a minute. But when one of the state governors said to us that we need a new Marshall Plan for Nigeria, we said, "Well look, there is already a $35 billion write-off of debt with the Paris Club a couple of weeks ago. There is already Gleneagles and the African Union strategy agreed in London". My noble friend Lord Triesman will know all that backwards, forwards and sideways, But the fact is that we cannot just turn on a tap. Our taxpayers would expect a degree of accountability that has not been provided, and the fact is that the issue of "value added" lay at the heart of the Marshall Plan. It has to be recognised that in 1948 the plan did set benchmarks for political, social and economic standards in Europe through the OEEC. If there is an analogy to be made with the Marshall Plan, that is it.

I strongly support the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, but it has to be taken a stage further in its implementation with transparency of auditing on the part of both the oil companies, which provide 90 per cent of state revenues, and the finance ministry. Only last week the Financial Times published an authoritative report describing a discrepancy worth several hundred million dollars between what the oil companies say they are giving the Nigerians through the state oil company and finance ministry and what is being published by the ministry itself.

I want to say only a few words about the Niger delta. Shell and the other companies are committed to making further investments, but I want to make the point that President Obasanjo has to become much more involved in the political economy of the delta region than he has been hitherto. The share paid to the delta states, the production states, from national revenues is due to rise from 13 per cent to 18 per cent. It is important that we do not get into a situation where the Americans, who take half the oil, declare the Niger delta to be part of the war on terror. We do not want some crazy assistant in the White House defining it as being part of that war. However, that could be the direction in which things go.

We had a good meeting with representatives from the trade unions. Our talks ranged from the difficulties of migration to the monitoring of the 2003 elections. The president of the Nigeria Labour Congress is a fine man who studied at Ruskin College, which is another example of the British connection. He is very highly regarded and could one day be a presidential candidate. He is also a good example of the dedicated people now to be found in Nigeria's political and socio-economic spheres. However, President Obasanjo has to be congratulated on his status as an international statesman. All I can say on the constitutional question in the time available is that we ought to be careful when we comment on it. It is obvious that it is possible to comment at the level of the African Union and NePAD on certain constitutional principles of governance. That is very important. But we are hardly in a position to discuss the details of a constitution as long as the process of change is carried out transparently and any ensuing elections are perceived by the people to be conducted fairly.

In conclusion, Nigeria has played a prominent role in the African Union. Although my comments have been rather downbeat, everyone in the business community and in government says that the developing role and aspirations of the African Union are making a difference. In the words, I think, of the president of the senate, it is now inconceivable that there could be a military government again in Nigeria. So we have to say that there are some green shoots which should be strong enough to promote democratic development—not just handing the whole country over to the Chinese, as it were—and ensure that the principles of parliamentary democracy flower, bringing economic and social success with them.