Poverty alleviation: Not in the IMF and World Bank DNA, By Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf

…IMF and WB loans have created hellish debts, reduced working peoples’ consumption, promoted debt slavery, deepen underdevelopment, and aggravated poverty in UDCs. They are institutions meant to promote and exacerbate hellish debts, reduce working peoples’ consumption, promote debt slavery, deepen underdevelopment, and worsen poverty in underdeveloped countries. IMF and WB, therefore, are continuing, “non-violently”, with their owners’ traditions of looting and plundering UDCs.  

I understand the irony when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) write, talk and publish that they are interested in poverty alleviation in underdeveloped countries (UDCs), including Nigeria. In reality, they are merely marketing their product – loans – and making fantastic profits from them.  

But when African governments join in this propaganda, they are disgracing themselves, belittling the Black race, and making us a laughing stock in the world. 

IMF claims that its “main objective” is to work with UDCs “to promote deep and lasting poverty reduction”. The WB, on the other hand, states that its mission is to “end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity on a liveable planet.” These are what the Hausa people call “dogon turaci” – deceptive, bogus, and baseless grammar. 

First, IMF, as much as possible, avoids any definition of poverty. So, it regularly quotes WB definitions of poverty in its publications, which is, pronounced and intolerable deprivation in human well-being, including psychological and social deprivation. Extreme poverty, to them, means the, “fraction of the population living with less than $2.15.” 

Definitely, income is important but, that in itself, is not enough to define and determine poverty. For, while $2.15 in the US and Britain will not buy a snack and a bottled water to wash it down, the amount will feed a family of four for two days in parts of Nigeria.  

IMF and WB definitions, besides, greatly ignore our value systems. The Yoruba, for instance, see the poor as those earning a living through unskilled work, like gathering and selling firewood; while the Igbo see the poor as one who owns no land.  

Poverty, to most Nigerians, is anything that belittles our individuality, collectivity, material wellbeing, spiritual development, and humanity. This implies anything that denies our development, devalues our humanity, degrades our personality, makes us voiceless, subjects us to physical, psychological and structural violence, and reduces us to virtually nothing in the state and the economy, as society makes us extremely poverty-stricken. IMF and WB, therefore, cannot give us what is not in their dictionaries!

Secondly, IMF and WB are Siamese twins – owned by former major colonial powers, which dictate their policies, direct their activities, and employ their staff. Powers which decide “who stands to gain” and approves “who actually gains” from the activities of the two organisations. 

The owners of IMF and WB are the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Japan. All were former colonial powers, and the first three still have colonies. All committed the worst genocides in human history, and participated actively in, and benefited immensely from, slavery and slave trade. 

…IMF and WB are programmed to promote harmful indebtedness of UDCs, not to alleviate poverty. Their loans are extremely harmful and enslaving, as they dictate how the loans are to be spent. They usually insist that the loans must be used exclusively to hire consultants, and purchase materials from the creditors’ countries. Even these are to be transported using companies registered in the creditors’ nations.

They equally committed genocide; plundered and looted the agricultural and natural resources of non-European or non-Japanese societies; imposed unfair and unjust pricing on the various resources of UDCs; raped little girls and women; and pauperised people.

These owners of IMF and WB have forcefully changed governments through the instigation of military coups, social disturbances, economic sabotages, civil wars, and assassination of leaders who dared to seek independent paths of economic and financial development in UDCs. They imposed economic blockade on Cuba, and sanctioned countries like Zimbabwe and Venezuela for daring to chart a national and people-oriented path of development. 

Where their political and economic diplomacy fail, their military wing – the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – is called in to invade the ‘stubborn’ countries, during which people are massively killed, cities bombed, economic and social activities disrupted, financial and gold reserves looted, and material and natural resources plundered. 

Countries like Iraq, Libya and Syria, which insisted on alternative international financing, are mere contemporary victims of this insidious debauchery. Before these more recent victims was Togo, whose founding President, Sylvanus Olympio, was summarily executed in a French-instigated coup for contemplating to establish a Central Bank for Togo.

Just as the tortoise is inseparable from its shell, so are IMF and WB inseparable from their owners. They all have the same mission, sing the same songs, dance the same dance, chart the same path, and chase the same goal. Why, then, should they reduce poverty, when our asara (or loss) is their gain, our poverty is their wealth, and our underdevelopment is their development? 

Thirdly, IMF and WB are programmed to promote harmful indebtedness of UDCs, not to alleviate poverty. Their loans are extremely harmful and enslaving, as they dictate how the loans are to be spent. They usually insist that the loans must be used exclusively to hire consultants, and purchase materials from the creditors’ countries. Even these are to be transported using companies registered in the creditors’ nations.  

They equally lend at high interest rates, unlike the  low interest rates that they usually propagate. A study by the Jubilee Debt Campaign organisation revealed that by the time most loans are paid, these lenders, “make up to 250% profit from the original loan.” It also disclosed that, “From 1970-2022, the global south (UDCs) governments paid a staggering $2.5 trillion in interest payments to creditors, making profits for lenders.”

The payment of the high interest rates has led to serious debt crises. Irredeemable debts whose principals cannot be paid, and which keep compelling UDCs to increasingly seek for newer loans from the IMF and WB. Hellish debts, which the present and future generations will keep servicing and paying, with greater proportions of their gross domestic products (GDPs), leaving virtually nothing for social services, poverty reduction, and societal development. 

One major IMF and WB conditionality is cuts in government spending on education, food, healthcare, utility services, as well as employment, wages and pension, supposedly to reduce budget deficits. In reality, these cuts are self-consciously and directly aimed at eliminating expenditures that subsidise the working and vulnerable people, alleviate poverty and promote development. 

Fourthly, when the loans are issued, the UDCs are given other sets of conditionalities to implement. Conditionalities which breed, nourish, grow, stabilise, and develop poverty.  

One major IMF and WB conditionality is cuts in government spending on education, food, healthcare, utility services, as well as employment, wages and pension, supposedly to reduce budget deficits. In reality, these cuts are self-consciously and directly aimed at eliminating expenditures that subsidise the working and vulnerable people, alleviate poverty and promote development. 

Equally, de-nationalisation, commercialisation and privatisation are deliberately aimed at neutralising the power of unions, and the solidarity within and between the working peoples’ movements, whose struggles are directed at income distribution, poverty alleviation and societal development. 

These anti-poor conditionalities are also meant to create capitalist allies in UDCs, solidify their relationships with Western capitalist forces, and smash any home-driven development. 

Devaluation of national currencies cheapen labour, undervalue export commodities, trigger inflation, degrade working peoples’ incomes, reduce their consumption, spark mass exodus to the West, and create more extreme poverty. 

Conclusively, IMF and WB loans have created hellish debts, reduced working peoples’ consumption, promoted debt slavery, deepen underdevelopment, and aggravated poverty in UDCs. They are institutions meant to promote and exacerbate hellish debts, reduce working peoples’ consumption, promote debt slavery, deepen underdevelopment, and worsen poverty in underdeveloped countries. IMF and WB, therefore, are continuing, “non-violently”, with their owners’ traditions of looting and plundering UDCs.  

IMF and WB have exerted and continue to exert the extreme economic and political control of Western powers over UDCs, to protect their interests therein, develop the West, and consolidate their global power and dominance.

Poverty alleviation is not in anyway in the nature, character, and DNA of IMF and WB. 

Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf worked as deputy director, Cabinet Affairs Office, The Presidency, and retired as General Manager (Administration), Nigerian Meteorological Agency, (NiMet). Email: aaramatuyusuf@yahoo.com