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by ftoo 3082 days ago
Nigeria loses tens of billions of dollars a year to corruption, especially in their oil industry, especially among politicians. If I was Nigerian, I would find this sort of charity to be very embarrassing.
5 comments

Hey there! I'm a citizen in a country where the current minister of finance was caught with a briefcase of 100.000 DM illegal "donations" from an arms manufacturer to the ruling party. The then-chancellor of 16 years took the fall to protect black party accounts, but nobody spent time in jail. That same party produces nepotism scandals in their home state but nobody cares because nepotism is an open secret through all state institutions. Every citizen knows this dt a continuing functioning press.

What is a German like me to do?

100,000 DM is quite small change no? All countries will have corruption, the difference is the scale of it and in third world countries, the amounts are much much higher (look at Wen Jiabao's family in China or Mahatir in Malaysia)
Isn't that worse? People in the highest echelon of power in Germany are corruptible by a mere 50.000€? I could understand millions, but our Democracy being threatened by chump change is ridiculous.
Talk to your friends, vote differently. Or bust your balls and go into politics. Fix it yourself.

You can blame the system only for so long if you want change.

"Talk is cheap. Show me the code"

Nigeria has a $2,000 GDP per capita. Embarrassment over assistance on polio eradication is not a luxury they have. Any help there is fortunately going to be largely welcomed by Nigeria.
In PPP terms it's over 5,000$. Still poor, but not as bad as you might think.
And? OK, that's very terrible indeed, but should it prevent working towards eradicating polio by whatever means necessary?

Meanwhile, America isn't a shining example, we just passed a tax cut for the rich at a huge cost to the health of the poor. And the government is seriously considering whether to take away health coverage for poor kids despite the cbo saying it would actually cost more money to do so.

If you were Nigerian you'd probably feel anger (or apathy) at the corruption that led you here.
> If I was Nigerian, I would find this sort of charity to be very embarrassing

Fortunately, there are those willing to trade feeling embarrassed for making progesss towards eradicating polio.

If I were Nigerian, I think I would be both profoundly embarrassed by the need for this charity and extremely enthusiastic about taking it.