The Catholic pontiff, Pope Francis has noted that European countries are exploiting Nigeria and other African nations, calling on Europe to invest in ways that benefit the continent more, including sharing mineral resources more equitably.

Speaking with Reuters in a wide-ranging interview, the Holy Father said, “We must invest in Africa, but invest in an orderly way and create employment, not go there to exploit it.”

Explaining how European countries are exploiting Africa, he said, “When a country grants independence to an African country it is from the ground up – but the subsoil is not independent. And then people (outside Africa) complain about hungry Africans coming here. There are injustices there!”

Touching on the reasons for hunger in Africa, the Pope said that, “In our collective unconscious there is something inside us that says Africa must be exploited.”

The pope said Europe needed to focus on education and investment in Africa if it wanted to stem the flow of migrants, which is also an increasingly divisive issue in Italy, where the new governing coalition is taking a hard line.

“And there’s a problem,” he disclosed, adding that, “We send people back to those who have sent them here. They end up in the jails of traffickers”.

However, Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, SAN, has indicted Western countries as being partakers of treasury looting in Africa.

He added that there had been a massive and accelerated transfer of the looted wealth from the developing world into developed economies.

Falana said this in a paper titled Human Rights Issues Surrounding The Non-Return Of Assets To Countries Of Origin and delivered during the weekend at the Second Forum of the Anti-Corruption Situation Room, organised by the Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA).
He said: “African governments and anti-corruption bodies should stop labeling Africa as a continent of corrupt people. London is the centre of global corruption. The banks of western countries receive and keep stolen wealth from Africa and other developing countries.

“Western governments conveniently hid behind the free movement of capital ideology to fold their arms and turn the other way for many years after the end of the Cold War. This laissez-faire attitude on the part Western leaders encouraged corrupt leaders from Africa to use stolen wealth from their various countries to establish individual presence in their economies; buying shares in major corporations, mansions and other landed properties, yachts, planes, you name it.

“Mr. David Cameron whose family name was listed in the Panama papers had the temerity to label Nigeria as a fantastically corrupt country. The Abacha loot of about $5 billion has been traced to banks in Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States and other western countries. Apart from Switzerland which has reluctantly returned part of the loot no other recipient country has recovered and repatriated a dime to Nigeria.

“Since the Joseph Kabila regime has failed to request for the repatriation of the over $10 billion kept in Zurich banks by the late Mobutu Sese Seko, the Swiss government is planning to return the looted wealth to the family of the former dictator and not to the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.


“Throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, money leaving Africa into Europe and other parts of the world took an upward trajectory, leaving essential services to rot and decay. What then followed was a serious economic crisis across Africa, which witnessed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) setting up offices inside the various ministries of finance in state after state on the continent, as it tried to help implement a harsh austerity programme to “re-adjust” the various economies.

“Nigeria has lost billions to illicit financial outflow resulting from corruption and embezzlement of funds by public officials. Nigeria’s history as a “fantastically corrupt” country is apparent upon an appraisal of the activities of its past leaders and public officials especially as it relates to conversion of government fund.

“Meanwhile, scores of African “migrants” were finding their ways into Europe, looking for employment and a better life. This alarmed Western governments whose citizens began to make their feelings known by voting in right wing governments promising to put a stop to immigration from so-called “Third World” countries.”

“The idea of untrammelled, free movement of capital economic orthodoxy has long been dead and buried. Western Governments, especially the USA, now freely impose sanctions against countries, for instance, Iran and Russia, even against specific individuals and companies in those countries and elsewhere in the world. Why then have corrupt political leaders in Africa and their stolen wealth not attracted the same level of vigour and scrutiny?

“It is simply that corrupt money emanating from Africa and elsewhere had long been thought of as a ‘victimless’ crime. There is, after all, no one visibly hurt, no building being blown up, no planes flying into high rise buildings or anything of that nature. It was seen as just another typical “Third World” malaise. Well, not any more. There is a nexus between stolen wealth and human rights.

Source: http://dailypost.ng/2018/06/21/pope-francis-reveals-europe-exploiting-nigeria-african-countries/amp/

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