"I would be poor if things were like Zimbabwe" says Nigeria's richest businessman
Listening to BBC World News this morning I heard a man described as Nigeria's richest business man give a `rare' interview. In haste I must write down why I find a single phrase, uttered by this man, so shattering. No time to check the spelling: Aleko Dangote was explaining his support for President Obasanjo's chosen PDP successor in this week's forthcoming elections. Tackled on the corruption, endemic in his country, Dangote said that no country was free of corruption (at national level) but that this should not be allowed to go too far because "I would be poor if things were like Zimbabwe".
Wow! I remember so well the jubilation of Nathan Shamuyarira, once an admired fellow Zimbabwean media man when the Nigerians paid his ZANU (PF) some seven millions (real money in Zimbabwe way back in 1980) to buy out South Africa's Argus Africa News which had governed newspapers in former Rhodesia. This enabled the ruling party, to set up the Mass Media Trust. It became one of so many institutions in `liberated' Zimbabwe which ultimately betrayed its high-sounding, founding principles. The MMT aimed to `act as a "buffer" between government and the only national newspaper chain'. (see Richard Saunders booklet Zimbabwe's Growth towards Democracy 1980 - 2000 accompanying Edwina Spicer's film "Never the same again"). Thank God Nathan failed to get me, a friend of nationalists and Willy Musarurwa, his former best friend, appointed to the founding Board of Trustees - now a despicable travesty of a protecter of press freedom in independent Zimbabwe.
I wonder if the Nigerian government could possible understand the irony of the situation that Nathan and his cronies have connived at for 27 years in bringing about today's destroyed Zimbabwe?
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
