US/Nigeria relations
Between March and April 2012, there was nothing less than three such expositions by top officials on US/Nigeria relations. They include the United States’ Ambassador to Nigeria, Terence McCulley’s interview with the media on a wide range of issues on US/Nigeria relations in March and April respectively; the widely circulated opinion of John Campbell, a […]
Between March and April 2012, there was nothing less than three such expositions by top officials on US/Nigeria relations. They include the United States’ Ambassador to Nigeria, Terence McCulley’s interview with the media on a wide range of issues on US/Nigeria relations in March and April respectively; the widely circulated opinion of John Campbell, a former US ambassador to Nigeria urging the US to play more constructive role in Nigeria’s battle for stability and also the United States’ Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Johnie Carson’s dissection of the root causes of the insurgency currently going on.
Taken together their positions and thrusts seem targeted at an attempt to disabuse the minds of Nigerians that it is the US’s policy to work actively to weaken and undermine Nigeria’s effort at becoming a strong powerful country in its own right. A few years ago, an unfortunate and innocuous comment by a high US official predicting that if certain conditions existing then did not improve, Nigeria as we know it, may seize to exist. Since then the US has spared no effort in trying to state that it had no strategic plans to seek the disintegration of Nigeria, protesting profusely in the process that the fellow’s comment did not reflect US official position and that a close reading of the comment at issue would reveal that it was quoted out of context.
But the US’s protestation has not been helped by a new such dooms day forecast. This time by a US military Think –Tank putting the date for disintegration at 2030. When queried on this latest prediction the US Ambassador Terence McCulley explained it away as being comments made by private citizens of the United States which the government does not feel obliged to comment on, evading the issue by repeating the platitudes of Nigeria “playing a role in the sub-region and the world, and so we value peace and stability in the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” but noting however that he was optimistic about the future of Nigeria. It could be argued therefore that the focus which Nigeria has attracted and attention paid to it from top US policy makers emanate not only from an officially coordinated attempt at continuing to reiterate the US’s position that it is not working against Nigeria’s continuous existence as a united entity, but also that in the turmoil created by the insurgency it is facing presently, the US’s interest is to contribute to surmounting it.
And to buttress this fact the expositions were at pains to underscore beneficial US –Nigeria relations. In John Campbell’s view ‘’Nigeria is a weak state with a largely unresponsive government that faces significant domestic opposition. The result is that it has only a very limited ability to serve as a diplomatic partner.’’ But he cautions that ‘’a fragmentation of Nigeria would lead to ethnic and religious clashes and the shifts in population that would result would constitute a humanitarian disaster. He urged President Barrack Obama to deploy a combination of policies that would essentially win the confidence of everyone including the Nigerian Muslim who, as he claims see themselves as alienated by the election result of 2011. And one way is to invite Muhammadu Buhari to the White House, ‘’as it does leaders of opposition in friendly states,’’ in order to dispel the belief that the US is against Muslims in Nigeria.
Ambassador Terence McCulley, on his own part went to great pains to illustrate the strategic nature of US/Nigeria partnership. From being an important trading partner in which Nigeria exports some $ 30.5 billion worth of crude oil to the US yearly, to the US-Nigeria Bi-National Commission which provides the platform for cooperation of the two countries in matters ranging from Good Governance, Transparency and Integrity; to Energy and Investment, Niger Delta and Regional Security Cooperation as well as Agriculture and Food Security. On security, for example, he said the US is working with the Nigeria Police to help them learn how to carry out forensic investigations, while the FBI has been working with security authorities on how to detect explosives planted by extremists before they go off.
The Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jonnie Carson reiterated many of the solutions to the insecurity situation and added that since we are agreed that widespread poverty was behind it, the government should consider creating the ministry of northern affairs similar to the one in Niger Delta. At a glance all these expressions of concern for the situation in Nigeria may be the US’s way of emphasizing it is not working against the interests of Nigeria but indeed actively looking for the way out to surmount its latest predicament. Perhaps, it could be explained as a feverish search to avert the coming to pass of a prediction attributed rightly or wrongly to it, in which case in the event of it becoming a reality it would be difficult to insist the dire prognosis were other people’s views and not an official US policy.
Since one is not privy to what combination of factors motivate US’s overt and covert policies, one can only suspend a categorical statement one way or the other. It suffices to state however that the US’s moves in attempting to solve the current security crisis deserves to be highlighted as a way to show that other people are sufficiently agitated about the situation in Nigeria. Are Nigerians, particularly the sleep-walking leadership concerned enough to halt the seeming inexorable slide to the Cliff edge beyond mere platitudes and sanctimonious buck passing that further stoke the embers of divisions that have begun to bare their fangs? Would the leadership accept that it is put in that position to solve issues such as we are faced with presently?
It is good to know however that Nigeria still commands so much goodwill from o0ther countries even when it works so hard against itself to self- destruct.
Endpiece
The picture of sprawled bodies lying motionless alongside their motorcycles caught in the vortex of the attack on the Police Commissioner in Jalingo on the front page of the Guardian of Thursday, May 1 2012, and the burnt- out livestock market in Potiskum depicting scotched earth and burnt trees also depicted on the front page of the Daily Trust on Friday, May 4 2012 show vividly the vicious, malevolent and sinister powers that now rule over all of us.