Chad is 10th up from the bottom of the UN human development index, or number 167. To compound its problems, it is one of the most corrupt places on earth.

And now the government wants to spend more of its relatively limited oil wealth on security and general government revenues instead of poverty reduction.

Some excerpts from the NYT story:

When the World Bank said more than five years ago that it would help Chad build a $4.2 billion pipeline to export the oil discovered in the southern part of that landlocked, deeply impoverished nation, it seemed an opportunity to give the lie to the resource curse that is the painful experience of virtually every oil-rich African nation: that oil wealth typically creates more problems for poor countries than it solves.

In exchange for World Bank loans to build a 670-mile underground pipeline through Cameroon to export its oil, the Chadian government passed a law requiring that almost all of the money it earns on oil exports be spent for poverty reduction and that 10 percent be put aside as a "future generations fund," to leave something behind once the estimated one billion barrels of oil have been exhausted.

But in October, Chad's government abruptly announced at a meeting with the World Bank in N'Djamena, the capital, that it plans to alter that law and funnel more money into its general budget and increase spending on security.

Under the new proposal, the future generations fund would be scrapped and military spending would be added to the list of "priority sectors" that until now focused on spending in areas like agriculture, housing, health care and education.

"These are fundamental changes to the agreement Chad made on oil revenue management," said Ian Gary, an expert on oil at Oxfam America who has written several research reports critical of the Chad oil industry.

The changes, he said, make it far less likely the people of Chad will see any benefit from the billions of dollars Chad's oil fields are likely to pump into the economy, which in turn undermines the antipoverty rationale of the World Bank's role in the project.

The World Bank acknowledges that the Chadian government faces serious financial problems, and needs the money to pay salaries for civil servants and to deal with security threats, and has offered technical assistance to help bring spending under control.

"The adopted bill redefines the priority areas, abolishes the future generations fund, alters the way in which funds are allocated and extends the law to apply to new oilfields," Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor, a government spokesman, told Reuters. ...

The proposed changes have drawn angry reactions from civic groups in Chad, many of which were skeptical about the pipeline deal to begin with and warned the World Bank that the government would pull out once the oil money started flowing.

"It was at the very beginning clear that the government has adopted that law only to get the World Bank approved oil project," said Delphine Djiraibe of the Chadian Association for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, one of the groups that fought the pipeline deal. "Now that everything is finished and money is coming in, the government is doing whatever they want regardless of the agreement they have signed with World Bank or commitments they have made to use oil money to fight poverty."