Nigeria ablaze

By David McCormack

It was hoped by many that President Bush’s meeting today with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo augurs a stronger relationship between the United States and Africa’s most populous country. The reality, however, is that a situation exists in Nigeria in which threats to U.S. interests are creating tremendous impediments to a viable partnership. If the U.S. does not act quickly, these challenges will become insurmountable.

Religious Strife

Most significantly, Nigeria — home to 60 million Muslims, roughly half the country’s population — has become one of the central battleground of Islamofascism’s war on Africa. Over the course of the last 30 years, foreign sponsors — namely Saudi Arabia, but including Iran and Libya — backed by treasuries overflowing with petrodollars have systematically exported extremist interpretations of Islam to the African subcontinent, significantly corroding the region’s temperate and progressive Islamic traditions.

Nowhere has the impact of this campaign been felt more greatly than in Nigeria. In the shake-up that followed liberation from military rule in 1999, twelve predominantly Muslim states in northern Nigeria took advantage of the central government’s weakened position and adopted legal codes based on full Shari’a. Characteristics of these Shari’a states include the severe marginalization of women and the institutionalization of punishments such as flogging and death by stoning. The new laws, moreover, are often applied regardless of a citizen’s faith and enforced by vigilante organizations modeled on those of Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The impact of the Islamist advance was on display recently (although it was almost entirely missed by the media) when violence ostensibly sparked by the publication of cartoons unflatteringly depicting the Prophet Muhammad claimed more lives in Nigeria than in the rest of the world combined. Sadly, the latest round of Muslim attacks followed by Christian reprisals only mimics on a tiny scale the pattern of violence that has gripped the country since the northern region’s Islamist turn. Most credible studies, in fact, suggest that 6,000 people have been killed in interfaith fighting since 1999.

While Western observers have been slow to recognize the dire implications of Islamofascism’s advance in Nigeria, America’s enemies have not. In a May 2003 tape, Osama bin Laden named Nigeria as one of six states "most eligible for liberation." And perhaps in a sign of times to come, in early 2004 a group of 200 militant Islamists calling themselves the "Taliban" waged a brief insurgency intended to establish an independent Muslim state along Nigeria’s border with Niger Republic. Only after several weeks of murder and conquest was the insurrection put down by the Nigerian army. The thought that U.S. foreign policy might have to contend with an Islamist state sponsor of terrorism based in West Africa is indeed frightening, though not farfetched given the state of affairs in Nigeria.

Ethnic Conflict

Despite the ferocity of religious turmoil in the country, it may not be Nigeria’s most immediate problem. Last month, the Movement for Emancipation of the Niger-Delta (MEND) — an ethnically-based militia operating in Nigeria’s oil-rich southern region — launched "Operation Dark February" (which carried over into March), promising to bring about an "Armageddon in the Nigerian petroleum history".

To make good on that promise, MEND destroyed an offshore loading platform and trunk line of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) and kidnapped nine of the company’s foreign employees (including three Americans). Fearing continued attacks, SPDC announced it was temporarily shutting down operations that will amount to a production loss of 455,000 barrels per day — 19 percent of Nigeria’s output.

Unless competition for oil revenue — which accounts for roughly 20% of GDP, 95% of foreign exchange earnings, and 65% of budgetary revenues — by various ethnic groups can be mitigated, oil-driven attacks on the world’s eighth largest exporter and fifth largest supplier to the United States will likely continue apace, with devastating consequences for the U.S. and global economy. Given the Nigerian government’s abject failure to date to find a resolution, however, there is little reason to be optimistic.

China’s Charge

Absent communal friction, Nigeria’s energy sector would still prove highly problematic for American interests. Communist China’s global drive to dominate strategic energy resources has naturally attracted it to sub-Saharan Africa, from which it currently imports nearly 30 percent of its oil and natural gas. The PRC’s presence, unfortunately, has greatly abetted the scourge of Africa — corruption. As Mustafa Bello, head of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission, recently admitted, "The U.S. will talk to you about governance, about efficiency, about security, about the environment….The Chinese just ask, ‘How do we procure this license?’"

Not surprisingly, then, Nigeria has been increasingly receptive to PRC energy forays. For instance, in its first major investment since its failed bid to take over Unocal last year, the Chinese state-controlled oil company CNOOC announced last month it will pay $2.3 billion for a 45 percent stake in a Nigerian oil field. As Iheanyi Ohiaeri, head of business development for Nigeria’s National Petroleum Corporation, explains, "We haven’t been totally invaded by China yet, but it will come."

Political Unrest

If the aforementioned matters weren’t enough to complicate the landscape, the government may face a rebellion in the very near term over an attempt to amend the constitution to permit those brought to power in the democratic elections of 1999 — including President Obasanjo — to serve a third term in office.

This is hardly a trivial development in a country ruled by strongmen throughout its post-colonial history. Mirroring the general understanding of Nigerian public opinion, an editorial in the independent newspaper Vanguard recently claimed officials are "haunted by the fear that a successor…may call them to account like they have done [to] others. The third term promoters would prefer to die in office than quit to face the reckoning of their own conduct in office." Already, public hearings on the constitutional review have sparked demonstrations that in some cities saw as many as 20,000 take to the streets.

To be sure, Obasanjo’s government has, by and large, been an ally of the United States, especially with regard to the war on terror. Nevertheless, the Bush Administration would do well to quietly prod Nigerian leaders to step down at the end of their second term to assuage the Nigerian public’s fear that a strongman will return to rule over them — and perhaps to hedge against that very occurrence.

The Bottom Line

This volatile mix of Islamofascist activity, ethnic division, and natural resources so abundant in Nigeria makes the country America’s greatest strategic concern in Africa. U.S. policy toward Nigeria — and Africa in general — has thus far, unfortunately, been one of general apathy, costing America dearly in terms of its strategic position.

Fortunately, a promising vehicle already exists by which the United States might safeguard its interests along with those of Nigeria and its neighbors. Established last summer, the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative (TSCTI) — partnering the U.S. with nine African countries — brings to bear the resources of the U.S. departments of Defense, State and Treasury along with those of the U.S. Agency for International Development, offering not only services such as expanded joint military training but also developmental assistance aimed at promoting good governance and encouraging the growth of civil society. However, TSCTI’s modest budget of $100 million per year is sure to limit its effectiveness.

Of course, the United States will need to do much more to secure its interests, such as increasing its miniscule public diplomacy budget for the region, and invigorating state-to-state diplomacy to deny foreign states the opportunity to advance harmful agendas. More than anything, America must awake to the fact that Nigeria — along with much of Africa — is an important piece of the international security framework.