I mean, Bill's foundation is already dedicating $3B a year on development assistance, couldn't Japan just say to Nigeria: "You don't have to pay us back. Consider it a donation". How could they reasonably expect Nigeria to pay them back $76M?
"when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a complete monster."
https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
As a side note, I find that articles arguments troubling for several reasons that appear to be glossed over, but in interest of not derailing onto a different comment, I'll wait for what aspect you are specifically referring to in this case.
Would it have been better if Japan had done nothing and Bill gates committed the charity now? No, people would have died. So unless you are japanese my question to you would be what has your government done for polio irradication in Nigeria? Because I bet it's less than the Japanese government.
The ethics of profiting off the act might need to be truncated off it though, that is a genuine moral discussion that has so many shades of grey I feel.
Well three weeks ago Nigeria agreed to buy a dozen Super Tucano aircraft through a US FMS arrangement for $593 million.[0]
So why would Japan expect that they couldn't pay $76 million? The Nigerian Presidents's Boeing 737 is worth nearly that much, plus his pair each of Gulfsreams and Falcons...
[0] whereas the USAF paid about $30 million per airframe including similar spares and support services, and bare flyaway cost from the manufacturer is about $12 million each.
In perspective, oil and gas companies spend more than double that lobbying the US government every year and in Mayfair in London, a house went on sale last year for $120M.
Oil revenue?
Also, more importantly, you should probably google before shit posting as they roughly make ~$48bn of their GDP from oil.
Nigeria is a country with a long and persistent history of corruption. It pays its legislators the highest salaries in the world, yet over 60% of Nigerians live in poverty. About 9 months ago, anti-corruption investigators found $43 million in cash in an apartment, which is a drop in the many-hundreds-of-billions that have been lost to corruption in the course of Nigerian history.
[1] I'm trying to find their foreign aid info, but not having much luck on finding figures...