Nigeria’s Independence and the US Embassy Terror Alarm

By

Ahmed Joe

ahyajoe@yahoo.com

The recent terror alert by the US Embassy in Nigeria is a typically leviathan reaction to the singular ability of the newly installed Yar’adua Presidency to politically rein in the mainstream Niger Delta militancy and militarily contain its criminally cultist offshoot.

Ordinarily this initiative would have earned the fledging administration accolades in the diplomatic scene and more importantly help upsurge dwindling OPEC quotas and stabilize prices, which to Nigeria is a double-edged sword anyway.

The much dreaded sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has come and gone with its major impact a mere videotape exhortation from America’s twenty first century Poncho Villa- remember the Y2K frenzy?

As long as restiveness pervades the oil rich coastal fringes of Nigeria, the high seas of the Guinean hydrocarbons will remain for our officials an unmonitored backyard because the world’s Cohiba smoke filled walnut paneled boardrooms thrive under the deep throat laughter of managed crisis.

Anybody can today download from the Internet commercially available Goggle Earth software with which you can locate your residence, place of work, landmarks and sundry installations (except in Abuja and Lagos with the demonstration version). It does not take the imagination of Ian Fleming’s Q to decipher that a more comprehensive infrared version can locate hostage takers down to their whiskers but somehow that has not happened. A drive along the Marina across the filthy Lagos lagoon arrays rusting and idle Nigerian warships yet those of AFRICOM (the US Military African command based in far away Germany) are in active service in our very own waters securing shipping lanes for the low sulfur crude that account for 12% of total American consumption.

The US Senate confirmation hearings of the very delectable, pleasantly endearing and scholarly southern belle Condeleeza Rice as madam Secretary of State back in January 2004 attracted more TV ratings than the earlier Presidential inauguration that secured her nomination in the first place. Not so in Nigeria the current Foreign Affairs minister merely took a bow and left with a partisan swagger that’s why some anonymous embassy officials can take a swipe at us without an iota of Federal Government reaction to the affront- it is in times like this that one misses the dynamic duo of Generals Buhari and Idiagbon.

Chief Ojo Madueke might be a brilliant lawyer and consummate politician but he is a diplomatic novice. His ministry handled the US embassy terror threat alarm with the dexterity peculiar to an amateur. On second thought though, one cannot discount how having acumen for a portfolio in the current dispensation can politically harm considering the travails of the chief architect of the Naira redenomination. A political appointment in Nigeria is actually an invitation to come and chop. You are expected to behave as you no de hear English -see how too much grammar is making a small boy EFCC boss rubbish a silk gown AGF.It is however unfortunate that it’s a mere embassy and not even Washington that will quake us with the reckless abandon of an unsubstantiated non-specific alarm and be allowed to get away with it.

All American citizens resident in Nigeria are of course in constant contact with their consular officials and avenues of official contact with the Nigerian government are not hindered at least to the best of our limited knowledge, so why the public spectacle?

The Defense Headquarters spokesperson even took it to a comical level by the declaration “we are battle ready” as if it is conventional warfare that is at stake.

The acting IGP who spends more time in front of TV cameras undermining his force public relations officers also by reason of the terror alarm has found a welcome international dimension for his confirmation lobby.

If there is any terror threat in Nigeria it will be by reason of our self-inflicted Chinese and Indian new age mercantile imperialism, our primitive accumulation and the tenacious escapism we have found in the Green Card visa lottery. The forbidding cages at the embassy in Abuja and legation in Lagos present the initial trauma for many of our subdued compatriots young, able and better educated than the officials interviewing them yet most end up in a humiliating sojourn underemployed at the margins of the great American dream but nevertheless making money transfer our nation’s largest non-oil foreign exchange earner.

The non-specificity of the terror threat can be conveniently explained by it’s proponents by not wanting to compromise human intelligence sources or being intercepts of cryptic electronic chatter but the manner of its delivery suggests mischief in an attempt to re-brand Nigeria as a terrorism destination based on a meander of arcane analysis and not in any way “the sum of all fears” as Tom Clancy would say. The former US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld would however once say at a Pentagon briefing “…there are known knowns. These are things we know we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. They are things we don’t know we don’t know” (March 10, 2002, Newsweek p.21).

The US is a preferred trading partner of Nigeria and a pivotal component in regional peacekeeping efforts despite the recent attacks on an AU contingent exemplary of Magreb belligerence by proxy ahead of the forthcoming October 27 peace conference in Libya. Both our countries are characterized by market forces pilgrims and pirates, we share the same diverse multi-culture and conspicuous consumption, our peoples have common rugged individuality with zest for life and we intersect at the junction of opportunity yet the terror alert had the impunity of a mathematical abstraction used in the intelligence business to navigate and identify complex real life issues the long and short of which to any discerning and patriotic Nigerian is a “dirty slap” on our sovereignty and a disdain for our Independence, the Presidential speech of which this year is the shortest in rhetoric since 1960. 

The September 11^th 2001 edition of the authoritative New York Times (the third largest circulating newspaper in the US) carried an interview with Bill Ayers a homegrown anarchist formerly of the Weather Underground who attempted to obliterate the Pentagon in 1972. In it Mr. Ayers harped unregretably on “the certain eloquence to bombs”, events that same morning is now history, a respected American syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer would later describe that prominent interview as “an unfortunate piece of journalism”.

The US Embassy terror threat alarm was released the same week as if to dull the opening for business the ultra-modern Murtala Mohammed International Airport Terminal 2 and marked by the seeming effrontery to make Nigerian skies less safe by denying to grant 16 Air Traffic Controllers travel permission to further their ICAO endorsed and Federal Government sponsored on the job training in Miami on the excuse that a previous batch had undergone similar training.

It is not too late for the embassy to swallow its self-effacing pride before it becomes an unfortunate piece of our cordial relations with the US.

In 1999 when Mr. Bush was still on the campaign trail and General Pervez Musharaff had taken over power in Islamabad, a Boston TV reporter took the then presidential hopeful off-guard by asking he name the new head of state answer of which he mumbled “General…somebody”. Today Pakistanis derisively refer to the strongman as “Busharaff” on account of the overbearing influence American foreign policy has over his now embattled government.

That is probably the kind of political cul- de-sac President Yar’adua with understandable trepidation and cautious optimism is avoiding as he posited in a post inauguration interview  (June 11, 2007 TIME p.29).

According to the THISDAY Newspaper website www.thisdayonline.com question segment that posed “Is the proposed US military presence in the Gulf of Guinea necessary?” 73.7% of respondents answered no, 22.8% yes and 3.4% were undecided. This verdict is no doubt instructive and as if to purloin the moral from the Daily Trust Monday Column (June 18, 2007 back page)-“it is not finding the bounties of the world that is difficult. It is where to sit down and eat it”.

America the world’s freest nation and most open society is loathed by most countries but imitated by all just as Nigerians are despised by unfair profiling but acknowledged, little wonder the Venezuelan people’s leader Comrade Presidente Hugo Chavez would say  “…. tell the Americanos that our revolution is based on their ideals” and US President George Bush will call Nigeria  “a strategic partner and ally”.

Fellow Nigerians should note that true patriotism is more than the mass marketed myth of a Proudly Nigerian logo and the green-white-green lapel pins of a miniature geographical expression of Nigeria as part of our leaders’ fashion statement, it also means standing up to the bully despite all his friendliness.

Terrorism is not indigenous to Nigeria, not even during the Maxim-gun colonial era not now because that kind of infamy is rooted in alienation and sustained by grievance and no matter whose ox was gored colonialism was refreshingly civilizing. The most common expression in our country is “no problem” not that we don’t have any but because we have learnt to live with most, we are loud and expressive soon to dissolve into our uncommon elasticity for every day reality. The looming danger is however located in the increasing prevalence of full grown men not being able to meet their barest economic needs parenting a young with less time honored mores and lesser scruples. The onus therefore lies with our political and business elite but for now let us say we are lucky that tribal emotions outrival religious sentiments.