Reflections, Reflections

From the Telegraph - By David Blair in Abuja

The scale of the task facing Tony Blair in his drive to help Africa was laid bare yesterday when it emerged that Nigeria's past rulers stole or misused £220 billion.


That is as much as all the western aid given to Africa in almost four decades. The looting of Africa's most populous country amounted to a sum equivalent to 300 years of British aid for the continent.

Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, has spoken of a new Marshall Plan for Africa. But Nigeria's rulers have already pocketed the equivalent of six Marshall Plans. After that mass theft, two thirds of the country's 130 million people - one in seven of the total African population - live in abject poverty, a third is illiterate and 40 per cent have no safe water supply.
[...]
Former leader Gen Sani Abacha stole between £1bn and £3bn.

Although dictators and rulers who do this stuff deserve to be hanged, there is no way such vasts amounts of money can be "stollen" without full knowledge and complicity from donor agencies/govts/banks. The system is all corrupt.

Why can't humans manage to be something other than such pests?
.