Recent cold attitudes from Nigeria’s friendly big powers, especially White House, towards the country’s security and social headaches seem to task the fidelity of their relationship. However, top diplomats within Africa and beyond hold the view that Washington still regards Nigeria, despite seeming attention elsewhere, reports SAM NWOKORO.
Right from the moment Nigeria became an oil-producing nation, Washington was among (if not the first) the present G8 counties that registered interest in Nigeria’s economy, then primarily anchored on petroleum exports. U.S. energy firms had, for a long time, dominated Nigeria’s oil and gas industry: everything from exploration to production to refining (abroad), to marketing of refined petroleum products.
Somehow, owing to circumstances, from 1958 when crude oil was discovered in Oloibiri in the present Bayelsa State, till today, U.S. major energy firms like Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCo), Chevron, Addax, Conoco-Philips and one or two others remained the dominant players, more or less an unofficial, unelected parallel Nigerian government, in the sense that Nigeria’s fiscal destiny depended on their remitting her share of crude oil export proceeds accruing from the many Joint Venture Partners and Production Sharing contracts with Nigerian authorities, faithfully.
As time went by, what was economic relations developed and diversified into other sectors, to the extent that Washington is today, by all standards, Nigeria’s major trade and commerce partner, more than any other country in the Northern hemisphere. Nigeria counts in Africa as Washington’s most strategic partner. To a large extent, no threatening fissure is fathomable in Nigeria-U.S. relations, even till date.
Recent disquiet
In a recent interview with the Cable News Network (CNN), a U.S. expert and don in international affairs, James ‘Spider’ Marks, explained that Washington, and in fact much of the outside world, seems not to consider the terrorist onslaught in some African states like Nigeria a priority in their strategic security calculations.
In fact, the Executive Dean, College of Criminal Justice and Security, University of Phoenix, Arizona, pointedly expressed regrets that while the world, including Washington, got alarmed over the recent terror attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France, the same world leaders feigned less concerned about the Boko Haram large scale massacres in several parts of North East Nigeria.
The former intelligence officer described the Baga, Borno State, terrorist massacres, which left nearly 3,000 displaced, aside hundreds of deaths, as “madness”.
Mark also remarked: “The difference is that while world leaders are in complete solidarity and outrage against what happened in France vis-a-vis Nigeria, truly, that should be surprising because what is happening in Nigeria is real madness. But it is not a priority.” With a flint of optimism, he added: “The United States can do anything it needs to do to rid Nigeria of Boko Haram.”
Only recently, the U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, James Entwistle, disclosed to journalists that Nigeria unilaterally cancelled an agreed military training pact for Nigerian army to help it fight insurgency in the troubled states of the North East.
He had told the journalists: “We had at Nigeria’s request agreed to train some battalions. In my opinion, some of the best trainers in the world have been provided by the United States. The agreement was that we should provide the trainers and the Nigerian army would provide the equipment we need to properly conduct the training, and that was agreed well ahead as part of our partnership.”
It is not clear whether the refusal of the Nigerian authorities to conclude the military training is partly responsible for why a usual doze of silence seems to have become apparent from the unspoken behaviour of Nigeria’s major allies, especially against the now disgusting Bagga massacres. Notwithstanding the absence of any serious diplomatic row in the public domain between Nigeria and U.S.
Observers of Nigeria-Washington relations are quick to conclude that so many things have bound the two countries together that what can be called a diplomatic face-off can never be imagined occurring between them.
Charles Ngwo, a businessman who lives in U.S., posted in one of his tweets when Washington denied Nigeria purchase of military equipment late last year: “I think what Washington expects from Nigeria is a mature relationship, not the type that she had with her colonial master, Britain. She remains Nigeria’s strategic partner.”
Most informed Nigerians and watchers of diplomatic events between Nigeria and Washington are quick to point out that the former has a greater need of the latter. Some also say that a number of cogent factors may have been responsible for this seemingly cautious attitude of U.S. towards Nigeria. It is not only Washington that has developed cold feet in responding to the security challenges in the North East of Nigeria. Some of these underlying theories can be summarised as follows:
Cautious engagement
First among the probable reasons Washington seems not to be overly keen about not just Nigeria’s terrorism problems, but the entire African region’s may not be unconnected with what can be described, rightly or wrongly, as “work load”.
In the past couple of years, much part of the world has come to be plagued by murderous terrorism. From the Arab world’s ISIS movement, to the yet unresolved shambolic behaviour of African polities, bandits in diverse forms and shapes with diverse agenda are increasingly threatening the existence of most African states, and most parts of the world. In most of these countries, Washington has more than a passing interest: in Syria where the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) is executing calculated decimation of humanity, fuelling refugee crises and human displacement, to Saudi Arabia, the headquarters of Islam that has little or no influence over the murderous activities of fundamentalist sects, down to the Maghreb regions of Africa, and even in this January, the assault on Paris’ heritage as the world’s capital of freedom, it seems Washington’s foreign policy machineries and policy strategies, including defence budgets and domestic nuisances associated with foreign expeditions, may have led U.S. to prioritise foreign engagements and commitments. The ‘world police’ resorted to paying attention to world’s crises spots according to each one’s relationship to Washington’s strategic interests.
In such calculations, Africa nay Nigeria’s domestic worries may not qualify for the deployment of U.S. attention, at least not in the immediate promptings, when, in the first place, Nigerian authorities, in the estimation of many concerned stakeholders had not been proactive enough in containing the nuisance of Boko Haram. Perhaps, it could make better sense if Abuja and Washington consummate their various approaches in responding to the Boko Haram threat before resorting to any full-scale confrontation, more so, when it has become publicly clear that Nigeria’s military authorities have not been upbeat in intelligence gathering about the modus operandi of Boko Haram.
Receding dependence on Nigeria’s oil exports
Since the middle of last year, Washington has been cutting her imports of Nigeria’s crude oil. And not only Nigeria’s, but the entire Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) supplies, buoyed by her recent production of alternative oil – shale gas.
At a time U.S. President Barack Obama is seeking to consolidate growth at home as his tenure expires next year, getting embroiled in a far-flung military expedition in Nigeria or any part of Africa for that matter, without a clear-cut timeframe is perhaps not rational. With reported breaching of military training partnership agreement between the two countries, which the U.S. ambassador here has maintained, was caused by Nigeria, attracting Washington’s interest to take a harder stance in the fight against Boko Haram may take more than a verbal assurance of not reneging on agreements again by Nigerian authorities.
Strategic timing
From another school of thought, it could be that Washington prefers that more ‘carrot and stick’ approach be deployed by Nigerian authorities to see if the tempo of terror attacks by the terrorists could abate before the next political dispensation.
President Goodluck Jonathan has so far tried admirably in the estimation of observers to get the jihadists sit down and explain their grievances, but it appeared the Boko Haram fundamentalists are pushing for an Islamic state out of Nigeria, but which they are so far away from achieving, at least not within any foreseeable future.
Therefore, goes the reasoning, it does not make sense for Washington to deploy all its anti-terror combat forces, at a time of election, when it is not certain how long such expedition could last. Besides, the general election is just about few weeks away. A scaled up military expedition in the North East, not just the main three states, has every tendency of affecting negatively the outcome of the 2015 general election.
Tightening the noose around Boko Haram’s fund and arms sources
Terrorism today is now a global plague. It has become a common headache of most countries in the world. Thus, global terror networks has grown to become such that require more than average multinational intelligence sharing and collaboration to track and dismantle. It is believed that regional and sub-regional groupings in Africa such as African Union (AU) and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are yet to come to grips with the enormity of the terror plague on the continent. Their collective response has been abysmal.
ECOWAS members still bicker over the formation of the 300 regional troops it agreed to assemble since 2012, and the AU has not been able to raise any appreciable amount from the regional security fund it recently set up to fight terrorism.
Obviously, since the fight against terror in Nigeria would need to involve the collaboration of regional and sub-regional input, Nigeria alone may not be able to influence Washington to bankroll its terror problems without carrying along the decisions of these regional blocs. Lack of effective collaboration and intelligence sharing among security agencies of these regional groupings has often been cited as one of the reasons terrorism fester easily across border in the continent. Thus these blocs may have to exhibit a bit more united front in dealing with the terrorism problem and their root in Africa before hoping for outside assistance
More diplomacy
Another theory said to be partly responsible for western world’s low profile response to the fight against terrorism in Africa is the growing perception outside the continent that much of her problems are man-made. Most African countries have, for long, been rankled by political instability, most of them resulting in chaotic ethnic/nationalist agitations, which later on developed into deeper social and political turmoil.
Even despite Washington’s extension of the Africa’s growth opportunity Act, a U.S.-designed trade policy to allow African economies access into the country, and consequently such big markets as Canada, Mexico and partly Western Europe because of the active markets there for African produce, the record has been abysmal. Most African states never recorded any appreciable advantage from that trade policy which is due to expire as Obama rounds off his tenure in less than a year.
Rather, African nations have been rattled by coups and counter-coups up to this 21st century, despite sweeping pluralism all over the world. In the last one year, up to five African countries has had controversial change of governments: from Sudan to Burkina Faso to Senegal and virtually the whole of North Africa.
With Washington increasingly achieving mileage in curtailing her dependence on external energy sources, the likelihood is very much that, just as Mark noted, Africa, Nigeria inclusive, may soon fall out of global reckoning again, after posting impressive resurgence as a continent bent on recovery in the beginning of the century.