Anthony L. Hall is a descendant of the Turks & Caicos Islands, international lawyer and political consultant - headquartered in Washington DC - who publishes his own Internet Weblog at www.theipinionsjournal.com offering commentaries on current events from a Caribbean perspective

However, when I read about this latest reason to give up on Haiti (as reported here on Tuesday), I was reminded of the quizzical idea businessman Mo Ibrahim came up with recently to combat pandemic corruption on the African continent.

Alas, Ibrahim seems to think African leaders are so congenitally corrupt that the only way “to remove corruption and improve governance” in Africa is, in fact, to bribe them.

This has to be the perverse reasoning that inspired him to fund a prize to present to the African leader who is deemed to be the least corrupt. And, to prove that he intends to vest this igNoble Prize with (at least financial) value that surpasses that of the Nobel prize (at $1.4 million), Ibrahim has provided for a cash gift of $5 million over 10 years, when the winner leaves office, plus $200,000 a year for life to be awarded with his “Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership”.

However, to adorn his prize with a patina of integrity, he has decreed that only a leader who "democratically transfers power to his successor" will be eligible to receive this golden parachute. But even this seems a quixotic qualifier - given that it seems a long-established fringe benefit for African leaders to steal more than $5 million each year of their presidency....

Now, before you start scoffing at the patently egocentric and inherently fatuous nature of Ibrahim's igNoble Prize, you should know that Harvard University has signed on to evaluate the candidates and select the annual winner. Moreover, notwithstanding my cynicism, former South African President Nelson Mandela, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan are among the notable statesmen who have endorsed this prize.

Nonetheless, I cannot help thinking that launching this prize is rather like promising a child a cookie to induce it to behave. And it’s more than a little disappointing that those who have complained most about the paternalistic and patronising treatment of Africans are now the ones participating in this paternalistic and patronising exercise, no matter how well-intentioned.

Meanwhile, given the pathology of poverty and corruption in Africa and the perennial state of affairs in Haiti, I cannot help wondering if Haiti’s location in the Caribbean is not a geographical accident of nature….

NOTE: Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo will probably be the first leader eligible to receive this prize when he’s "forced" to democratically transfer power to his successor after national elections next April. Because he’s arguably the second least corrupt leader in Africa, after South African President Thabo Mbeki (who will not be eligible until 2009).

Never mind that Obasanjo’s political opponents claim reasonable suspicion that he may have dipped his hand in the cookie jar a few times during his tenure to take his share of the $380 billion that, according to a BBC report, has been stolen or wasted by Nigerian leaders over the past 25 years.