African Oil Corruption
Somalian corruption is rampant in this impoverished nation. It has devastated millions of lives during famines, as tribal rivalries made the withholding of food and medicine a tactic. The food and medicine was then sold for profit instead of going to the needy. Any resources including oil will surely go to the greedy and corrupt officials that call themselves tribal leaders of Somalia. Somalians have suffered needlessly through the hands of their leaders. Leadership in Somalia is the most corrupt, abhorrent and disgusting in Africa.
Here is a list of other African nations that require new leaders who are more honest and have integrity to represent all their people equally and fair. The list is incomplete and it is obvious that the leadership throughout Africa is in a very bad state of affairs.
EQUATORIAL GUINEA
Teodoro Obiang / Pablo Manriquez
- Teodoro Obiang, president of Equatorial Guinea, has a genius for insuring that none of his country’s vast oil wealth goes to help its impoverished people, over 60 percent of whom live on less than $1 a day. His son, Teodorin, is building a mammoth $380 million luxury yacht, whose cost is three times more than the country spends on health care and education combined. This, in addition to a fleet of luxury cars and a $35 million estate in Malibu. Asked once how he managed to spend so outrageously on a government salary, the despot’s son and presumed successor said in a sworn affidavit that in Equatorial Guinea, government ministers can partner with companies that win government contracts. As a result, he wrote, “a cabinet minister ends up with a sizable part of the contract price in his bank account.
ZIMBABWE
Robert Mugabe / Mangwanani
- Thanks to Robert Mugabe, among the longest-standing leaders in Africa, Zimbabwe is ranked as one of the most corrupt countries by Transparency International. Citing the country’s unbridled corruption, the United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions against economic trade with the country, and barred Mugabe and his top officials from coming to Europe and the U.S. That, however, has not stopped Mugabe from spending his own country’s minimal resources for himself and his cronies: Mugabe is on track to spend nearly $50 million on foreign travel this year. He has a fancy house in the richest district of Hong Kong. His heavy-handed tactics have only brought violence and poverty to a country that was once seen as the breadbasket of Africa.
NIGERIA
Goodluck Jonathan / Official Photo
- Goodluck Jonathan took over one of the world’s most corrupt countries in May 2010 on the death of its president, and was re-elected last April. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country — with appalling living conditions. Education, health and health care are poor. Only about half the population has access to clean water and life expectancy averages 47 years. Polio is still a problem, even though it has been eradicated everywhere else in Africa, along with cholera, malaria and HIV/AIDS. In 2006, anti-corruption officials investigated Mr. Jonathan’s wife, Patience, over allegations she tried to launder $13.5 million. She has never been convicted of any wrongdoing, however. Oil-rich Nigeria is home to networks of organized crime and has suffered from drug trafficking and piracy.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
President Joseph Kabila / Helene C. Stikkel – DOD
- Since taking office as president in 2001 following the assasination of his father Laurent, Joseph Kabila is seen as doing little to combat corruption and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The country is resource rich: Diamonds, cobalt and rare minerals used in electronics are all found in abundance in the DR Congo. Yet the country has a long history of corruption. Laurent Kabila’s predecessor, Mobutu Sese Seko, allegedly walked away with $4 billion and Swiss courts found that a statute of limitations ran out on collecting some of that bounty. Meanwhile, DR Congo remains one of the poorest countries on earth. Its citizens struggle with incomes that average $200 a year. Only two other countries have lower per capita income.
And let's not forget the terrible tragedies occurring in Somalian neighbours of Yemen and Sudan as a result of the continuing struggle for power of OIL wealth. Will the greed and corruption ever end? Will history repeat itself in Somalia and Kenya?
Sudan says costs no bar to recapture of oil region
Reuters, 17/04 17:24 CET
By Yara Bayoumy and Alexander Dziadosz
NAIROBI/KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Sudan said on Tuesday the cost of a full-blown conflict with South Sudan would not deter it from recapturing the disputed Heglig oilfield, and that newly tapped oilfields would help to sustain its struggling economy.
South Sudan took control of the contested oil-producing Heglig region last week, prompting Sudan’s parliament to brand its former civil war foe an “enemy” on Monday and to call for a swift recapture of the flat savannah region.
Both countries’ faltering economies are likely to be important factors in the conflict’s outcome.
“Despite the high cost of the war, despite the destruction that the war can cause … our options are very limited. We can tolerate some sacrifice, until we can liberate our land,” Sudan’s ambassador to Kenya, Kamal Ismail Saeed, said.
“So from our side, yes, it is expensive but that doesn’t deter us or that doesn’t stop us from exerting all effort to liberate our land,” he told reporters in Nairobi.
“We have been in war without oil for several years and we survived … As a matter of fact … the good news (is) we have developed other sources and fields of oil and that will really compensate our loss.”
Fighting over oil payments and territory has withered the combined crude output of both countries.
The Heglig field is vital to Sudan’s economy because it accounted for half the 115,000 barrels per day output that remained in its control when South Sudan seceded in July. The field’s output has stopped due to the fighting, officials say.
The landlocked South had already closed its 350,000 bpd output after failing to agree how much it should pay to export via Sudan’s pipelines, a Red Sea port and other facilities.
The latest clashes have also dampened hopes that Sudan and South Sudan can reach a deal soon on disputed issues such as demarcation of their 1,800-km (1,200-mile) border, division of debt and the status of citizens in each other’s territory.
The loss of Heglig, a shock to many Sudanese, has also stirred tensions in the north. Sudan’s interior minister said on Tuesday the police college had dismissed its South Sudanese students after “their violation of police regulations and their celebration of the occupation of Heglig”.
U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said she was alarmed by the South’s “unwarranted” occupation of Heglig and urged both sides to halt the violence, including the North’s bombing campaign against the South.
“I condemn the indiscriminate aerial bombing by Sudanese forces in civilian areas in South Sudan, including in Mayom and Bentiu in Unity State, resulting in the deaths of at least 8 civilians and many injuries since Saturday,” she said in a statement.
“In the past week we have seen an intensification of the use of Antonovs as well as jetfighters dropping bombs and launching rocket attacks, including in areas dangerously close to the offices of international organisations. Such deplorable attacks must stop immediately.”
South Sudan’s military (SPLA) spokesman said its positions were bombed on Monday, but no clashes were reported on Tuesday.
“We are aware they are trying to advance, and the SPLA is ready to receive them,” spokesman Philip Aguer said, describing the conflict as a “limited war”. Sudan’s army spokesman was not immediately available to comment.
NEWOILFIELDS
Saeed insisted Khartoum could weather the latest conflict, which has sent food prices soaring and hit the currency as officials try to make up for the sudden loss in revenues.
He said production from new fields in the west of the Kordofan region, in Darfur and in the states of White Nile and Blue Nile would offset much of the loss of Heglig’s output.
“We used to produce 115,000 barrels a day before the attack, we lost about 40,000, and now we’ll get another 30,000.”
South Sudan insists Heglig is rightfully part of the South and says it will not withdraw its troops unless the United Nations deploys a neutral force to monitor a ceasefire. Saeed said that was unacceptable.
“They have two options: either to withdraw very quickly or withdraw. We will reserve the right to use all means at our access to kick them out of there, and we will do it,” he said.
“They will be thrown out of there very soon.”
Pillay and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed alarm over reports of a build-up of militia forces in the disputed Abyei border region.
The U.N. statement did not say where the reports were from or give details but called it a violation of a June agreement in which both sides said they would withdraw forces from the area.
Ban called on Khartoum to “ensure the full and immediate withdrawal of these elements from the area”.
Abyei, which is prized for its fertile grazing land and produces some oil, was a major battleground during Sudan’s civil war and is symbolically potent for both sides. Both countries lay claim to it.
Khartoum seized Abyei in May last year after a southern attack on an army convoy, triggering an exodus of tens of thousands of civilians. The Security Council authorised the deployment of 3,800 U.N. peacekeepers in Abyei in June.
Some 2 million people died in Sudan’s civil war, waged for all but a few years between 1955 and 2005 over conflicts of ideology, ethnicity, oil and religion.
(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations and Tom Miles in Geneva; Writing by Yara Bayoumy and Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Jon Hemming)
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