Equatorial Guinea and the African paradox

The facts are these. Equatorial Guinea is one of the smallest countries in Africa. It is only 28,000 km big with an estimated 2016 population of 1,221,490.  Not enough to fill half of Yobe State, I think.

Equatorial Guinea is a former Spanish colony. Its exports were timber and cocoa. Life was harsh and brutal for the people. And then fortune smiled on the country. Mobil discovered crude oil there in 1995. Its fortunes suddenly changed. It is now the third-largest crude oil exporter in West and Central Africa. The petro-dollar flowed in in large quantities to fill the national treasury. Its GDP rose from almost nothing to a giddy $29.162 billion by this year’s estimate. Its estimated per capita is a whopping $21,442; the highest in Africa and the 43rd in the world. No mean achievements.

This small but wealthy country should be something of a paradise for its people on earth. It earns enough money from crude oil alone to take care of the social, education, health, developmental and other problems of its small population. Sadly, the facts tell a different story. Equatorial Guinea is living the paradox of a very rich but very poor nation; not unlike ours, the poverty capital of the world. More than half of its population live on less than one US dollar a day. In other words, amid plenty, there is grinding poverty. You have heard that before.

What went wrong? The affliction of the African Big Man. – kleptocracy. The affliction usually translates into the Big Man’s right to appropriate his country’s wealth for himself, his family and his political cronies. The late President Mobutu had a cynical take on this. He once told an interviewer that he became the paymaster of his country because he was not just the president of Zaire but the traditional African chief of his country and that in African tradition, everything belongs to the chief. Try to beat that.

The Equatorial Guinean strong man, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasago has made no such public claim so far but this week, we had some idea of why the people are among the truly wretched of the earth amid such blessings from hydrocarbon. Switzerland, once the keeper and the protector of stolen wealth from Africa and other countries, has turned 360 degrees against the looters who hid their money in its banks. It is no longer a haven for them. Instead, it is exposing them and returning the stolen wealth to the people.

In 2011, Equatorial Guinea found itself in the cross hairs of the Swiss authorities. And trouble came knocking at the doors of the first son of the Equatorial Guinean president, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue. He is the country’s first vice-president. The Swiss authorities began to seize his expensive and luxury cars and other property. Eleven rare, expensive and state of the art cars, some of which I am sure, like me, you have never heard of, were seized from him. Among them were, according to The New York Times, the following: two Bugatti Veyron, said to be “among the most powerful and expensive cars in the world;” a Mercedes Maybach; an Aston Martin, a Ferrari Enzo, a Ferrari GTO, a Rolls-Royce Phantom and a Maserati MC12.

More troubles came for the president and his son in 2016 and 2017 when the Swiss authorities launched investigations into corrupt practices involving the president himself. They seized more luxury vehicles and a yacht. And in 2017, a Paris court convicted the vice-president of embezzling and laundering more than $100 million. He appealed his conviction and may not go from his luxury homes to the harsh environment of prison yet. But if he loses his appeal, as I very much hope he would, he would have a taste of what his father’s political opponents face in the notorious prison named, with a hint of irony, Black Beach.

The Swiss authorities auctioned off the cars on September 30. A New York Times reporter, Iliana Magra, reported that “Mr Obiang led an opulent and charmed life for years, spending a good amount of his time in a 100-room mansion on Avenue Foch in Paris,” drinking rare and expensive wines. The auction fetched $27 million. The Swiss authorities intend to send the money back to the country in the form of donations to charity.

I picked interest in the story of this small but wealthy African country in which the rights of the people to their common wealth are abridged by the kleptocrats in power, not because I found anything particularly strange or unusual but because it  tells me something good about Nigerians that we tend to ignore. We have refused to allow the emergence of the African Big Man in our country. It has not stopped corruption, sure, but it could have been worse, much worse for the country and its people. I think this is no mean achievement for us.

Consider this: With four decades under his belt, President Obiang is the second longest ruling African dictator, second only to his neighbour in Cameroon, Paul Biya. Forbes estimated that he is worth a cool $600 million. But this would seem to be a gross under-estimation because US investigators looking into a failed back found that he had $700 million deposit in the bank. The story of Equatorial Guinea is illustrative of the curse of the African Big Man. It is also the story of an unfortunate country effectively pocketed by one family since independence from Spain in 1968.

Its first president was Francisco Macias Nguema, a brutal ruler known for his bizarre claim as a sorcerer. He was said to collect human skulls. He locked up political opponents and those who could, fled the country to safety in the Cameroon and other African countries. But on August 3, 1979, the baton changed hands within the family when Col Obang, his nephew toppled him and seized power. He arrested Nguema and executed him. Obiang has been in power since then. He has exceeded his late uncle in tyranny and brutality and the systematic stripping of the country of its wealth. Everything is in the family.

One of his sons, Teodorin, is the minister of agriculture with an official salary personal to him of five thousand pounds sterling. He too, as you would expect, lives in private paradise. He is rumoured to be favoured by his father to succeed him when death does him and power part. So, expect the baton to pass on to another in the family. There is only one private television station in the country. And it is owned by the president’s son, who owns the only private radio station as well. The first lady even owns a model primary school in Malabo for the children of the president’s men. But the children of the poor try to learn in shacks. Their school have no books. They learn by rote in the 21st century.

The US think tank, Freedom House, has a short list of the world’s worst regimes. Equatorial Guinea is in the good company here of North Korea, Burma and Somalia. It is ranked 135th in the world on human development index. The infant mortality rate is among the worst in the world with twenty per cent of its children dying before the age of five.

Obiang, like Mobutu is obviously a traditional African chief. The wealth of the country belongs to him and his family. I wonder if there is an African god looking on.