The World Bank and Us

By Ken Saro-Wiwa, Sunday Times (Lagos), 1989-1990, reprinted in Similia: Essays on Anomic Nigeria (Port Harcourt: Saros, 1991), by Ken Saro-Wiwa.

[Note: In this essay Ken uses World Bank and IMF interchangeably, much as they often are in casual speech. The reason for his blurring the two probably goes back to the history of structural adjustment programs in Nigeria. At the time of the Babangida coup in August, 1985, the government had been negotiating with the IMF for a SAP loan; his government continued the negotiations, but as part of its initial flush of popularity, promised Nigerians a national debate before entering into any agreement. The debate raged in the press, and even the government couldn't deny that the bulk of those who spoke up opposed the loan (see Yusufu Bala Usman, *Nigeria Against the IMF* [Kaduna: Vanguard, 1986] for a collection of essays by probably its most intrepid opponent); its support came largely from academic economists with tenure (see T.A. Oyejide, A. Soyode, and M.O. Kayode, *Nigeria and the IMF* [Ibadan: Heinemann, 1985]). (Of course even tenured faculty are now taking on second and third jobs to make ends meet, so perhaps they're paying for their choice.) So the government declined the IMF loan. Then a couple months later Babangida announced a home-grown SAP that looked quite similar to the IMF's plan in most respects. Having detected a spirit of sacrifice and hard work among the people during the course of the debate, they felt no reservations about taking their own version to the World Bank for a SAP loan from them (without further debate). Such maneuvering is how Babangida got his nickname, Maradona, after the Argentinean soccer star. Maradona apparently was (and I hear he has come out of retirement) a master of ball-control and spectacular dribbling. —Soren Ambrose]

Almost twenty years ago, touring the United States of America, I came to know several variations of my surname. In New York, I was called Sora-Wawo, in Los Angeles Sira-Wawa. But the limit was in Atlanta, in the presence of Mrs. Coretta King, where I was introduced as Saro-Wee-Wee. Uncomfortably close to the toilet, you might say.

I was minded, that day, to change my name to something more heavenly like Wiwa or Saros. I refrained from doing so. In the interest of history. Today, I'm used to these and other variations of my name.

Thus I was only half-surprised when an invitation arrived at my Surulere office the other day, addressed to, you guessed it, Ken Sarohiwa. And it came from the Indian High Commission.

It was an invitation to a party celebrating Indian National Day. I am not a party-going man. Invariably, I find myself, in the day, glued to my telephone or sitting in the front offices of the high and mighty in Nigeria pursuing you know what. At night, I'm in my study consulting dictionaries or the thesaurus and struggling endlessly with words in English or my native Khana. No one invites me to parties. Which is a blessing. So the half of my surprise was that the Indian High Commission had called me up. How on earth did they find out my address? I am supposed to be anonymous, in the name of all you love!

Since I have never been to a diplomat's party, and I do not mind a new experience, I took my courage in my hands and wended my way to Eleke Crescent on Victoria Island.

I suspected I would be lost at the part. I knew that my perpetual *adire* shirt would mark me out as a non-diplomat and that I did not have the polish to match a diplomat's shoes. I *was* lost. I held my soft drink (no alcohol was served) and the only diplomat I met almost sent me to my grave.

No, he did not deal me a blow. He was a high official of the World Bank. These sapped times are hungry times, and a hungry man is an angry man. I never have met any representative of the International Monetary Fund anywhere and this was an opportunity for me to send a message to the Fund through one of its representatives in Nigeria.

As it turned out, I had nothing new to tell the representative. He had been to all but two of the states of Nigeria, and most of it by road. He was aware of the distress caused by the Structural Adjustment Programme. The latest World Bank Report on the Africa Sub-region accepts as much. Forty years of the World Bank experiment in turning the economies of debtor-nations round has not resulted in success in a single country. Yet the Bank persists in its folly. Which makes you believe that their mission in debtor nations is not to heal but to rub salt into wounds. To collect debts and to send the nations into even greater debt so that the World Bank can remain in the nations forever.

The gentleman in question kept reminding me that the IMF would not have been in Nigeria if Nigeria had not gone on a borrowing spree. I know and have always known it. But the question which confronts us all is what to do in the circumstances. Must we see all our children die of kwashiorkor? Must we see all those who survive the ravages of disease and famine grow up as zombies because they have no books to read, cannot afford good education, decent housing, transportation and water? Perhaps the only thing they can look forward to is a befitting burial which we perversely still give the dead? All of which sends me right back to the present administration which continues to sing of the gains of SAP. It is all right for a government, any government, to put a policy in place and pursue its implementation with single-mindedness. Just to see if it works. However, any respectable government must also have a fall-back position.

I believe that all Nigerians, indeed, all black people, must work hard, think hard, practise thrift and show dedication to progress. But the question which Government and all of us must now tackle is the failure of World Bank remedies world-wide. A survey in Ghana recently showed that in spite of adherence to World Bank conditionalities, in spite of the fact that the Bank has enough statistics to show that the Ghanaian economy is improving, the fact stands that the average Ghanaian's earnings cannot feed him and his family, much less send his children to school or doctor them.

The representative of the World Bank in Ghana is reported to have said recently that the mismanagement of the past in Ghana was so immense that recovery under the IMF's guidelines will be almost impossible.

For Ghana, you may read Nigeria, Zambia, or wherever. Which, of course, means that the gains of SAP are likely to remain a chimera for all time.

The World Bank itself has now accepted that some of its programmes are faulty. It also accepts that it pays its employees incredible salaries and allowances. but it then places the blame on the various governments: the governments are autocratic, corrupt and have not allowed the full development of the creative energies of their peoples. Maybe. This may mean that the World Bank and its Euro-American mentors will stop forcing incompetent rulers and brutes upon third and enth world societies in the belief that such men will brutalize their peoples and compel them to accept the bitter pill which the World Bank means to force down the nations' throats.

But methinks the World Bank has to accept that its real instrument of torture is its insistence on growth, its economic theorizing at the expense of human welfare. In Nigeria, as elsewhere, its potent instrument is the exchange rate. The fixing of that rate is, as far as I can see it, a con; it is dubious and no one can convince me otherwise. And the sooner debtor-nations realized the political nature of the World Bank, the sooner they will be able to face the bogus economic theories of the Bank with an equivalent weapon—people's power. At no matter what cost.