Porn for our times
Snippets of
information gathered from sources so varied and diverse and woven in a yarn of
a nightmare too bizarre for words that one reels with shock.
As the century
turned there came those whose sophistry opened the purse strings of funding for
projects that were to attend to pressing needs of people dying of a disease
that had defied cure but not the management of it.
Collection tins
were shaken in the streets of rich countries tugging at the heartstrings of a
public that could only spare little but augmented with international aid budgets
you had a pool of resource ready to be plundered by the savvy.
As our screens are
filled with famine porn, disease porn, malnutrition porn, disaster porn, war
porn and whatever pornography that engages the mind and excites altruistic
activists to demonstrate, protest and agitate for more action, the money
mountains piled up to be doled out to frontmen, spokespersons, activists and
espousers of causes we all seem to hold dear in lands afar.
Black holes of aid
Closer to the needy,
there are activists who are doing a lot with very little, their resources
stretched to the limit and still they are coping with the situation whilst they
are insulated from the real funding they need by middlemen elite who have
become professional panhandlers with access to international organisations and
influential persons.
With the urgency to
act at what has always been a crisis exploited by some who had assumed the role
of activist, spokesperson and head of some organisation – be it a non-governmental
organisation (NGO) or a community based organisation (CBO) with a cause that is
at best a guzzler of dollars for the leaders and a dispenser of cents to the
led, money has flooded into named projects and selected hands to do what has
generated much paperwork activity but no fulfilling result.
The rain is not
getting to the ground, that is why the crops have failed and yet more clouds
gather for a monsoon – that is the metaphor for the snippets of stories that
have accompanied aid activism for many projects to do with family planning,
alleviating poverty, addressing diseases as malaria, tuberculosis and most
especially HIV/AIDS.
Squandered on self
Suites at
conferences where the footmen invited can barely get a place that they
literally lie in slave ship formation on some benevolent floor, as the elite
select choice persons for sensual pleasure, living the life of oil sheiks to
hedonistic for polite phrasing, they have danced on the graves of the many who
suffered needlessly as funds were diverted to acquisitive ostentatious living
with unconscionable impunity – Woe betide the ones that remain in this activity
even as some are long dead.
The money made
available for these causes was unbelievably too much and as they shared the
largesse amongst themselves, fights broke out and with those fights some light
came into what they were up to but whatever is known is just the tip of the
iceberg of schemes hatched in minds so reprobate and rotten beyond redemption.
Sadly, as the love
of money is the root of all evil, the dissenters and whistle-blowers have run
the risk of loss as great as the loss of support, the loss of influence and
even the loss of life (assassinations portrayed as armed robbery murders), the corrupt
enterprise built on aid activism that appeals to wealthy donors cannot be
allowed to suffer the scrutiny necessary to ensure that funds allocated reach
the projects advocated.
Lavish lifestyle
Accountability in
the evil enterprise of the aid industrial complex peopled by career activists
is of the utmost urgency, auditors have to follow the money from the hand-out for
things to be done to the handoff of things completed.
It is contemptible
that aid is somewhat now intricately linked with lavish lifestyles because of
the lack of transparency and accountability; the altruistic activist is rare,
many have joined a cause for the money and the lifestyle than for the purpose
and the project.
As Imran Khan
observed about aid in this June 2013 interview
with the New Statesman, “the ruling elite use aid to finance their lavish
lifestyle.”
10 years before,
Senator Grassley reported, “Over the years, we've seen incidents in which federal funds
for HIV/AIDS have been squandered through overcharges for medicines and
laboratories, embezzlement of program funds to support lavish lifestyles, or even diversion of AIDS funds to finance
political campaigns.”
The great shame
This is not a
problem specific to Pakistan or the United States, it is pervasive and the
snippets could well involve Nigerians; a story that is in need of telling as
more aid and support flows into fences dressed as NGOs with activists jetting
around the globe from conference to conference, peddling influence and living
large with no care in the world for anyone but themselves.
The greatest
tragedy of this abuse of aids funds which might well be found in many countries and
it has had its run in Nigeria too is in these words by Senator Grassley, “It’s tragic
if people die because the funds they need to survive are being diverted,
misspent, or wasted.”
The fact is the
funds did come but they were diverted and people died – for this alone, there
must be accountability and justice, it is criminal that people have gotten away
with this and risen up the ranks as if this is insignificant and of no
consequence – it is a shame, a great shame.
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