As US Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton vis­its Angola and Nige­ria, it’s worth another look at how oil does lit­tle to improve the lives of peo­ple there. Politi­cians take all of the money from oil rev­enues for them­selves. The money and the oil make the keep the politi­cians from hav­ing to court vot­ers to keep their jobs, as the two coun­tries are democ­ra­cies only in name.

Clin­ton is vis­it­ing the area in an effort to improve rela­tions with the two coun­tries. The US hopes to pur­chase more oil from Africa instead of rely­ing on the Mid­dle East.

From this Asso­ci­ated Press arti­cle that is hosted at Google News, Katharine Houreld does another piece on the curse of oil.

Nige­ria has a his­tory of coups and the last elec­tions here were marred by vot­ing irreg­u­lar­i­ties and police fir­ing tear gas at lines of vot­ers. In Angola’s last par­lia­men­tary elec­tion, money, alco­hol and even cars were dished out and many polling sta­tions didn’t open for lack of mate­ri­als, inter­na­tional observers found. Angola was in civil war from the 1970s to 2002. It has not held pres­i­den­tial elec­tions since the war ended.

Just last week, Global Wit­ness, a London-based watch­dog group, reported that sev­eral share­hold­ers of a pri­vate firm autho­rized by Angola’s state oil com­pany to bid for lucra­tive con­tracts have the same names as top cur­rent and for­mer Angolan offi­cials, includ­ing the state oil com­pany chair­man. The offi­cials have not responded to repeated requests from Global Wit­ness and reporters for a response.

“Despite the wide­spread per­cep­tion that gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion at all lev­els was endemic, there were no pub­lic inves­ti­ga­tions or pros­e­cu­tions of gov­ern­ment offi­cials dur­ing the year,” said a report this year by the U.S. State Department.

More than two-thirds of 12 mil­lion Angolans and more than four-fifths of 150 mil­lion Nige­ri­ans live on less than $2 a day. Many feel neglected by their leaders.

“They don’t care about the small man. Not at all,” said Sam Olufemi, sell­ing phone cards amid one of Lagos’ peren­nial traf­fic jams. “It’s pay-as-you-go politics.”

Angola has suf­fered unrest in Cabinda, the main oil-producing region. Human rights groups have accused the mil­i­tary of atroc­i­ties and claim gov­ern­ment offi­cials have embez­zled mil­lions of dol­lars in oil rev­enue. The gov­ern­ment has denied the charges.

Thou­sands have been killed over the years in Nigeria’s oil-rich Delta, where the mil­i­tary bat­tles crim­i­nal gangs by fir­ing into slums from heli­copter gun­ships and mil­i­tant groups bomb pipelines and kid­nap foreigners.

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