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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, FEBRUARY 11, 1983
PAGE 6
been sorely neglected since independence. Nigeria, once Africa's largest
food exporter has become the continent's biggest importer of food.
And at
the moment there is precious little money to buy imported food, certainly
the more luxury-level processed food products to which Nigeria's growing
middle class had become accustomed.
For some additional background reports to this remarkable development we
have excerpts from a couple of articles from the British press. The first
article, entitled "Scapegoats for an Oil Glut," appeared in the February 4,
1983 FINANCIAL TIMES:
For the past three weeks, Nigeria seems to have been suffering
from a chronic case of schizophrenia. It has managed to expel
hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in conditions of consid
erable misery without apparently suffering from any great degree
of e ublic remorse. The expulsion of the Ghanalans and other West
Arr1cans who had flocked to Nigeria for jobs over the past 10
years of oi1 boom is regarded as the legitimate action of a
sovereign state, even though it was done without warning and
without consultation.•..
[Because of the drop-off in oil revenues] both foreign exchange
income and government revenues have been slashed, forcing drastic
cut-backs in imports and general economic activity and in turn
resulting in a sharp increase in urban unemployment.
Public
attention inevitably focused on the presence of migrant workers,
who had taken on thousands of lowly-paid jobs in construction,
textile factories, hotels and domestic service--jobs which in
normal circumstances most Nigerians would consider beneath their
dignity....
The British news maga�ine THE SPECTATOR, in its February 5 issue expanded
on this latest example of heartrending human tragedy to take an overview of
the skidding fortunes of West Africa as a whole:
The expulsion by Nigeria of nearly two million Ghanaians is far
more brutal and dangerous than the expulsion from Ghana, in 1969,
of 250,000 aliens, most of them to Nigeria. This week we have
read of Ghanaians given only a few days to be out of the country;
of newspapers and radio inciting anti-Ghanaian violence; of
statements by Ali Baba, the aptly-named Minister of the Interior,
that foreigners are responsible for the Nigerian crime wave••••
In today's West Africa•.•except for Senegal and the Ivory Coast
{both strongly under the influence of France) almost every
country has suffered from military government•••. And� we in
Euro
1
e, who hear so much of injustices in South "Tir1ca,know
Iitt e about
tliTs
aTsmar-siae of the continent. Few Journalists
can get permissTon to enter West-x1r1can countries, except for
Senegal and the Ivory Coast, which have little to hide••••
. Those businessmen and those very few journalists who have re
cently been to Nigeria speak of corruption quite unparalleled on
this earth, of having to bribe one's way onto planes with con
firmed seats, and into hotels with confirmed reservations. The
peasants are deserting the land; tribal and religious massacres