AS accusations and counter-accusations rage between President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar unabated, the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank has added Nigeria to its list of fragile nations that risk breaking up.
A report from Singapore, venue of this year�s Annual Meetings of the Breton Woods Institutions, yesterday, said the list now contains 14 new countries. There are now 26 countries on the list.
�The potential failure of countries including Nigeria and Angola, China’s biggest oil supplier this year, threatens to boost energy and commodities prices and slow economic growth,� the report said, citing the crisis in the Niger Delta.
Oil has fallen 19 per cent since reaching a record $78.40 on July 14. The group is also concerned that terrorism, drug production and weapon smuggling are spiraling. �Neglecting the fragile states, half of whom are living in extreme poverty, risks a worsening of their misery. That in turn will feed regional and global instability,� said Vinod Thomas, the group�s Director General.
The group, which reports to the World Bank�s board of executive directors rather than President Paul Wolfowitz, defines fragile states as low-income nations that score three or less on a scale of one to six measuring economic policies, social equality and public-sector management.
Angola, the world�s third-largest diamond producer in 2003, is emerging from civil war. Half a million people were killed in battles that began after the African nation gained independence from Portugal in 1975. In the Republic of Congo, which earns more than half its income from oil, about four million people died, mostly from disease and starvation during two civil wars between 1996 and 2002.
�There could be large global spillovers if they don�t do well,� Soniya Carvalho, lead author of Engaging with Fragile States: An IEG Review of World Bank Support to Low-Income Countries Under Stress, said in an interview, adding: “They could become hotbeds of terrorist activity because there are large ungoverned areas. The imperative to do something in fragile states is very great.�
Donors don�t want to spend money in such countries because their governments don�t have the capacity to use the funds effectively to reduce poverty, according to the report.
The World Bank, which has lent $4.1 billion to the fragile states in the past two years, and other donors need to boost investment in developing local expertise after conflicts, Carvalho said. In East Timor, donors may have pulled out too quickly, she said.
Civil unrest erupted in March in East Timor, which is about 500 kilometres north of Australia, after former Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri dismissed 600 soldiers for deserting. Clashes between security forces escalated into fighting between armed gangs, killing 37 people and forcing 155,000 people from their homes.
Timor’s share of oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea is about $10 billion, according to the Australian government. Half the population lacks safe drinking water. About 60 out of 1,000 infants die before their first birthday and life expectancy is just over 55, according to a United Nations report in March.
Other fragile states include the Central African Republic, which has diamond, uranium, gold and oil deposits, Comoros, Cote d�Ivoire, Eritrea , Guinea, Kosovo, the Solomon Islands, Togo, Vanuatu, West Bank and Gaza, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Laos, Liberia, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe.