It is impossible to fight graft when its origins are in the centralization of a big oil income

Sir you write in “Nigerian graft”, August 12, that “the most important battle at home looks likely to be lost” and yes, at current oil prices, the battle was lost before it even began. Any country where the oil revenues are centralized in the hands of government and where they come to signify more than for instance 5 percent of GDP and thereby make the government wealthy, independently of its citizens, will be swamped by graft, in whatever shades or colours it comes, whether open, hidden, informal or de-facto, whether in pseudo-democracies or real autocracies, whether in Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia or Venezuela.

What an opportunity was missed in Iraq when someone decided not to implement an oil revenue sharing plan for its citizens! That way Iraq was condemned to a non functioning democracy and to living in graft.

You should not give debt relief to “odious” debt.

Sir Alan Beattie in “Vultures unlikely allies in anti-graft cause” July 18 quotes Stephen Rand of the Jubilee Debt Campaign saying “Debt relief should never be used as a weapon of economic coercion by creditors” as implying that debt relief should be awarded even when governments are still corrupt.

What is this? As a citizen of a country with a government that I consider quite corrupt, I do not like anyone giving it loans, debt relief or anything whatsoever. Frankly, before corruption is ended most of any debt relief given would just end up allowing these countries and governments addicted to debt, to hit the bars again.

If the concept of odious debt is applicable in the sense that some debts should not have to be repaid if contracted in an illegitimate way, castigating the creditor, then the same concept should clearly also apply to the granting of any debt relief, punishing the debtor.