By Chris Adetayo
Aid is one of the vehicles that nations use to drive their foreign policy and national interest objectives. Used properly, especially as part of public diplomacy, it can deliver so much.
In some countries, development aid is so valued that they are operated as a separate or distinct part of the foreign affairs office. Think of the US and USAID; UK and DFID; Japan and ODA etc etc.
Nigeria is not new to the use of aid as a foreign policy tool. During the struggle for independence of some African countries, Nigeria was in the thick of it. When there was an earthquake in the defunct USSR in 1988, a Nigeria that was on its knees found $1m (big money back then) to donate fornrhe recovery effort. Many examples abound.
So how does one view the gift of cars to Niger Republic? To start, I think it was an error by the FG to not have made this known publicly ab initio. That it took an official document relating to the aid to be leaked before the Govt came forward to admit it is all shades of wrong. There should be nothing secretive about such a transaction. Hiding it makes it feel worse than it should.
Giving the state of our economy, and the reality of so much pain in the land, is this a judicious use of public funds? Hard to say. The Govt only admitted the spending. It did not tell us what the national interest it was pursuing by making the donation. Was it critical? Or just another “gift to the cousins”?
However, it is not unusual for a country that is in belt-tightening mode to still give aid to others. For example, when the UK Govt under David Cameron put in place widespread cost cutting and austerity measures, one of 2 or 3 budget lines that was left unaffected was foreign development aid. There was internal protest about this (many MPs wanted the budget for foreign aid slashed) but he stuck to his guns.
Ultimately, the problem really comes down to transparency. In this transaction, there is none. That, to me, is where the FG failed the citizens of Nigeria.