Interviews with Tutu Alicante

President Obiang assumed power in 1979. At that point, Equatorial Guinea was one of the poorest countries in Africa and in the world. Equatorial Guinea was coming from 11 disastrous years of lack of political space, poverty, because President Macías, his predecessor, had ensured that there was no economy in the country: There were no schools, no educational system; there were no hospitals, no health system. So we’re coming from a – disastrous years, 11 years.

For the first few years, with the help of the World Bank, IMF and mostly Spain, Equatorial Guinea economically began to recover. The economy back then was mostly based on, in addition to offering assistance, timber. Equatorial Guinea is – at least the continental side, is naturally endowed with a lot of timber wood. So for a few years, timber was a source of the economy. But in 1994, oil was discovered in Equatorial Guinea. And almost overnight, Equatorial Guinea went from being a very poor and isolated country to becoming the richest country in Africa, and at that point, 1995, 1996, 1997, top three, one of the three richest countries in the world.

In 1996, at the height of oil production in Equatorial Guinea, we were ranking second to Luxembourg. And that is, again, because we have a population of half a million people and we were producing between 450,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil every single day. Politically what that did was – well, with so much more money coming, without the institutions in place to guarantee transparency and accountability, without a congress that would hold government accountable, without civil society that would push for transparency and accountability, what that did immediately was to position the president where he could use all these resources to further ensconce, further entrench his power inside the country.

He bought off political opposition. He went outside the country, kidnapped people and brought them back to the country that he felt were a threat to his power. Regionally, he bought a lot of influence, so you have regional papers, Jeune Afrique and others, inside Africa who began to publish all this good information about this president. Despite the oil discovery, despite the wealth from the oil, the average person in Equatorial Guinea has not benefited from that oil boom. There has been some infrastructure – there are roads, there are better roads from the airport to the city.

There is a brand-new hospital that is top of the line in Central Africa. But nobody can afford to go to that hospital, because it wasn’t built with the average Equatorial Guinean in mind. And the roads, well, if there is a road from the airport to the city but you don’t provide public transportation and other ways for people to be able to make use of these roads, then it becomes just an elephant project, right. We know, for instance, Equatorial Guinea hosted the [2011] African [Union] summit. In preparation for hosting the African summit, they built a luxury resort, $850 million spent on building a luxury resort to host the African delegates and African diplomats and head of state that were coming. You go a kilometer away from this resort, called Sipopo, and the poverty is astounding, people living right next to a sewer system, open sewer; people living in rat-infested, mosquito-infested houses; people living without water, without electricity, 365 days a year.

So, yes, people can see the new buildings, the new roads, that exist, the new airport. That, however, has not changed the average person’s life. That has made possible that those – that 1 percent of the population that has the resources, because they are in the family of the government or because they do have a job with your companies, live better, can use these roads, but the average Equatorial Guinean has not.

Tutu Alicante is a human rights lawyer from the island of Annobon in Equatorial Guinea. In 1993, Mr. Alicante was in a Roman Catholic seminary, preparing for the priesthood. A group of citizens, among them one of Mr. Alicante’s cousins, organized a peaceful demonstration at the governor’s house calling for respect for human rights and measures to address widespread poverty. In response, government forces arrested and killed a number of the demonstrators and burned Mr. Alicante’s family home to the ground. He left Equatorial Guinea in 1994 to pursue his education abroad.

After obtaining a law degree from the University of Tennessee and a Masters in Law from Columbia University, he worked on legal defense programs for migrant farm workers and as a consultant for a branch of the Open Society Institute promoting legal accountability and transparency in extractive industries.

Tutu Alicante founded and serves as Executive Director of EG Justice, a nonprofit and nongovernmental organization that educates, empowers, and engages a new generation of democracy and human rights advocates at home and abroad. It undertakes grassroots campaigns to reform institutions inside Equatorial Guinea and
documents human rights violations, collecting oral and written testimonies inside the country and abroad to hold violators accountable. EG Justice publishes periodic reports and educates the public. EG Justice collaborates with international institutions to bring critical human rights issues to the attention of global policymakers, including the United Nations, the African Union, and other multilateral organizations. It undertakes and supports legal advocacy to hold human rights abusers accountable in local, regional, and international tribunals and works closely with community-based partners to empower them through the litigation process.

Follow Tutu Alicante on Twitter at @TutuAlicante and follow EG Justice on Twitter at @EGJustice