Houston, Texas-based Halliburton Company, which until 2007 owned KBR (Kellogg, Brown, and Root) company, has been fined for bribing Nigerian oil officials. KBR wanted contracts in order to build a $6-billion gas liquefaction plant in the Niger Delta. This plant has been damaging to Nigeria’s economy in that it helps and supports major international oil companies to ship Nigerian crude oil out of the country for refining, which drops the profits that Africans could obtain for their valuable resource. KBR has yet to admit or deny this bribe. These alleged bribes occurred for an entire decade (1994-2004), during this time, KBR’s parent company, Halliburton was headed by Dick Cheney, who stepped down in 2000 to become vice president. Nigeria relies heavily on its oil and gas-related resources which account for 87 percent of its foreign exchanges. Companies like KBR and the Houston oil companies are slowing and hurting the Nigerian economy but are not helping in any way; they are being selfish. Neither KBR nor most of Houston oil companies have provided any charitable services to help revitalize Nigerians, who have endured the foreign extraction of their local resource wealth.
Future political plans include Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua to supervise and control corrupt illegitimate robbery of public funds, and monitor the performance of multinational oil companies.
This article relates back to what we have been learning in class through economic challenges, political power, and international interests. The Nigerian economy is mainly based upon oil, and with international powers taking away it's one valuable natural resource, it doesn't allow African's to be profiting as much as they should. Reforms to fix this issue depends on the President to monitor the international companies that Nigeria works with in order to support economic revitalization.
No comments:
Post a Comment