Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Finance Minister of Nigeria.

This is a pivotal year for Africa; Britain has set up a Commission for Africa; the Make Poverty History coalition is campaigning furiously for the poor in my continent and around the world; more far-reaching debt cancellation is once again on the table as the Group of Eight rich industrialized countries meet in London this weekend. Given that one in five Africans is Nigerian, it would be a travesty if Nigeria is left out in the cold.

Nigeria desperately needs debt cancellation, a new start. But we are hobbled by misperceptions, understandable given past decades of misrule and instability. People think that because Nigeria has oil, she is a rich country; and that debt cancellation would be wasted on her because the money would simply disappear into a black hole of corruption. I want to convince you otherwise.

Nigeria is invariably described as “oil-rich”. Yes, Nigeria has oil but she is not rich. The money earned is spread across a population of nearly 130 million people; our revenues are equivalent to around 50 cents a day for each Nigerian. To put that in perspective, this is roughly equivalent to Cameroon which is defined as heavily indebted and deserving of debt cancellation.

The fact is that Nigeria is very poor. Some 93 million Nigerians live on less than $1 a day – that's more people than in the 12 countries already granted debt relief under the HIPC initiative because they were so poor. Nigeria 's income per head is $300 compared with an average of $450 in Low Income Countries; Nigeria 's life expectancy at birth is 47 years compared with 58. Around the world, 10 million children around the world die before the age of five; of these, one million are Nigerian, a fact that we hope creditors will take into account.

Yet Nigeria gets the least aid of any sub-Saharan country at around $2 per capita compared with the $28 average in sub-Saharan Africa . In fact, because of large debt service bills, a net $12 per head goes out to developing countries. Nigeria owes some $34 billion, much of it in penalties and compound interest imposed on debts that were not paid by the military dictatorships of the 1980s and early 1990s. We are currently making annual debt repayments of more than $1.7 billion a year, three times our education budget and nine times our health budget.

We have every intention of continuing to fulfill our obligations to our creditors but I can tell you that this debt burden is unsustainable. There is no chance that Nigeria can meet the Millennium Development Goals without debt cancellation.

I know that the simple fact of being poor will not be enough to make our case; Nigeria has to convince the world that she is capable of using the resources released by debt cancellation wisely and productively. To that end, we have already put tracking of poverty reduction expenditure into the budget.

I will not pretend that Nigeria is an easy country to manage. It is almost the size of Western Europe , a huge aggregation of 36 fiercely independent-minded states with 130 million people speaking 374 different languages. But I can tell you that we are working very hard to put Nigeria onto a solid footing for the future.

Nigeria has successfully conducted two democratic elections since 1998 and President Obasanjo has put economic reform and battling corruption and vested interests at the heart of his programme. Internet scam criminals have been arrested and jailed and their funds confiscated; senior political figures and government officials have been dismissed and will face prosecution if current investigations establish evidence of corruption. Across government, we have cleaned up our act, embedding accountability and transparency. A highly professional Debt Management Office was put in place to reopen a dialogue with creditors and ensure that debt repayments are smoothly made. The President is pushing through “fiscal responsibility” legislation to entrench budget discipline.

We have subjected ourselves to an intensely disciplined economic reform programme and the results are impressive. In 2004, our budget deficit, at a $25 a barrel oil price, was around 2 per cent of GDP, much lower than deficits in Germany , France , Britain and the United States . Taking into account additional oil revenues (because of higher prices), we actually ran a surplus but these extra revenues have been put aside, earmarked partly for investing in education, health and infrastructure, and partly saved for the day when the oil price and therefore our revenues drop.

Changes to our governance have not been universally popular with vested interests and there is a real fear that, without the support of international creditors, disillusionment and resistance will overwhelm the Government's dedication to democracy, to rooting out corruption and to reform. We desperately need to invest more in public services for our people. We are asking for debt cancellation to help us succeed. We are asking for credit where credit is due.