Ngozi Okonjo – Iweala
Minister of Finance in Nigeria


(15 th June 2005, ASAHI News paper in Japan )

Year 2005 is important for Africa . There is a lot of campaign for poverty eradication in Africa . In G8 summit held in July in U.K. the agenda will include debt cancellation for poor country and debt problem in Nigeria .

Nigerian has 130 million populations, which is equivalent to one sixth of Africa and nearly same as Japan 's. It is necessary for Nigeria to have external debt cancellation to solve the poverty problem. However, previous political failure and instability has been preventing the debt relief. There are opinion that "Nigeria must be Rich, because they have oil" "Money received from debt relief will go somewhere and be missing". But I would like to tell Japanese people that those are not true.

Nigeria produces crude oil, but we are rich. The oil revenue is only 50 cent per capita day. On the other hand, Gross Domestic Income per capita is 300$ per day. This is much less than average of lower income country. More than 74 million people are living with below 1$ per day. Average life expectancy is 47 years, which is less than average of lower income country, which is 58 years. Although 10 million children in the world die annually before becoming 5 years old, out of theses 10% are Nigerian children.

However, Official Development Assistance (ODA) per capita to Nigeria is the lowest in Sub – Sahara Africa. Although the average in Sub – Sahara Africa is $28 per year, that is only $24 in Nigeria . On the other hand, $12 goes back to developed country annually as debt repayment, which is 6 times larger than ODA to Nigeria ($2).

Almost all the debt of $34billion comes from penalty and interest amounted during 1980's and early 1990's when military regime did not repay the debt. At present Nigeria is repaying $1.7billion annually, which is 3 times larger than budget for education sector, and 9 times larger than budget for health sector.

We would like to fulfill our duty, but it is not sustainable. If there is no debt cancellation, UN's Millennium Development Goals including to halve poverty by year 2015 would not be achieved.

After 1998, Nigeria implemented democratic election twice. President Obasanjo set the economic reform and figthting against corruption on the centre of the policy. Until now, we arrested criminals of the notorious internet fraud. Some powerful politician and governmental officials were dismissed because of the corruption. The president is trying to establish the fiscal responsibility law.

The result of the austerity budget has produced fruit. In 2004, budget deficit was equivalent to about 2% of GDP. This shows that Nigerian budget is sounder than budget in Japan , Germany , France , UK and USA . Excess revenue coming from higher oil price is saved as reserve and will be used for education and health sector and investment to infrastructure, or will be used in future when oil price would be collapsed.

Currently our economic reform is not popular among the vested interests. Democracy and our effort to eradicate corruption might disappear without assistance from creditor countries. To achieve democracy and the reform, I would like to ask Japanese government to appreciate our effort and implement debt cancellation.