FOUL!
Rwandan despot handed huge sums in foreign aid splurges £30m sponsoring his beloved Arsenal club
RWANDA has spent millions on a sponsorship deal with a Premier League football club despite receiving large sums in British aid.
The tiny African republic is paying £30 million to sponsor Arsenal, one of the world’s richest clubs.
The ‘obscene’ deal comes even though Rwanda and its Arsenal-supporting despotic leader Paul Kagame received £64 million this year from the British Government.
Last night there were calls for International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt to review aid to Rwanda. Tory MPs said it was ‘sickening’ that the regime could be so profligate when it happily accepted British taxpayer handouts.
Under the deal, Arsenal will promote the African country’s tourist industry on players’ shirts.
Rwanda was torn apart by war in the 1990s but has since tried to build up its tourist industry. Many people visit the tiny country to see gorillas in the wild. In 1978, David Attenborough famously encountered a family of mountain gorillas for his Life on Earth series.
The sponsorship deal will also give keen Gunners fan Kagame and his aides the use of an exclusive hospitality box at the London club’s Emirates Stadium, piles of match- day tickets and access to star players for promotional work. Nigel Evans, Tory member of the Commons international development select committee, said: ‘This is a perversion of priorities by the Rwandan ruler – taking with one hand from ordinary taxpayers and giving millions to one of the richest football clubs in the world.
‘In essence this is money diverted from the poorest people in Rwanda towards feeding pampered rich footballers in Britain. It is a sickening perversion of priorities. I hope Penny Mordaunt will take a proper look at aid to Rwanda. Most people will see this as absolutely disgusting.
‘Even Arsenal supporters will see this as very wrong.’ Last year, the UK gave £27 milcannabislion directly to the Rwandan government for poverty relief and spent a further £37million on aid projects in the country.
But despite the vast amounts of cash being given by the UK and other countries, hospitals, schools, businesses and homes in the country are without electricity much of the time.
Most people survive on less than £1 a day under the authoritarian regime, and teachers in some parts of Rwanda have not been paid for five months.
Kagame has been accused of murdering and torturing his opponents, and of funding ‘prestige’ projects such an airline which loses £750,000 a week.
The message ‘Visit Rwanda’ will be emblazoned on Arsenal players’ left sleeves and on pitch-side screens, at an annual cost of £10 million for the next three years.
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: ‘This is absolutely astonishing. It’s ludicrous. If this isn’t a perfect own goal for foreign aid, I don’t know what is. It serves to expose the complete idiocy this system is based on.’ London- based Rwandan human rights campaigner Rene Mugenzi said: ‘ It is hard to believe that Arsenal really conducted due diligence on this obscene deal, and they should scrap it. How can a country which receives tens of millions of UK aid start spending money on a football club in London, just because the president supports them?
‘Britain should stop giving money to Rwanda because it just frees up their government to spend money on crazy things like this.’ Former Tory minister Robert Halfon tweeted: ‘Arsenal should not have accepted this money, and we need radical reform of aid budget and a cut in the amount with funds spent on the NHS instead.’
A DfID spokesman said: ‘ All UK aid to Rwanda is earmarked for specific programmes, such as education and agriculture.
‘We track results to ensure value for money for UK taxpayers. We are helping Rwanda to stand on its own two feet.’
Former Arsenal and England star Tony Adams presented Kagame with a replica shirt in 2014 while visiting Rwanda to promote a youth coaching initiative.
An Arsenal spokesman said: ‘We believe that, having conducted due diligence, it is a partnership that will help Rwanda meet their tourism goals while developing football in the country.’
The Rwandan Development Board said: ‘We’re thrilled to be partnering with Arsenal.’
‘Sickening perversion of priorities’