Nigeria's Incompetence Is Putting The Future Of Africa At Risk

It Is a well-known precept in geopolitics that a country does not have 'permanent friends', only 'permanent interests.'

Nigeria may be neither a permanent friend nor a permanent enemy of the United States. But America does have important economic interests in Nigeria, and therefore maintains a sort of watching brief over that country.

Western oil companies like Chevron, Shell and Total, operate in Nigeria.

But that is no big deal. What makes Nigeria uniquely important to the West is the quality of its oil. This is light (as in 'Bonny Light') and is therefore greatly sought after to mix with much heavier crudes imported from elsewhere.

But Nigeria also attracts the attention of the United States for political reasons. Yes, the political leadership of Nigeria is corrupt; its public services are grossly inefficient; and its social imbalances sharp beyond comprehension.

Such weaknesses suggest that Nigeria should be a mammoth with the voice of an ant.

But the US found out, in 1975, that Nigeria, then led by the redoubtable Murtala Muhammed, could frustrate a carefully-crafted US campaign to get the (then) Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to recognise the UNITA movement , led by Jonas Savimbi, as the legitimate government of Angola. (UNITA was armed and financed by the US in secret collaboration with the apartheid regime in South Africa; the story is told in the book, IN SEARCH OF ENEMIES by John Stockwell.)

Aware of the CIA support for UNITA, Nigeria used its money and diplomatic clout to help the (then) Marxist-oriented MPLA, instead, to gain recognition as the legitimate government of Angola from the OAU. Despite subsequent efforts by the US to twist the arms of African countries to oppose 'Communist rule' in Angola by the MPLA, it was UNITA that was eventually defeated.

Of course, looking at Angola today, the notion that the country would go 'Communist ' under the MPLA is quite laughable. And yet the US had done studies by 'experts' that suggested that America should ally itself with the resist regimes in Southern Africa against a possible 'Communist' takeover of the region by Black freedom fighters. (One of the most notable of these 'studies' was entitled 'Operation Tar Baby'. It apparently had the approval of no less a person than the American foreign policy genius of the time, Secretary of Stater Henry Kissinger, whom Americans lionised because of his feats in extricating the US from the difficulties in which it had placed itself, in its relations with Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand - as well as, ultimately, the People's Republic of China).

'Operation Tar Baby' claimed that the white regimes of Southern Africa would retain power and so should be covertly assisted to remain in charge.

Black Africa was to be persuaded - with deceit and bribes - into adopting a lukewarm, if not neutral , attitude towards the emancipation of the Blacks.

Nigeria saw through this. It threatened to nationalise Western oil installations on its soil if the West continued to support the racist regimes.

That historic confrontation still informs the attitudes of some opinion makers within the Nigerian bodypolitic.

On Nigerian Internet forums, there have even been suggestions that Boko Haram is 'the creation of the CIA.'

The CIA created Boko Haram in the way it created Al Qaeda in collaboration with Osama Bi Laden, before Osama turned against America, it is claimed.

Of course, in an emotive situation like the one that has been created by the abduction, on 14 April 2014, of nearly 300 secondary school girls at Chibok, in Borno State, conspiracy theories are bound to germinate and multiply.

But there is room for speculation that the way Boko Haram's activities have weakened Nigeria and placed her in the hands of the US and its Western allies, is too 'neat' to be a mere 'happenstance' (as James Bond would put it.)

To begin with, the US does have a genuine desire to control Nigeria, if possible. For the influence of Nigeria in West Africa cannot be overemphasized (it was Nigerian military intervention, under E COMOG, that saved Liberia from total destruction (after the US had abandoned it to self-seeking warlords; Sierra Leone too was saved by the UK and ECOMOG after falling into the hands of a band of desperadoes whose calling card was the amputation of limbs).

The Ivory Coast and Mali also benefited from Nigerian military assistance during their recent upheavals.

However, the argument that will clinch the issue for deep-thinking Nigerians is that the US may not fully trust Nigeria to fall in line behind America's long-term strategic design on Africa, which the US is busy constructing (with drone bases under the command of 'Africom,' in Djibouti, the Seychelles, Niger and other African countries.) If the US is able - in an opportunistic manner — to use the abduction of the girls at Chibok to enrol Nigeria into full membership of Africom, then certainly a great number of pieces will fall into place for the US, on the chess-board on which the US has painted the image of Africa.

The dangers of that are emphasized by the fact that even as Nigeria was worrying itself to death over the abduction of the girls, Nigeria was signing an agreement with China that will enable China to construct a coastal railway line for Nigeria.

The price tag? Thirteen billion dollars!
NOW, what would the US say about that - if it was in a position to say something?

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