Cameron calls Nigeria, Afghanistan ‘fantastically corrupt’
British Prime Minister David Cameron has described Afghanistan and Nigeria as “fantastically corrupt” countries.
In a video released on Tuesday, Cameron was caught on camera making the remarks to the British Queen and some political figures while speaking about Thursday’s anti-corruption summit to be held in London with Afghanistan and Nigeria in attendance.
“We had a very successful Cabinet meeting this morning to talk about our anti-corruption summit. We’ve got the Nigerians, actually we’ve got the leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain,” he told the Queen.
“Nigeria and Afghanistan [are] possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world.”
This is while the leaders of both countries mentioned have already acknowledged that they have problems with corruption and eagerly expressed readiness to attend the summit.
Reacting to Cameron’s comments, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari accused the British premier of “looking at an old snapshot” of the country.
The Afghan embassy in London also called the prime minister’s comments “unfair”.
“President Ghani and his government since in office have taken major steps to fight corruption. Countering corruption is a top priority along security issues for the National Unity Government," a spokesman for the Afghan embassy said.
“We have made important progresses in fighting systematic capture in major national procurement contracts and are making progress on addressing institutional issues as well as issues related to impunity. Therefore calling Afghanistan in that way and taking bold decisions by NUG is unfair,” the spokesman added.
Transparency International, a global anti-corruption organization, published an annual corruption perceptions index, which ranks countries in order of how corrupt they are perceived to be.
In the most recent index, published in 2015, Afghanistan was ranked in 166th place, above only North Korea and Somalia while Nigeria was in 136th place.
In response to the British Premier’s comments, Transparency International said: “We should not forget that by providing a safe haven for corrupt assets, the UK and its Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies are a big part of the world’s corruption problem.”
It is not the first time a gaffe by Cameron has been caught on film. In 2014, he was filmed telling New York's mayor that the Queen had “purred down the line” after he had called her to say Scotland had rejected independence.
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