A month ago, Kemi Adeosun, the Minister of Finance, announced Nigeria would withdraw from 90 of the 310 "international organizations" we are presently part of. We apparently owe payments of one kind or another, payments we cannot afford, to a number of these organizations. Unsurprisingly, there is uncertainty as to how much we are owing; a "committee" said the arrears were $120 million, but the Ministry of Finance (and other ministries) believe we owe a lot more than that.
The Minister gave no indication as to which organizations we would be withdrawing from. Its been a month, and there is still no guidance .... not just as to which specific organizations, but also as to what particular types of organizations they consider to be superfluous.
The number "90" is very specific. Did they already identify the 90, or did they just randomly decided to fix our number of memberships at 220 and withdrawals at 90 just to have specific numbers to report?
If it is the former, they could at least give us some sense as to what sorts of organizations are on the list; it is a very significant thing the government is planning to do, and they did not mention any of this in their 2015 campaign, so it would be nice if they didn't act like we gave them a mandate to do such things secretly without telling anyone what they are doing.
On the other hand, if it is the latter, and they just randomly fixed the two numbers at 220 and 90 without actually first deciding on a criteria for withdrawals, then they may find that when they do develop a criteria, the organizations that meet or fail to meet the criteria will not fit neatly into the nice round numbers of 220 and 90.
Don't misunderstand me. I support the reduction in the number of international organizations Nigeria is a part of; I just want to know what it is they are doing.
If it was up to me, frankly, the magnitude of the reduction would be greater. However, I wouldn't make a move without first discussing it with the public. Or rather starting a public discourse on what Nigeria's strategic interests are, how the rest of the continent/planet impacts upon these interests, what would be the best path towards protecting our interests .... and then we would have to talk about whether or not any international organization that currently exists helps, hinders or is irrelevant to the protection of our citizens' interests.
Because to be honest, it really shouldn't be about the money. We shouldn't join or leave organizations based on whether we are owing, or whether we can afford to pay. Even if we can afford to pay to be in 220 organizations, we shouldn't be in any of them that is irrelevant or harmful to Nigeria, and if we cannot afford to pay to be in 310, but there is something about the 310 that is practically useful to Nigeria, then we should find the money somehow (perhaps by selling Governor Okorocha's Zuma statue to wealthy foreign collectors of curios and oddities).
I've got to be honest with you. I don't really think any of the international organizations do anything that is useful to Nigerian or African progress. The hype surrounding these organizations is that they step in to fund insufficient "aid" programmes for refugees of a politically-created disasters. What we need to be doing is dealing with the issues that make these politically-create disasters predictably incessant, and as to whether international organizations help, hinder or are irrelevant to that ... well, we can argue about that in another blog post.
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