By: Oyez Olatunde Rex
Tuesday 20th June 2023, newly inaugurated Nigerian president Bola Ahmed Tinubu arrived in Paris, to join other world leaders participating in the Global Financing Pact Summit.
President Tinubu’s attendance at this summit is significant, being his first international trip as a sworn Nigerian president; and being president, at a period in which the global community believe Nigeria, a country bedevilled, by several debilitating conditions of economic woes, insecurities and ineffectual leadership IDC in a make or mar; several leaders present at the summit in Paris, would probably know in their hearts, what the Nigerian president ought to be Canvassing, as he addresses the Summit audience.
According to a United Nations release, the Secretary-General of the United Nations will be present at the Global Financing Pact Summit “to advocate for a reform of the international financial system, which is not currently equipped to tackle present-day challenges.”
António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations in the build up to this summit was quoted to have said: “the global financial system, which manages around 300 trillion dollars in financial assets, is simply not fit for purpose.” The UN scribe has most probably said this from the background of a Global Financing System, that has continued to widen the inequalities between countries; perpetually consigning poor, mostly African countries into economic servitude of other ivy league countries.
Isn’t it clear, even to the most unscrupulous players in the Global Financing System, that developing countries such as Nigeria has a litany of woes, compounded largely because of an unfair global financial system that is “short-term, crisis-prone, and that further exacerbates inequalities”?
Nigeria has in the past few decades, accessed several funds from the Global Financing System, which are looted by corrupt leaders. Such funds find their ways back to the economies from which they come, while the Nigerian economy groans under the debt servicing burden that seems interminable.
It is the Nigerian people that bears the burden. The worsening hopelessness of the impoverished Nigerians has manifested in malaise such as brain drain; terrorism and insecurities; financial scams and a whole lot more.
If the aim of the new Global Financing Pact Summit is to concurrently tackle the challenges of climate change, biodiversity protection, and the fight against inequality in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); if also, the purpose of the Summit in Paris is to streamline various agendas (climate, development, debt) and propose new solutions to these challenges; a developing country such as Nigeria in attendance must be definitive in her canvassal of conscious efforts from both ends of the inequalities to effect a change.
The debt inequalities on African countries make meaningful development unrealistic for them. Nigerian public utilities and infrastructures remain in a dismal state just as looted needed resources are domiciled in creditor economies.
Nigerian president Tinubu must champion the call for repatriation of stolen African funds as the only way to cut down the debt burden on African countries.
This summit co-organized by France and India, may come and go with Africans only in attendance as fillers or nominal participants if Nigeria does not take its place now as the spear head of African liberation.
Nigerian President Tinubu is fresh in the saddle; and many wait in expectation of what manner of mind exists in him; what direction of leadership he has to offer the giant of Africa that has been on its belly for decades.
He may either stun the rest of the world to act to our advantage; or bring forward the lame foot of another ineffectual leadership, the plague of African underdevelopment.
Being a 5 minute contribution to the forum of New Professionals Movement For African Emancipation
Oyez Olatunde Rex is Editor of National Moonlight and Publisher of Rextun City Updates.
