Hussaini Abdu: “The global economic crisis is the excuse for failing aid commitments”

Hussaini Abdu is the Country Director of ActionAid Nigeria, a position that he has held since May 2009. He is responsible for overseeing the organizations campaign’s on fighting poverty, the right to health, women’s rights, education, good governance, and human security in conflict and emergencies.
He is a development activist and previously served as the Africa Regional Governance       Co-ordinator of ActionAid International, where he co-ordinated, managed and built governance, programming and policy advocacy in 23 African countries. He has played a leading role in ActionAid’s engagement with various international organisations and multilateral institutions.

“The nature of the society is unequal and unjust”

For him, poverty “is an extreme state of people’s vulnerability, where they don’t have acces to basic things, food, healthcare or education. But that is the nature of the society, unequal and unjust”. Nowadays, for Abdu, the world needs to begin to be supportive. The countries have to take a common position and make a network of solidarity. Also “the poorest countries should come together and link them with the Northern countries. Because one individual country can’t do anything”.
Over the world, the poverty is increasing, more than one billion people go to bed hungry. The case is extreme in Africa, Latinoamerica and Asia. It doesn’t happen in Europe or America, because “every society has resources, but they are distributed unequally”. The most evolved Soouth countries during last years have been China and India. But in Africa’s case “poverty is increasing in a very alarming manner”, said Abdu.
At present, a lot of countries are saying  they can’t reach the goals that were expected, as we are in crisis. But how the Country Director says, “the global economic crisis is becoming the biggest excuse, and now the Governments of  Europe are playing the blame game with economic crisis. Anytime there is crisis, governments use it as excuse, even in Africa”.
 The country director of ActionAid Nigeria consider that the most important goals for them are “figh to eradicate poverty, because everybody has right to health, and now a lot children are dying in Nigeria for Malaria”. Another goal that they are trying to reach is to “promote the participation of women in politics, because women need space in politics”. Also, ActionAid is promoting peace in some parts of the country, because they want to stop the violence in Nigeria. And now some religious and ethnic conflicts are taking place in the country.

“The goals the EU wants to reach are minimum goals”

Europe has the better system to help the South countries, but America is the most influential country in the world. They are in the position to change drastical situations, the main problem is they never have taken it in a serious way. “American foreign policies have strategic interest, as happens in Israel”. They spend all the money on wars instead of using it on aid for the Third World countries
The goals that EU wants to reach with the programme Millenium Development Goals, are minimum. Because when 2015 arrive, they are not going to eradicate all the poverty, it probably will be the same as now. So “the countries should look beyond 2015 to improve these goals”, suggested Hussaini Abdu.