“What have you done for your village?” This popular question, asked of successful professionals, public servants, or political leaders, signifies corruption as inverted philanthropy. I am not the Anambra State Government or Nnewi North LGA. A failure of government to perform
its functions should not be passed off to individuals - especially those who are or have been public servants and not wealthy entrepreneurs. This misplaced expectation is partly why public officers steal public funds so that they can “do things” for their community that honest
income can’t afford. We Nigerians should not allow our paradigm perceptions to be distorted by the collapse of values that has happened in our country.
Nevertheless, as a matter of record and speaking for myself, in December 2005, while still a senior #UN official, decently paid but not exactly swimming in cash, I took $20,000 out of my personal savings and established the Isaac Moghalu Foundation in memory of my later father.
Since then IMoF has given scholarships (secondary and tertiary) to underprivileged youth in rural communities, supported schools in rural areas and urban slums in different parts of the country (Southeast and Abuja FCT) with educational infrastructure such as classroom blocks and
sanitary toilet facilities, and trained thousands of women including in Kano State and Niger State, including disabled women in skills for small-scale business ventures. The foundation also holds periodic leadership lectures. @MaryanneMoghalu is the Executive Director of IMoF
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THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020: FACTS, DISPUTES, AND DELUSIONS - A THREAD
1. It’s natural that President Trump and his supporters are shell-shocked by the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election which,according to the vote tallies confirmed (but not yet formally
2. certified) so far, as well as media projections and “calls” on the basis of the vote count, he has lost to Joseph R. Biden. It can’t be pleasant for any candidate to lose an election, let alone one with Trump’s well known temperament and personality. His favorite word for his
3. political opponents is “loser”. It must hurt and strain the limits of his relationship with facts, truths, and reality (always controversial even at the best of times) to be put into the same bucket by the outcome of an election which, in its 2016 edition, made him the winner.
Our governments invest political and financial capital in infrastructure. Physical infrastructure is important but, as a development strategy, the most important investment, the highest priority, is human development: quality of life - health, education and skills, potable water,
life expectancy (how long a country’s citizens live on average). The development trajectory should be: 1. Human Development (mainly social infrastructure); 2. Economic Growth (which includes GDP growth and can be helped by physical infrastructure); 3. Structural Transformation
(a shift away from single commodity or natural resource dependency to a diversified economy based on complex, value-added production and services). Failure to proceed in this order is why real development has eluded Nigeria and many other African countries.
Driving one day in Geneva years ago, I met a “traffic jam” at a popular junction. Everyone was maneuvering to get ahead. Chaos. Car horns were honking (unbelievable!). Was I in Lagos? The problem: both the traffic light and the traffic camera that catches violations broke down.
Once everyone could see that the mechanism that enforced order and accountability wasn’t functioning, human nature took over. An illuminating moment. The Swiss are an ordered society. But that’s because the law is enforced if you break it.If you break a traffic rule you won’t
see police anywhere except there is an accident. But the cameras capture your vehicle number and you promptly received notice of a fine in your mail box. If you fail to pay it, life can get, well, uncomfortable and complicated! That’s how and why functioning societies work.
Development has to be internally driven in any society. The only helpful external interventions are those that can help developing countries build their weak internal state capacity, & focus on understanding and tackling the root causes of underdevelopment. “Foreign aid”doesn’t.
With few exceptions, aid is the projection of “soft power”, a tool to promote the worldviews of donor countries. It’s a business model, as most of the contractors/consultants are from the same donor countries. It’s also partly a “guilt complex” of some in the west to “atone”
for the “sin” of colonialism. The first thing every poor country that becomes a rising power does is to STOP receiving foreign and establish its own aid program. Brazil, China, India. Whether the aid is from the west or the east, most of it goes to one continent - Africa.
We’re always quick to hail the feats of Diaspora Nigerians like @KayceeMaduYEG , the new AG of Canada’s Alberta region. But @NGRPresident , @NigeriaGov and state governments should do more to attract brilliant Nigerians abroad back home to build our country instead of others.
China, India, Israel have used a Diaspora engagement strategy to develop their country. They know human capital is the secret of development. But we “donate” ours to others by omission or commission when conditions at home are so difficult for people outside the political elite.
Every Nigerian is entitled to make an honest living, at home, or abroad if the opportunity does not exist at home. This is why our youth are leaving in droves for Canada and other countries. The developed countries are replete with whizkid Nigerian doctors but we have no real
I decided at 13 that I would have a global career @UN. My friends in secondary school laughed at me and called me a “dreamer”. I joined the UN at 29. In the 16 years in between, my vision never wavered. I passed up a chance to join a new bank in Lagos to go abroad for a master’s
in 1991. I knew where I was going, and applied the principle of delayed gratification- the long view. When I wrote to the US Embassy in Lagos that I’d been accepted @FletcherSchool and needed a visa, they were impressed. “Many of our best were trained there”, I was told.
“Just send your passport over”. I did. They returned it with a student visa stamped on it and a travel grant to cover my ticket plus some change. I left for the US without physically touching foot at the embassy, with a ticket they bought for me. 18 years later I returned home as