The Oil Thieves of Nigeria
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I honestly think people largely get what they deserve. We’ve decided to shun competence and embrace corruption…no surprise we’re seeing the results in a failed economy.
Really hope the Labour Party candidate wins the upcoming Presidential election, or else we’re f**ed. Even if that happens, there’s still a massive uphill battle because corruption is embedded from top to bottom.
>but sure, people still continue to vote in the corrupt and inept leaders.
i live in a military state so i don't see much of "democracy". Many years ago, 1986 to be exact, people came out and there was a grassroots level movement for "rights" and people did lots of campaigning and the whole exercise of "elections" but the union government saw that as an attack on their iron grip and the elections were rigged.
Since then, we've had elections in the last 20 odd years but EVERYONE in the elections process is inept and corrupt and a "paid shill". it really doesn't matter who we vote (we don't cast votes for that reason) because it is a bad choice vs bad choice.
No one wants to "stand up" because the whole system locally and the overlords in the union government do NOT allow anyone who would threaten their control and their control means these corrupt people should remain in power.
we've all but given up on this whole thing so yeah. It gets tiring.
>We’ve decided to shun competence and embrace corruption…no surprise we’re seeing the results in a failed economy.
we have only bad options so it is a pointless exercise "choosing between them" so we decide to forgo the whole sham exercise.
well, that is just me so take whatever you can from this
And how often do the violent victors reveal their true ambitions? To be exactly those they deposed.
I don't know if I made myself understood, my point is I don't think this is a situation you can vote yourself out of. I honestly don't know what can be done in such situations.
When resources dominate an economy like in Venezuela or Nigeria or Iraq or Russia then the spoils get contested and that fighting inevitably leads to unstable governments, authoritarianism, corruption, economic stagnation, etc. etc.
The only country to really escape the resource curse is Norway and that's likely coz they were discovered quite late after they had developed a high trust society and were able to manage the spoils effectively and fairly. They're the exception not the rule.
Oh please.
Last I checked the midwest and Austrialia were doing just fine. There are tons of commodity exporters that don't fit this pattern.
Even so they have actual functioning non-resource economies unlike Nigeria and Venezuela and resource extraction can not dominate politics nearly as much.
Are you serious? You're comparing Australia to Nigeria?
Hell, I almost included Russia(!!) in my comment because even they have quite functional and non-corrupt government relative to the area of the spectrum we're talking about here.
Just because some nation doesn't turn the screws on industries you don't like as hard as you want them to doesn't make them dysfunctional and corrupt.
Yes, because Australia has been developing a resource heavy economy with dysfunctional politics to match while Nigeria's has been completely resource dominated for a long time and been a basket case for most of its history because of it.
>Hell, I almost included Russia(!!) in my comment because even they have quite functional and non-corrupt government
A country more resource dominated than Australia and less resource dominated than Nigeria is more politically dysfunctional than Australia and less dysfunctional than Nigeria? Shocking (!!).
It's weird that I even have to utter this sentence but... Russia is not non-corrupt, by the way.
Russia is corrupt. They aren't "owned by shell". They don't have organized crime siphoning off their pipelines. The gangsters they do have are working with the state at a high level and with the state's permission, not competing with it, paying off locals, etc. That's a whole different categorical level of corrupt than Nigeria and some other select parts of sub-saharan Africa. Trying to play corruption off like a binary is dishonest, screw off with that.
>Yes, because Australia has been developing a resource heavy economy with dysfunctional politics to match while Nigeria's has been completely resource dominated for a long time and been a basket case for most of its history because of it.
Australia is not of noteworthy levels of dysfunction compared to the rest of the western world. Hell, they're doing pretty good as far as former penal colonies go. They make political concessions for their breadwinner industries like everyone else does. You're just salty that mining is one of their key breadwinner industries.
Norway is another resource extraction nation and to portray them as "dysfunctional" would definitely be wrongthink 'round these parts. Canada is doing pretty good too.
This is not about fuel theft but a related crime called fuel smuggling where they buy subsidized gasoline and then illegally export it to neighboring countries (the government bans this to prevent exactly this kind of arbitrage). If you watch the video they actually follow along with a fuel smuggler, pay bribes (only $1-2 each) at several checkpoints, and just proceed as usual. The checkpoints exist just to facilitate bribe collection! Later in the video they mention that if you go frequently enough you can get some kind of pass or placard on your car so that you only have to pay once per month. This kind of bribery at every level of government does not exist in any first world country. Yes, politicians in most first world countries take campaign contributions from big companies but that is way different than quid pro quo bribery schemes where padded contracts are literally doled out based on who gives a bigger bribe. If you offered food inspectors in America or Australia $500 to ignore violations some might say OK but most would say fuck off. I'm not saying this kind of thing is inherent to Nigeria either -- rampant bribery existed in every major city in America in the 1800 and early 1900s but basically went away due to a persistent effort by good-government reformers, Protestants, and aggressive prosecutors. I don't know about Australia specifically but it seems most countries that are not corrupt today have taken a similar path.
I'm acutely aware of what corruption is like there, thanks. I got shaken down by corrupt cops just outside of Ikeja three weeks ago.
Unlike Nigeria, first world countries have functioning economies that don't pale into insignificance compared to whatever resource extraction they do. This is the key difference you missed. Where resource wealth doesn't overwhelm everything else, the effect of the curse is lower.
Nonetheless, resources are still a curse for the first world even when they dont overwhelm their entire economy. For homework I suggest you contrast Oklahoma and Texas politics to those of New York and Washington State.
New York had the largest political machine and patronage system in the country for several decades (Tammany). Eric Adams' term has had scandal after scandal (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/02/eric-adams-scandals...., https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/05/nyregion/eric-adams-petro...). Illinois has plenty of corrupt politics despite having very few natural resources (4 of the past 7 governors there have gone to jail): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-style_politics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Madigan. I don't know the history of Oklahoma or Texas very well but I would say that the bigger issue is that the ability to authorize tens of millions of dollars of spending is placed in the hands of a few unaccountable poorly paid individuals. Natural resources obviously go hand in hand with this because they provide a giant pile of money for people to divert.
About cultural values, an anecdotal example: every time somebody gets prison time for stealing, fraud, embezzlement, etc, people comment things like "4 years for X million euros? Would gladly take that deal". Also people who make money with drugs or human trafficking are idols for many young people and they are open about it. We have song hits about this life style. This is what I call culture.
Interpol caught up with him since and he’s living that deal now while his wife manages his assets. I wonder if she’s still his wife and I wonder if he still thinks it was worthwhile.
Imagine that you grow up in an environment where laboring is a way to sustain a so-so existence, and never anything more. The only way to make it big is to steal big. It's a life goal. If you get to a position if any power, you are expected to steal. If you do, others envy you. If you don't, others, including the regular folk, despise you, because they see you as an inept fool; were they in your position, they'd grab so much more! Also, your bosses tacitly expect that you grease their hand with some of the spoils from your position of some power; if you don't, you will lose your position, there are many more willing candidates.
The above happens naturally when people see the wealth of their community, or their whole society, as a loot box to grab, not as an orchard to grow. It's very easy to hold such views when much wealth comes from, well, grabbing natural resources like oil, ores, timber, etc. It may also be a convenient setup for those on the top, because it prevents people from trying to do something else than to get to the top the elites already control. No competition to the elites is going to form through cooperation and accumulation of wealth.
Once formed by greedy bandits, or instilled by conquerors (that is, greedy bandits from elsewhere), this sick system can continue as long as there are resources to extract and sell, boxes to loot. Of course even inside societies like those there are people who would prefer a different setup. Of course the change to a better society is not impossible. But it's a change that needs to alter ingrained values of many people, and topple many tiny power structures built on those which permeate the society. Such a change cannot be fast.
https://www.stakeholderdemocracy.org/resources/sdn-multimedi...
Full list of resources including those videos and also reports and guides to these topics: https://www.stakeholderdemocracy.org/resources/
Between 2013 and 2019 I worked as freelancer with them on two applications for the Nigerian National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), the Oil Spill Monitor and the Gas Flare Tracker:
https://sentido-labs.com/en/portfolio/?filter=oil%20gas
There are many aspects to this conflict. One is the cultural division that the linked article only hints at: most power and wealth is held by Muslims from the north of the country (where the capital Abuja is) while the population in the Niger Delta (the oil-rich part) is predominantly Christian. Recently the president of Nigeria mentioned that weapons from Ukraine are finding their way to Nigeria ( https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/weapons-deliver... ). The same happened years ago from Libya when Gaddafi was killed in 2011.
Gangs are now stealing directly from the pipelines in a semi-professional manner in addition of the continued violence as there has been for such a long time.
The Americans help of course. This whole Africom nonsense that the Americans have been pushing lately is about making sure that companies like British Shell continue to 'own' African countries.
Are the Australian government "thieves" for taxing Rio Tinto?
ideally the Australian Government is representative and working on behalf of the overwhelming majority of Australians putting revenues in long term investment funds for security and into public infrastructure that benefits the health, security and economic well being of the nation.
This is not always the case for <random post-colonial African state> (or indeed any of the 190+ countries about the globe).
They should belong to the people. The state and the people are not the same thing in Australia and certainly not the same thing in Nigeria.
I mean, that sounds like a nice slogan that doesn't really mean anything. Can you give an example of what that would mean in practice?
The Government Pension Fund Global, also known as the Oil Fund, was established in 1990 to invest the surplus revenues of the Norwegian petroleum sector. It has over US$1.19 trillion in assets,[1] and holds 1.4% of all of the world’s listed companies, making it among the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds.[2][3] In December 2021, it was worth about $250,000 per Norwegian citizen.
Simply gifting the finite stuff in the ground to a corporation to dig up and sell for nothing is an act of corruption at best and out and out treason at worst.
Also: these some of these https://www.arabianbusiness.com/industries/banking-finance/t...
But here comes the agency problem.
Then, the state is, equally importantly, a self-defence agency, which protect citizens from threats external (army) and internal (police). Hence the state controls the tools of violence.
The agency problem intensifies.
A carefully built system of checks and balances can sort of keep it at bay. Less carefully built systems turned into tyrannical regimes many, many times in recent history, all across the world.