Borrowing to rig elections II

By Eze Eluchie

The practice of criminally minded politicians to further pauperize their States and citizenry by borrowing huge sums to rig elections has become a recurring decimal in Nigeria’s pretense at democracy. These kleptocrats, having already squandered their States resources on themselves, their cronies and white-elephant projects, proceed to rub insult into the injuries they have already inflicted on the citizens of their States by mortgaging the future of generations yet unborn via spurious bank loans.

The financial institutions that dish out these suspect loans are in most cases, quite aware of and complicit in the fraud being perpetuated against the peoples who are ruled by these kleptocrats. As pay-back, some of these Banks (and senior management of the Banks) deliberately announce amounts far in excess of the real sums advanced to States as the sums loaned, knowing full well that the difference between real sum loaned and the sum announced will remain in their vaults and probably distributed as perks/bonuses to those who participated in the scam.

This rather unfortunate practice occurs not only in-country but is also widespread amongst international financial institutions dealing with countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Populations which are already suffering the pangs of abject poverty are most unfortunately further saddled with fictitious and imaginary debt portfolios.

As election approach, the haste to secure more loans rises to frenzy.

It is in the light of this that the recent arrest of the Speaker, Principal Officers and Clerk of Nigeria’s Kano State House of Assembly by the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for surreptitiously trying to approve a bogus Supplementary Budget factored on placing Kano State into greater indebtedness via new loan facilities ought to be commended.

One is however worried that our law enforcement agencies (in Nigeria) did not harken to an earlier call I made regarding similar antics by the other States in Nigeria, particularly the Lagos State Government in an earlier post on my Blog (http://ezeluchie.blogspot.com/2013/09/borrowing-to-rig-elections.html  

When one realizes the nexus between the widespread poverty visited on populations in societies where State officials engage in such horrendous larceny/large-scale corruption on the one hand and civil strife, conflicts, organized crime and terrorism, the need for the recognition, investigation, prosecution and punishment of large-scale corruption as a crime against humanity as stipulated in Article 7(k) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court becomes quite clear.

The trans-international border nature of the large-scale corruption crimes as described above makes it pertinent that international law enforcement agencies must congregate efforts towards tackling this behemoth.

Picture: Logo of Nigeria' Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)