As the World Economic Forum gathers in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland 22 - 25 January 2014. It is pertinent to know what policies have been put in place by the G8 as it affects Nigeria to enhance and or ensure transparency, sustainable growth and development on the backdrop of the speech made by David Cameron on the same issue last year at the same venue. Below excerpts of the speech made by Rt Hon David Cameron MP the British Prime Minister in January 2013 “I want this G8 to lead a big push for transparency across the developing world, and to illustrate why let me give you one example. A few years back a transparency initiative exposed a huge hole in Nigeria’s finances, an eight hundred million dollar discrepancy between what companies were paying and what the government was receiving for oil - a massive, massive gap. The discovery of this is leading to new regulation of Nigeria’s oil sector so the richness of the earth can actually help to enrich the people of that country. And the potential is staggering. Last year Nigeria oil exports were worth almost a hundred billion dollars. That is more than the total net aid to the whole of sub Saharan Africa. So put simply: unleashing the natural resources in these countries dwarfs anything aid can achieve, and transparency is absolutely critical to that end. So we’re going to push for more transparency on who owns companies; on who’s buying up land and for what purpose; on how governments spend their money; on how gas, oil and mining companies operate; and on who is hiding stolen assets and how we recover and return them. Like everything else in this G8, the ambitions are big and I make no apology for that.” https://gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-minister-david-camerons-speech-to-the-world-economic-forum-in-davosWe hope it will not be the same old rhetoric like the previous year with little or no action to help deal with the beast in our country, nation and continent. This also serves as an eye opener to those who question when we talk about the West and its action or inaction when it comes to supporting or assisting the fight against corruption in our Nation.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Jan 2014 10:55:45 +0000
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