World Bank’s deadly agenda

What does the World Bank want? The question is pertinent in light of its deadly stance on Nigeria’s precarious fate. The country borrowed over $24 billion from the global lender in five years. In 16 months, the Bola Tinubu administration borrowed $6.45 billion. Within this short period, Nigeria sank deeper into crisis thanks to Tinubu’s Ill-advised removal of petroleum subsidies and floating the naira. Food prices and transportation costs immediately shot up. As sustenance became increasingly hard to come by, Nigerians grasped at any semblance of a lifeline. They stampeded for a loaf of bread, a small rice bag or yam tuber. Some died chasing the lifeline.

In a year, the country witnessed two major protests against hunger and bad governance. Inflation has reduced the naira to a near-worthless piece of paper. In a country notorious for its epileptic grid electricity, most Nigerians cannot afford to buy a litre of petrol at over N1000 for their power generators. Businesses are folding up. Unfortunately, the World Bank applauds the Tinubu government’s choking reforms. And sadly, the International Monetary Fund joins in the praise.

Emboldened by this endorsement, Tinubu once thumped his chest saying he deserved to be listed for an award in the Guinness World of Records. It was an insult to the injury his policies inflicted on his people. As if it is oblivious of the Nigerian people’s plight, the World Bank says the Tinubu administration should sustain the deadly policies, or stay the course, as it puts it. In 10 to 15 years, the World Bank says, Nigeria will become a big player not just on the continent but on the global stage. This is a pipedream and a dangerous stance on a struggling country and its suffering people.

“It is not only unacceptable but inhumane to ask Nigerians to endure 15 more years of suffering in the name of reforms that have historically failed us. Millions of Nigerians can barely afford food, fuel, or basic services today. Asking them to wait for over a decade for ‘things to get better’ is an affront to their dignity and a reckless gamble with the nation’s future,” says ActionAid Nigeria, a non-government organisation focused on rights and development issues.

The World Bank does not have a history of caring whether borrower countries sink or swim, provided they keep borrowing, even at forbidding costs. In the late 1980s, under pressure from the IMF, the World Bank’s sister organisation, Nigeria cut subsidies to its manufacturing sector and devalued the naira. The people were told to tighten their belts under a strangulating Structural Adjustment Programme. The result was catastrophic. The manufacturing sector crashed. Textile companies folded up, throwing tens of thousands of employees into the labour market. The country’s gross domestic product tumbled too. Nigeria’s borrowing and debt profile worsened ever since.

Reforms are desirable but if they strangulate the people they are meant to serve, they shouldn’t be touched with a ten-foot pole. Curiously, the World Bank does not utter a cautionary word on the stench of corruption that can be smelt from neighbouring countries. The subsidy regime is mired in corruption and opacity. No one knows how much has been saved from its removal, if at all. The World Bank which applauds its removal also said Nigeria was still paying it. Neither does the global lender care how borrowed funds are used. Tinubu has stepped up revenue generation through multiple taxes and sundry charges. But where is the money going?

At its founding in 1944, the core aim of the World Bank was to provide loans to help countries build their infrastructure and fight poverty. Decades after receiving billions in loans, Nigeria’s education, health, power, and other sectors remain comatose. The World Bank says more than half of Nigeria’s 233 million people live below the poverty line. Why does the Bank not take concrete steps to ensure that loans granted to Nigeria are used to close this huge poverty gap? Simple answer: it doesn’t care. Loan cash and funds from taxes are wasted on frivolities, presidential aircraft, luxury vehicles for the commander-in-chief and federal lawmakers, and refurbishing living quarters for the vice president. Rather than call the government out on these wastages, the World Bank applauds Tinubu’s reforms that take food off poor Nigerians’ tables. This speaks volumes of its agenda.