Nigeria 2010 - A Season of Foreign Interventionists and
their Nigerian Collaborators
By
Dr. Sullivan Odumegwu; Garba Mustapha; and James
Osunbor
sodumegwu@yahoo.com
1. Introduction & Background:
Since Nigeria’s historic return to multi-party electoral democracy in
1999, successive administrations, unlike the military before them,
have granted generous access to foreigners, notably the United States
and EU, to project themselves and their views on mundane (and
important) matters of Nigeria’s internal state policies.
It is understandable that Nigeria, convinced that it is but a young
democracy, will in good faith look to experienced foreign democracies
for mentoring; and for legitimacy especially in a world economic and
political order that is dominated by these nations.
Of the two Western’ powers, the United States is more aggressive and
gung-ho; and has of recent, outmanoeuvred the EU to emerge as the sole
foreign power that is now seemingly intent on dominating Nigeria
wholesale in the conduct of her domestic policies.
Important policy subjects to Nigeria upon which it has permitted a lot
of access to Americans comprised primarily of the matter of
Niger Delta, election policies and procedures; and lately,
combating terrorism. America tried to weigh-in on Nigeria’s
alleged ‘romance’ with China but a ‘proud and patriotic’ President
Yar’Adua would not allow it. Most Nigerians were not aware of the
private battles Yar’Adua fought to guard against what he perceived as
“unwarranted interference with Nigeria’s unfettered sovereign rights
to choose her friends”.
To America’s chagrin, Yar’Adua would neither confront Sudan (for her
open and ‘notorious’ romance with China), nor would he allow Africom
as a covert Atlantic buffer to intimidate Chinese incursion in the
Gulf of Guinea. It does not matter that Africom was ‘diplomatically’
sold to Yar’Adua as the only panacea to militancy in the Niger Delta;
and supposedly, the next best alternative to Yar’Adua’s push for
amnesty in the Delta.
But while Nigeria has been quick to assert her sovereignty on
‘security’ issues dealing with the Niger Delta (by flatly rejecting
Africom and other forms of direct military collaboration
with the United States); and whereas Nigeria has railed against US
‘over-belligerent response’ to the “perceived threat” of terrorism
from Nigeria (because of the single and isolated incident of
Abdulmutallab), the country has sadly remained porous to protecting “her
sovereignty to nurture her democracy at her own pace”, says
Pierre DeVine, a French intelligence veteran in Sub-Saharan Africa.
DeVine points to India as a ‘proud third world’ democracy that “has
proven resilient to foreign interferences even when Indira Ghandi
declared a state of emergency in the midst of dynastic electoral
transitions that saw three generations of Nehrus ruling India from
the 1940s”.
DeVine added that: “This evident lax is possible partly because
Nigeria appears to have been convinced by the United States that
Nigeria’s electoral achievements, despite being young but producing
three straight transitions, is the worst in the world. And within the
United States itself, Nigeria’s Foreign Ministry has made a zero
defense of the regime and country; but has instead, in many some
instances, made damaging remarks”.
Reliable Intels indicate that despite gentle warnings from the French
(and Germans, to a less extent), the United States appears to have
become more and more overbearing (and neo-colonialist) in projecting
itself into Nigeria’s domestic affairs by –
1)
Sponsoring so many anti-Nigeria conferences/colloquiums/congressional
hearings in the United States; and
2)
Earmarking millions of dollars to Nigeria’s “domestic professional
activists and disaffected political class to dictate to the government
of the day on all manners of domestic policies, with Nigeria’s
elections and internal crisis management taking centre-stage.
“American neo-con strategists have come to recognize that ‘Elections
and the lustre of public office’ is Nigeria’s ‘soft underbelly and
the strongest link’ to cultivating an army of disaffected Nigerians to
unwittingly destabilize their own system from within. Consumed by the
lust for power and personal animus, many otherwise patriotic Nigerians
have become easy prey to a burgeoning foreign design to undermine
their own country”, says an extract from an EU ‘soft Intels’ Memo
obtained by ‘Concerned Friends of Nigeria’ in Washington.
In all of these, it is needles to add that the nation’s image has
plummeted, more from this avalanche of American orchestrated ‘bad
press’ and less from the so-called Nigerian 419 and other
social/political vices, which cannot be said to be unique to Nigeria
but are instead manifested in greater degrees in other countries,
including even the “morally rampaging” United States.
The French and Germans, noted for their Realisms as opposed to
American Idealisms, are concerned that “a Nigeria pressured and pushed
to the precipice will spell disaster in the greater Gulf of Guinea,
with the result that Nigerian tribes, formerly held together on
fragile social/political compacts, will rise against one another and
give the West its first ‘intractable’ challenge of containing 150
million Africans grabbing at each other’s throats. The ‘end-game’ is
better imagined than real”, says agent DeVine.
2. The Gathering Conspiracy to
Overawe Nigeria and Why?
‘Marvin Singleton’,
an undercover intelligence consultant and a veteran ‘Intels mercenary
mole’ in Lagos (when it was capital of Nigeria) told these writers
that “America’s resurgent interest in who wins elections at the
federal levels in Nigeria is motivated by the strategic realization by
America that election is the only way it can hopefully exert some
control of Nigeria (even though by proxy), given that the political
will to procure coup d’état is all but gone. Besides, the radical
professionalizing of the Nigerian military brass by Obasanjo has
dramatically reduced prospects for coup in contemporary Nigeria.
Continuing in his thesis, Singleton says: “America knows that if it
determines the winner of elections in Nigeria, it will have all the
leave and license to determine major policies, including –
1)
Policies that will be directed against Chinese business (and
diplomatic) incursions in Sub-Saharan Africa (having the mineral-rich
Gulf of Guinea as the ultimate prize);
2)
Policies that will ensure uninterrupted flow of easy-to-refine,
environmentally friendly Bonny light sweet crude to US fuel stations;
and
3)
Policies that will isolate Northern Nigeria as a terrorist outpost to
be given the Iraqi treatment”.
“China, fuel and terrorism are considered matters of direct impact on
the United States and thus held by America as sufficient cause to wax
imperialistic on Nigeria. It appears that Nigerians remain clueless to
these designs and have therefore fallen for what America passes off as
altruistic idealism and genuine interest in nurturing Nigeria’s
democracy, using the mantra of free and fair elections as cover,
sounding as if Nigerians themselves do not want free and fair
elections for their country”.
Continuing, Singleton queried: “why is it possible for America to be
romancing Kuwait, Saidi Arabia, Egypt, China, and a host of other
nations which do not have any democracy? Why would a Nigeria that has
scored three straight multi-party electoral transitions allow itself
to be distracted from scoring its fourth transition by a bunch of
foreign counterintelligence mercenaries scheming to have the final say
on who rules the ‘Nigerian roost’ in 2011”?
Singleton attributed what he called “the easy conquest of Nigeria’s
electoral and democratic psyche” to three main factors comprising of:
1)
“A professional band of activists making a killing from the dollars
flowing from America to finance their organized harassment of the
Nigerian established order (for ulterior ends that they don’t care to
understand);
2)
An unsophisticated ruling party ranks that lack the intellectual
backbone to stand up to a small (but vocal) ‘opposition’ cabal that is
pushing Nigeria around; and
3)
A
weak foreign policy ministerial leadership that appears too obsequious
towards American State Department bullies that still have a textbook
world-view of Nigeria”.
Ambassador Campbell even included Nigeria’s lack of focus in foreign
policy as a ‘sore point’ when he told the US Congress in February 2010
that “Nigeria did not demonstrate its traditional diplomatic
leadership in the resolution of the political and humanitarian crises
in Guinea”.
Our assessment demonstrates that foregoing statement by Campbell is
latest revelation of America’s ‘abiding disappointment’ with Nigeria’s
‘poor’ conduct of her foreign policies since 2007, which is one of the
many ‘pressure points’ said to have been tactfully deployed by the
Americans to continually put Nigeria’s Foreign Ministry on the
defensive, forcing the former Minister to make public pronouncements
and ‘secret concessions’ that tended to weaken the legitimacy of
the Yar’Adua/Jonathan regime.
This situation provided the ‘moral cover’ for Americans to now
advocate regime change in 2011 through Electoral Reforms (read: ‘new’
and ‘timid’ electoral management) that they can control to ensure
emergence of a new federal leadership sans Yar’Adua; and now Jonathan.
This is part of the reason why a statesman like Obasanjo, noted for
his skill in dealing with America’s interventionists is being redlined
in the current Jonathan scheme of things.
Concluding his assessment of current country trends, Singleton said
that “it is noteworthy that America does not sponsor countless
Colloquiums to embarrass Saudi Arabia (which is not even a democracy)
or even China (with which it is now in a battle of wills and
ideology); and will not even contemplate sponsoring an army of Saudi
or Chinese activists/dissidents; and openly fund them to engage in
systematic disturbance of the good order and happiness of their
societies like it now does in Nigeria at new levels of escalation.
Nigeria can easily draw allies against much of these bashings from
within the US administration itself but it has, so far, sadly failed
to do so”.
Our Congressional contacts in Capitol Hill expressed a “collective
shock that Nigeria’s former Foreign Minister was not invited to the
crucial February 2010 Feingold Congressional hearings that featured
Ribadu, Campbell, Carson and Lewis; and till date, the Foreign
Ministry has not raised a whimper, even when the former Minister had
advance Intels knowledge that the Hearings was convened to bash
Nigeria and prepare grounds for further acts of intervention in her
internal affairs”.
One of our sources and ‘assessors’, who requested not to be named in
this essay, said that “Hearings such as was held before Senator
Feingold provide the embryo that forms State Department policies
towards foreign nations. The absence of an official Nigerian voice at
such an important policy hearing on Nigeria is inexcusable; and it
hurt”.
3. Specific Incidents and a Season of
Goading:
John Broder,
a noted political scientist in the United States and an authority on
American interferences in foreign countries, wrote that “Congress
routinely appropriates tens of millions of dollars in covert and overt
money to use in influencing domestic politics abroad”.
According to Broder’s research, which formed the basis for eliminating
US interference in elections in Indo-China, The National Endowment for
Democracy (NED), founded about 28 years ago “to do in the open what
the CIA has done surreptitiously for decades, spends $30 million a
year to support things like political parties, labor unions,
dissident movements and the news media in dozens of
countries”.
This appears to be the case with Nigeria at the moment, given the
hundreds of millions being spent on media campaigns and public
demonstrations by The Nigerian Labor Congress (NLC); certain elements
of the opposition (some from inside PDP itself); and Civil Society
organizations. NLC is considered the greatest asset, which is
why a lot of hard work and money was deployed to convincing its
national leadership to abandon ‘pure labor issues’ such as
deregulation, power, worker welfare, etc in order to concentrate fully
on the burgeoning ‘political action for regime-change through control
of the electoral levers’, as DeVine put it.
Nigeria came into play because in the years following the Chinese rise
in world influence and the ‘intimidating’ economic surge of the Asian
Tigers, “a bored and cowed United States found cause to direct its
pathological predilection for interfering in foreign
elections/internal affairs to nations on the sleep like Nigeria, which
also presents the prurient attraction of a gullible Civil Society
always at the ready to jump at American dollars and ‘friendship’
directed at destabilizing and engendering foreign control of their own
country”.
Recently, Nuhu Ribadu – no doubt a patriot but disaffected and angry
at Yar’Adua for ‘persecuting’ and exiling him - told the US Congress
to fund Nigeria’s dissidents in so many words when he testified before
the Feingold Committee that “we
see a new leadership rising up, new people-oriented power centres
being created. These are new phenomenon in Nigeria and they must be
respected and nurtured. America can no longer take the attitude of
keeping the lid on this boiling pot”.
Singleton and DeVine agree that Ribadu’s calls (or goading, if you
like) to the US Congress plays into the “first instinct of Americans
to always romance anti-government forces in countries it
hardly understands, ultimately getting burnt in the end. It happened
in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America, and all the other
places where they had to abandon ship and retreat back to America
after screwing up things”.
And the “new leadership” being championed, as referenced in the
Feingold late February Hearings, looks beyond acting President
Jonathan because in the same Congressional testimony, former US
Ambassador to Nigeria, Campbell ‘baited unrest in Nigeria’ by calling
“Jonathan’s ascendency unconstitutional”. For good
measure, Campbell repeatedly mocked Jonathan by referring to what he
called “the unconstitutional basis of his presidential
authority”.
Speaking further, Campbell said that “the National Assembly‘s
unconstitutional designation of Vice President Goodluck
Jonathan as the acting president endangers Nigeria‘s fragile
democratic development. And frantically looking to the Brits for
intellectual succour, Campbell claimed that “Ridle Markus, Africa
strategist at Absa Capital (London), noted in the Financial Times
that, ―the National Assembly‘s motion (making Jonathan acting
President) may not have any legal backing, which means…every
decision Goodluck makes could potentially be declared unlawful”.
Our policy wonks who contributed to this essay insist that this
statement is “meant to encourage two opposite, but complementary
results, which are –
1)
To encourage the so-called loyalists of President
Yar’Adua to either disobey Dr. Jonathan or openly challenge his
authority (implosion from within); and
2)
To, at the same time, encourage Nigeria’s conniving
activist lawyers and compliant segment of the judiciary to rule
Jonathan out of authority (implosion from without).
Encouraging a well-meaning but inexperienced Jonathan to dissolve a
Yar’Adua-appointed cabinet and then reappointing vast numbers of the
same Ministers he dismissed (and then Yar’Adua’s nephew) is a
political farce sure to cause instability in the system. Even a strong
and patriotic Senator Mark is being pressured to railroad the
confirmation of the farce in Nigeria’s NASS. Too many bad things could
ensue from all these, resulting in a situation where Nigeria keeps
calling in the Americans to ‘help’ postpone the coup that is lurking
in the corner”.
And going back to how it all began, DeVine reports that US embassy
intelligence moles in Abuja intercepted reliable Intels on the Brigade
of Guards twilight manoeuvres from the Kaduna and Abuja axis to
receive Yar’Adua but failed to alert either Jonathan or Nigeria’s
internal intelligence (including CDS AVM Paul Dike), even when it was
clear to them that Jonathan neither ordered nor was made aware of the
troop movements”.
Continuing, he added that “the stealthy nature of the troop
movement to Nigeria’s Abuja airport was meant as a ‘mock coup’ against
Jonathan, who is expected to get the clear warning that he does not,
and cannot be allowed the control of Nigerian armed forces, even when
the effect of the National Assembly resolution made him (Jonathan) the
constitutional Commander-in-Chief. The non-disclosure of the troop
movements serves as a pointer to the duplicitous politics America
desires to play in the Yar’Adua/Jonathan impasse, as part of the grand
plot to weaken them and show them out of power in 2011”.
Further evidence of this gathering plot to “pit Nigerians against
one another” and ‘the Presidency against itself” is
revealed by the “warning” recently issued to the so-called “Yar’Adua
loyalists” by the US “not to capitalize on the return of the President
to Nigeria to cause trouble for Jonathan”. DeVine asks: “How can
the US say such things when it was aware, via the ‘illegal’ airport
troop manoeuvre to receive Yar’Adua, that ‘causing trouble’ for
Jonathan was already underway but it failed to alert Jonathan?”.
Sources close to the US State Department ‘Nigerian cell’ confirmed
that these ‘dubious double-crossings’ are geared to –
1)
Driving a wedge between Yar’Adua and Jonathan;
2)
Suborn North against South; North against itself
3)
Split the ruling party from its highest leadership
levels; and
4)
Then, the disparate band of clueless activists and
disarrayed opposition will be quickly amalgamated and primed to take
the reins of power in 2011”.
The source added that “a mortally fractured PDP of 'Yar’Adua boys'
against 'Jonathan boys', Northerners against Southerners, will
immediately make Nigeria easy prey to those plotting to take her
prisoner, albeit by the hands of their Nigerian allies”.
Further evidence is to be found in the “serial approbations and
reprobations that have been spewing simultaneously from Washington
since Yar’Adua took ill”.
Therefore, this “gathering interventionism” is already looking beyond
the acting Presidency of Jonathan, who is seen “privately” by these
people as part of the ‘problem’, as the following details will show.
Just recently (after the NASS resolution conferring presidential
powers on Jonathan), Ambassador Campbell told the US Congress that
“following failed efforts to amend the constitutionally-mandated term
limits so that Obasanjo could run for a third term, the president
imposed on the ruling party his own candidates, Umaru Yar’Adua and
Goodluck Jonathan, setting the stage for the current
constitutional crisis”.
Our analysts say that “Campbell’s angst with Obasanjo’s choice of
Yar’Adua/Jonathan provides one of the best evidence yet that Obasanjo
was forced by patriotic zeal to do what he did because he (Obasanjo)
and a select few were privy to ‘hot Intels’ indicating an advanced
plot by foreign agents to weigh-in on the task of ‘picking’ Obasanjo’s
successors, either through ‘a US-dollar induced upset’ at the PDP
presidential Convention or suborning some compliant national electoral
commissioners to ‘rig in’ an opposition candidate.
Further evidence is to be found in the escalated levels of the
campaigns, during the period under review, to discredit the
‘transition’ election’. Devine insists that this plot included “an
international propaganda to give Ghana a heads-up over Nigeria and
prime it to become the new American satellite in African Sahara.
Therefore, Ghana elections, despite Rawling’s threats of another coup,
had to look better than Nigeria’s”.
Support for Devine’s
thesis can be found in the following excerpt: “Ghana’s
2008 election has been hailed by national and international observers
as a model for Africa. The perception of success has prevailed despite
persistent concerns about an inflated voter register and electoral
fraud perpetrated by the two major parties, the NPP and NDC”.
See “The Successful Ghana Election of 2008: A Convenient Myth?
Published by the
Journal of Modern African Studies,
48, 1 (2010), pp. 95–115. Cambridge University Press 2010.
So, despite all the public posturing on other fora, acting President
Jonathan is still deemed “part of the problem by these
‘bait-and-switch’ agents and their Nigerian allies who are intent on
remaking Nigeria after their own image in 2011”. And more revealing of
their angst against Nigeria is Professor Peter Lewis’ remarks before
Congress in February that Yar’Adua/Jonathan
government is “an
administration that has frankly been chilly toward U.S. overtures”.
Peter M. Lewis is the Director, African Studies Program and Associate
Professor at Johns Hopkins University, which is a known “academic
laboratory for using gullible nations as guinea pigs to test-run new
US ideas on neo-imperialism”, according to DeVine. He noted that
“Nigeria has the resources and intellectual class not to
be considered gullible but for the duplicity of her unpatriotic (and
patriotic but clueless) activist elements”.
4. All the other Evidence is in Plain
View:
China Again
- Several Diplomatic Despatches from US Diplomatic Missions and
Intelligence sources in Nigeria reveal that the “one major point of
American discontent towards Nigeria is the increased romance with
China since the Yar’Adua administration; and Yar’Adua is seen by
Americans as too Islamist to boot. Tying the Yar’Adua/Jonathan regime
to China is meant to –
1)
Excite America’s ultra-right interventionists; and
tying Yar’Adua alone to extreme Islam is a subliminal attempt
to make his regime a ‘fair’ target of America’s over-reacting war on
what they privately call ‘Black Islamic Terror’; and
2)
Such labelling will isolate him (Yar’Adua) personally
from his Christian brethrens and compatriots, north to south.”
As one of our sources put it, “America is looking to humiliate China
out of Africa. But at the same time, it feels that such a situation
will not have arisen if President Yar’Adua had remained ‘faithfully’
pro-American and worked very hard to keep China away from Nigeria’s
natural resources. An ‘interim’ Jonathan is not expected to suddenly
change course to repel such ‘fundamental’ Chinese penetration”.
Campbell offered ‘final solutions’ by suggesting to Congress
that the way out is to support Nigeria’s activists and opposition
elements, adding that “they deserve our (American) support. And
such support is in our own interest”. He further also suggested
that “the United States should make full use of its access to the
Nigerian media”. For what? Is Nigeria making full use of US media
in the run up to America’s federal elections or when Americans are in
a partisan contest for power?
And to underscore how total this “new engagement of all Nigeria” is to
be, Ambassador Carson suggested new ‘diplomatic’ outpost in Northern
Nigeria. Hear him: “To meet this call, we seek to expand our
diplomatic presence - most critically - in northern Nigeria ... report
on (northern Nigeria’s) political, economic and social issues”.
Johnnie Carson is the Assistant Secretary, Bureau of African Affairs,
U.S. Department of State; and he frequents Nigeria these days,
including one very suspicious flag stop at General Babangida’s Hilltop
Mansion in Minna, much to the discomfiture of a Jonathan that was then
just ascending to his precarious acting presidency.
Turning again to Campbell, he had also said that “domestic (Nigerian)
Islamic radicalization could facilitate in the future the activities
of international terrorist groups hostile to the United States”. So,
it is no longer Afghanistan that is the headquarters of Al-Qaeda, but
motherland Nigeria, with all her bearded mullahs, caves, Talibans and
dirty bombs all aimed from Abuja towards continental United States.
Haba, Campbell.
Better yet, there is more goading when Lewis told Congress that “the
United States should: support Nigeria’s civil society,
monitor internal developments closely, state
unambiguously that any resort to unconstitutional action against the
Nigerian people will be resisted and back
pro-democracy movements inside the country”.
Our experts at diplomatese who contributed to this essay say that
Lewis’ veiled use of the phrases ‘civil society’ and ‘pro-democracy
movements’ are euphemisms for Nigerian dissidents/activists and
intended to be a coded message to their allies to strike against the
ruling party – PDP “from the very top”. His use of the word
‘resisted’ meant that the US has been encouraged by the reticence
of our government to even be considering ‘some form of military (or
other coercive) action’, unless it is, willy-nilly, given the
final say on who becomes President of Nigeria in 2011, sans Yar’Adua/Jonathan.
Lewis’ warnings against taking ‘unconstitutional action against the
Nigerian people’ means that Jonathan must allow crippling public
demonstrations, in the hope that they will produce an Orange
Revolution; or a Yeltsin-type of civilians climbing atop military
tanks at the Eagle Square, or worse.
But most particularly striking is Lewis’ emphasis on offering US
inducements ONLY to “pro-democracy movements inside the country
(Nigeria)”. Now, you may ask: Since when did Nigeria become a rank
dictatorship, such that will be visited with an army of foreign-funded
‘pro-democracy’ groups?
There is more: Lewis’ emphasis on ‘movements inside the country’
is meant to redline sophisticated Nigerian Diaspora organizations
(which are mostly based in the United States) because those are deemed
to be at once patriotic and wiser in the wily ways of American foreign
interventionist tactics. Thus, they are “less likely to ‘play ball’ by
the allure of a few US dollars and a chance to appear before Congress
for a fifteen seconds of fame. Much as these US-based Nigerian groups
are committed to best democratic practices in their mother country,
they are averse to any action that might push Nigeria to the edge,
especially if they suspect that such action is made-in-the-USA or
misguided”.
Recent Nigerian émigrés in the US, - displaced and disaffected by the
coming of Yar’Adua and his hasty attempts to distance himself from
Obasanjo - are considered Rookies and thus much more likely to be
seduced by “false American idealisms and a chance to feel important”.
Also being targeted for a ‘putsch’ - as a consequence of their
consciousness of American designs on Nigeria - are “those highly
placed Nigerian officials that lived in the US in the recent past.
They are described in Intels Despatches as “ramrod patriots and thus
more vigilant and resistant to American covert and overt tactics at
regime-change”. DeVine calls it “a search and destroy mission
directed at dramatically reengineering Nigeria’s electoral management
to produce the result already pre-determined somewhere in Washington
DC”.
5. So many good Americans are even
warning Nigeria of the looming Danger:
In his award-winning book, A Faustian
Bargain:
U.S. Intervention in the Nicaraguan Elections...,
William I. Robinson charged that “Years of the CIA's bloody proxy war
in Nicaragua set the stage for the final phase: a
made-in-the-USA electoral coup d’état”. According to its
reviewers, the book “details how the National Endowment for Democracy
(NED) worked hand and glove with the Bush administration to create a
unified opposition out of the ineffective and quarrelsome
anti-Sandinista groups”.
"In
Washington's language, the opposition forces that ran against the
Sandinistas in the Nicaraguan elections were the 'democratic' and
'independent' opposition," Robinson writes.
Robinson also charged that “the groups and individuals the NED
employed to "promote democracy" in Nicaragua were also neither
democratic nor independent. Delphi International Group was the
biggest recipient of NED funds for its Nicaragua project. Henry
Quintero, who headed Delphi's Nicaragua program, is tied to the U.S.
intelligence community. Quintero, Carl "Spitz" Channel, and
Richard Miller ran the Institute for North-South Issues, which was a
front for Oliver North's off-the-shelf contra arms operation. Delphi's
president, Paul Von Ward, served in several State Department posts
before joining Delphi”.
Part of Foreword to A Faustian Bargain states that: “The
significance of A Faustian Bargain goes beyond a historical
analysis of U.S. policy in Nicaragua. As Robinson points out with
great prescience, the imperial political intervention which worked so
well in Nicaragua could become a model for U.S. foreign policy in the
(future).
“Indeed, US strategists want to make "promoting democracy"
through political intervention a key element of U.S. foreign policy in
the post-Cold War era” – Faustian. “It is sad that America has
trained her gun sights on Nigeria”, lamented DeVine.
“The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is well known to be
associated and providing funding (plus American diplomatic and
intelligence protection) to such groups as former Senator Ken
Nnamani’s ‘Centre for Leadership and Development’; former
Governor Tinubu’s CODER; and the many others masquerading as
Civil Society. This includes forging close associations with activists
like Femi Falana, and lately making frantic efforts to infiltrate and
split Nigeria’s ruling party from top to down”, says an extract from
our trusted ‘insider’ in Washington who has followed the unfolding
events in the past one year.
Broder’s research found that “those are among the more benign American
efforts to intervene in the domestic politics of nations around the
globe, activities that have been revealed in declassified documents,
memoirs and records of congressional hearings”.
It further found that “since the end of World War II, the United
States, usually acting covertly through the CIA, has installed or
toppled leaders on every continent, secretly supported political
parties of close allies like Japan, fomented coups, spread false
rumours, bribed political figures and spent countless billions of
dollars to sway public opinion” in mostly third-world countries.
Such dirty tactics are already being advocated by “closet
interventionists” like Campbell, who, last week, told the Congress
that “Nigerian
elites relish the opportunity to travel to the U.S. and to own
property there. The power of the U.S. government to revoke visitors’
visas is particularly potent personal leverage with members of the
Nigerian elites”.
The foregoing statement represents part of a more sinister plan to
“overawe ranking Nigerian leaders into submitting to the will of
American idealists, seeking to reduce Nigeria from being the main
player in the Gulf of Guinea to something akin to ‘the baby
elephant’ of Africa”, as DeVine humorously put it.
Peter Kornbluh, a highly respected American researcher at the
National Security Archive, an organization affiliated with George
Washington University that monitors intelligence and foreign policy,
called on Congress to halt what he said is “a long pattern of U.S.
manipulation, bribery and covert operations to influence the political
trajectory of countless countries around the world”. Kornbluh has
spoken up for Nigeria where some of those who are supposed to do so
and who are in authority seemed to have been cowed.
In the recent CIA Fact Book on Nigeria, there seems to
be also a note of caution and circumspection to rabble-rousers like
Campbell, Carson, Lewis and other disaffected elements waxing
nostalgic for US direct intervention in Nigerian politics. The Fact
Book pointedly said of Nigeria that “Nigeria is experiencing its
longest period of civilian rule since independence. The general
election of 2007 marked the first civilian-to-civilian transfer of
power since its history”.
Echoing the same theme, Bruce Fein, former Assistant Attorney General
of United States and a frequent and highly respected ‘testifier’
before the US Congress said that Nigeria experienced “a landmark
election in 2007”.
All our analysts who contributed to this essay concluded that “Nigeria
disappointed these people by conducting credible elections in
Anambra State. Beyond the surface and pre-election posturing, these
people were actually hoping that Anambra will be a fiasco and thus
give them the ultimate lightening rod they so desperately needed to
fast-track the grand plots on 2011. The backlash and escalation we
have seen of recent were ignited more by hurt feelings than anything
to do with the ‘officially-admitted’ faulty voters register in Anambra.
Remember same faulty voters’ register rampant in Ghana’s
much-hailed 2008 general elections”. DeVine, to whom the
Anambra scenario was blinded, agrees
in toto.
According to Broder, “even those who support American efforts to
influence the internal politics of other countries acknowledge that it
has been carried to murderous extremes in the past and
has to be carefully monitored”. Our analysts call for more vigilance
on the part of “anybody who desires orderly transition in 2011”.
“The toppling of Saddam revealed weaknesses in American foreign
interference taken too far - the genre Broder warned about. The
embarrassing reality of absolute absence of Weapons of Mass
Destruction in Iraq revealed that the real reason for the ill-fated
invasion was Regime Change and oil politics, to boot. Though
Iraqi and American battle-field casualties were legion, of more
significance to the ultimate folly of it all is that the invasion took
Rumsfeld, Collin Powell, Cheney and many others as casualties as well.
Their careers were ruined; and capping it all was Bush who carries the
invasion as the number one factor that tainted his double presidency.
“And talking also of Regime Change through elections (as is the
case in the current ‘Nigerian plot’), America conducted the worst
election ever in the history of Iraq, pitting Shiites against Sunnis
and Kurds against the rest of the country, brother against brother,
all Muslims. In the end, American Generals were the ones lamenting
their total lack of the skills of nation-building. Nigeria should
learn from this and remain watchful as she goes into 2011”.
"With the end of the cold war, a lot of the justification for these
activities has fallen away," said Michael Beschloss, a historian who
has written several volumes about U.S. policy in the Cold War era.
"It's always going to be a struggle between ends and means, but the
burden of proof is now much greater. But when you're a country in the
custom of trying to influence other countries' politics, it's a habit
that is very hard to break." A habit that is now manifesting itself in
Nigeria because of “her sweet crude, vibrant population, less than
patriotic (or clueless) activists, weak foreign ministry and the
financial interest of pesky ex-intelligence agents desperately
looking for new and easy incomes in an era of a meltdown that wiped
out their savings and stocks”.
According to Broder, ‘Presidents from Harry Truman to Obama have
justified American political interference abroad as necessary to
promote democracy or combat the spread of communism,
totalitarianism or mere anarchy’. In Nigeria of today, the continuous
orgy of US interference in Nigerian politics, which escalated since
2006, has been too easily ‘justified’ on the basis of promotion of
democracy. Broder said that such hackneyed excuses have
been “used to justify ignoble means”, including “direct and brazen
engagement of the electoral environment in the subject country”,
as DeVine put it.
6 Some Notable
Moments in History that should as a Primer on how Nigeria can contain
the Looming Danger:
Broder’s research found that ‘the CIA's earliest political activities
-- considered by many agency veterans to be its greatest
successes anywhere -- were in France and Italy in 1947 and
1948, when aggressive and well-financed Communist Parties and
communist labor unions came close to winning power by the popular
will.
‘The United States poured millions of dollars into both countries to
support centre-right parties and conservative unionists, forestalling
the Communist advance. The Italian effort was supervised by James
Jesus Angleton, who gained notoriety later as the CIA's chief of
counterintelligence for his paranoia about Soviet penetration of the
agency.
‘The CIA grew more ambitious in the 1950s, helping to overthrow
leaders in Iran and Guatemala that the United States considered too
leftist and replacing them with friendly dictators. More subtly, it
secretly manipulated elections in the Philippines, Lebanon
and Nepal with large amounts of covert cash.
‘Edward Lansdale, the legendary CIA operative, essentially ran the
successful presidential campaign of Defense Minister Ramon Magsaysay
in the Philippines. At one point in the campaign, Dulles, then the
director of central intelligence, offered Lansdale $5 million to use
in the operation. The CIA officer cabled back that he could sway the
election for $1 million. The agency money was supplemented by secret
donations from U.S. corporations doing business in the Philippines,
including Coca-Cola.
‘In Lebanon, the CIA supported Christian parties with U.S. government
money and donations by American oil companies that wanted to ensure a
friendly government in Lebanon, a pivotal Middle Eastern country.
Wilbur Crane Eveland, a CIA officer, later described driving his “gold
and white DeSoto onto the grounds of President Camille Chamoun's
residence in Beirut and openly delivering political payoffs”.
"Throughout the elections, I travelled regularly to the presidential
palace with a briefcase full of Lebanese pounds, then returned late at
night to the embassy with an empty twin case" to be replenished with
CIA money, Eveland wrote in "Ropes of Sand" in 1980, a history of
American policy failures in the Middle East.
Large body of research by Broder and others on this matter of US
interference in foreign elections found that even “countries that were
supposed to be allies were not immune to American meddling. The United
States secretly supported Japan's Liberal Democratic Party and
cultivated its rising political figures”. No matter that Nigeria is
also considered friend of America.
‘A recently declassified State Department cable recounts a
conversation among American diplomatic, military and intelligence
officers about the most effective way to ensure the victory of
friendly politicians in an election in Japan's Ryukyu Islands,
including the important U.S. military outpost at Okinawa.
The declassified Report shockingly revealed that “the American
officials unabashedly discussed the mechanisms of covert financial
support for candidates of the Liberal Democratic Party, debating only
how to do it, and not whether (they should even try or not)”.
‘Edwin Reischauer, then the U.S. ambassador to Japan, argued that it
would be "much safer to let national officials of the Liberal
Democratic Party handle the money than to channel it directly to local
candidates”.
"Okinawa is a small place, like a small town in the U.S.," Reischauer
said, according to a memorandum that was declassified in September.
"Okinawa is also like a small country prefecture in Japan, where
political manoeuvres -- particularly involving money -- are well
known. The Japanese conservatives are going to be involved with funds
and other activities in the Ryukyuan elections anyway, and it would be
a perfect cover to simply add to their resources rather than trying to
carry it out directly in the Ryukyus."
‘The declassified Report says that the “The CIA spent $4 million to
help Eduardo Frei Montalva defeat Salvador Allende Gossens in Chilean
elections. Nine years later, it inspired a coup that toppled Allende,
who had won power legitimately.
Africa, with Nigeria forming the pivotal point has lately come into
play. And to prepare grounds for what is to come soon, US
“non-officials are helping their official colleagues who succeeded
them to carry on with their avowed but misguided notion of having the
final say on who rules Nigeria next”.
7. The Way Forward/Conclusion:
Despite all these plots against Nigeria, there is hope
– to be found in the outrage of vast numbers of Americans who continue
to express their disapproval, albeit mutedly. A Congressional
Committee chaired by Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, concluded that “many
of these activities were counterproductive as well as wrong”.
Yet, the American moral majority can only succeed in
calling their wayward interventionists home when patriotic citizens of
countries-in-gun-sight, such as Nigeria, rise up to defend their
sovereignty.
This is where it can be said that Nigeria was hurt in
many ramifications by last year’s remarks (in the US) attributed to
Nigeria’s Foreign Minister, tending to cast a mall of illegitimacy on
the Yar’Adua/Goodluck administration. From then on, Americans began to
sense, rightly or wrongly, that “their broad designs on regime-change
in 2011 has allies within the Yar’Adua/Jonathan combine”,
says DeVine”.
Moving forward
..."we're more than a little hypocritical about these issues," said
Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr., who was staff director of the Sen. Frank
Church Congressional committee that reviewed the sort of ‘actions
being aimed at Nigeria now. "The United States has certainly engaged
in these things, but we get all up in arms when someone else does. The
things the CIA cited as successes really weren't successes," added
Schwarz, now a lawyer at the firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York.
"They were an arrogant exercise of our power to intervene in domestic
affairs" of other nations, he concluded.
The award-winning Book - A Faustian Bargain – contains the
Modus Operandi and reveals the full scope of U.S. interference in
foreign elections, using Nicaragua as a test case. We will reproduce
portions of it below to serve as a further Primer on how Nigeria can
best articulate its national defenses.
Below are Excerpts from the official review of the Book:
“Much has been written about the $12.5 million Congress allocated for
distribution by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in
1989-1990 to internal opposition groups in Nicaragua. But Robinson
lifts the veil of secrecy which shrouded the clandestine channels used
by the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide the opposition with
another $17.5 million. Robinson notes parenthetically that the Bush
administration spent about $20 per voter in Nicaragua, compared to $4
per voter in the U.S. elections of 1988.
“Funds were offered to leaders and organizations on the condition that
they follow the U.S. political strategy. Washington not only selected
Chamorro as the candidate of the National Opposition Union (UNO) but
actually drafted the platform she ran on.
"The pressures on me from the [U.S.] Embassy to join are really
intense," an anonymous opposition leader told Robinson, the author of
the book. "They are distributing a lot of cash; it's difficult to
resist”.
“Civic,
labor, youth, and women's groups were organized by NED-funded
political operatives who taught them the political skills needed for
an election campaign and mapped out their day-to-day activities.
La Prensa, the anti-Sandinista newspaper, and opposition radio
and television stations were funded and supplied with UNO political
ads and programming developed by specialists hired with NED money.
“Robinson, a former reporter for the Sandinista's Nicaragua News
Agency, was based in Washington, D.C. in 1989-1990, where he reported
on the NED's Nicaraguan election project. He developed a talent then
for getting administration and NED officials to talk to him and for
uncovering incriminating documents, some of which are included as an
appendix to A Faustian Bargain”.
8. Final Thoughts
If you remove Nicaragua from the above excerpt from A Faustian
Bargain, you would think that the reviewer is talking about what
is happening in Nigeria NOW, and the more that will come if Nigeria
fails to ‘activate her defensive mechanisms’.
The plot has thickened and “the hawks are circling to snatch the
mother-hen”, as Mr Fein likes to say. Therefore, A Faustian Bargain
is recommended as a must-read to all patriotic brethrens that care
about Nigeria’s sovereignty and stability, as we go into 2011.
As part of the effort to defend Nigeria’s sovereignty, it is important
to stress to all that Nigerians need to be proud of their country;
proud of what they have accomplished as a young democracy since 1999.
Yulia Kasyankova, a Russian Lawyer and author who visited Nigeria last
year and did her own independent research, published an epic essay on
her impression of Nigeria. In her Letter to Nigerians, she
wrote that:
“Nigeria
is the most populous black nation in the world. You have a rich
history, rich natural resources and a climate most favorable for
agriculture, when you can grow crops and fruit all year round. But
above all, you have democracy, ten years on, better than what Russia
had about same time after Communism.
The heaviest task is to make people believe in it and to feel positive
and proud of their country”.
The writers wrote in from the United States
All responses to sodumegwu@yahoo.com
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