As President Muhammadu Buhari prepares to honour the invitation by United States President Barack Obama this week, keen observers of Nigeria’s relations with Washington are articulating issues Buhari would like the White House to tackle, as well as the issues both countries may likely discuss to deepen bilateral relations.
Buhari may be going to U.S. from a weak position, unless the crisis within his All Progressives Congress (APC) dies down and he constitutes a cabinet. Beyond the veneer of peace meetings among the contending interests in the party still lies fears of deeper resentment in public mind about how the ruling party has been able to project itself before the citizens and the international community so soon after winning elections.
TheNiche here periscopes likely mood of Obama and the kind of issues and policies he would, in the manner of U.S. presidents, expect the Buhari government to tackle urgently, in order to be able to sustain a positively engaging relation with Washington in the next four years.
Security
The Buhari team going to Washington with him should expect that Obama would raise the issue of security, especially as it pertains to Boko Haram, and would need convincing assurance that Abuja would not relapse to the same old ‘Jonathanian miscalculations’ on which the now ruling party latched to arouse public sympathy and won the March election.
At a time U.S. interests in Africa are riveting in Nigeria and South Africa as the continent’s promising regional powers, Buhari would do well to expect that Obama would want concrete assurance that the war against Boko Haram would be effectively prosecuted by superior logistic planning and execution of battle plans to end the scourge of terror within the next four years.
According Pastor Ken Maduaka, who headed one of Christ Embassy’s U.S. branches, “Americans are curious. But Washington prefers more engagement and building of alliances and coalition. It is when these two approaches fail that she goes solo after calculating the risk of not doing anything and the benefits of interventions. So if Buhari fails to convince his host that he would certainly end Boko Haram within the next four years, Washington would be less eager to aid the fight against Boko Haram. That she has made a pledge of $5 million already shows she is ready to work with Nigeria’s new government. So it is up to Nigeria to act in good faith.”
Human rights
Washington would also want to extract commitments from Buhari that he would respect human rights in all ramifications, including the works and activism of civil society organisations. Washington has always seen civil society organisations as more effective organs of provoking regime change since the end of dente. It has always worked for her.
Therefore, Washington would want to know how Buhari goes about allowing Nigerians unfettered human rights. Related to this is the issue of legalisation of gay marriage, an issue that tickled Nigeria-U.S. relations in the negatives some time ago, when Nigeria balked from the idea of endorsing it.
Just last month, five of nine U.S. Supreme Court judges said aye to gay marriage in ‘God’s Own Country’. And the first victims of the development are Aaron and Melissa Klein, Christian owners of Sweet Cakes By Melissa, who have been ordered to pay $135,000 in damages to a lesbian couple after they refused to bake them a wedding cake in 2013.
Corruption
Washington expects that the Buhari team would demand assistance in retrieving stolen Nigerian money scattered abroad of which some U.S. courts have already adjudicated upon and applications for their retrieval already made by the immediate past Goodluck Jonathan administration. Here is where majority of Nigerians, especially the 15 million who voted for him, expect Buhari to show the stuff he is made of.
Subsidy
The U.S. multinational corporations are deep into Nigeria’s oil and gas sector. Luckily, Buhari himself is assumed to be a keen follower of oil and gas issues in the country, since he was Nigeria’s oil commissioner in the mid-1970s. The Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) was a comprehensive package to help the development in the oil sector. However some aspects of it have not gone down well with multinational corporations who believe it makes the business environment a bit fiscally uncomfortable. Buhari would do well explaining that the bill is to encourage and fast-track development and not meant to exclude anybody.
Related to this is the issue of liberalisation of the downstream sector, the removal of petroleum subsidy. The president is not expected by Nigerians to place the issue of “corruption by his predecessors” into focus in his dialogue with Obama, for that would spoil his communication.
Meeting with Diaspora Nigerians
An estimated two million Nigerians and Nigerian-Americans live, work and study in the U.S. Some are prominent business people. Buhari may use the opportunity of his visit to the U.S. to reassure Diaspora Nigerians that their country is working, that they should invest at home and identify with Washington which has demonstrated in practical ways that Nigeria counts.