- Why Nigeria shouldn’t let the US push it to war in Niger: Part 2
By Emmanuel Ogebe
The story is told that a new journalist at an American newspaper asked his Editor, “How does our paper spell IRAN? Is it ending with a Q or with an N? This joke was meant to illustrate that some people mistake them for one country though different (One invaded America’s embassy and one was invaded by America.)
Niger and Nigeria may well be mixed up but they’re quite different being francophone and anglophone countries. An informed American may recall Niger for three reasons
1. The false story about Niger uranium used to justify Iraq’s WMD invasion and expose a CIA agent (for which White House official Scooter Libby was jailed.)
2. The death of four US Green berets in a terror ambush (over which President Trump and Congresswoman Frederica Wilson clashed)
3. The Terror kidnap of American Philip Walton who was successfully rescued by Navy Seals in neighboring Nigeria on Trump’s orders.
Yesterday, Nigeria’s senate failed to give war authorization to newly-installed, legitimacy-bereft Nigerian ruler Bola Tinubu in his first defeat from a parliament he controls.
Why exactly did the US push him towards a war in Niger that virtually the entire senate rejected?
The answer requires lots of context.
Last week, I was watching a special report on the news in DC about USA training troops in Niger on counter terrorism. The very next day, there was a coup in Niger by the army the US was training in CT!
It’s a very awkward situation for America’s almost 2000 troops plus a drone base to be in a country where the government was toppled. Niger’s coup leader’s cutting off ties with Nigeria, France and USA means a loss of the latter’s strategic military foothold in the Sahel high terror threat theater.
American troops cannot help defeat the military to restore the president like Russian Wagner forces otherwise it would spell doom to their ever being hosted by any country again. So they need another proxy fighter and Nigeria is it. Again.
In 1885, at the Berlin conference, European countries carved out territories for themselves in what was the “scramble for Africa.” France got Niger and England got Nigeria in a nutshell.
Even after independence for many African countries in the sixties, a new ideological scramble for Africa broke out during the Cold War with the west and the Soviet communist world jousting for acolytes.
Then there is this. President Biden hosted a U.S. Africa Summit in Washington in December and Putin hosted Africa’s heads of state in Russia eight months later. China had built the African Union a Headquarters in Ethiopia long before and Israeli Prime Minister had traveled to meet with African presidents at a sub regional summit on the continent some years ago. Even terror group ISIS has opened its African franchise ISWAP. Why? There’s a new scramble for Africa – the “Warm War” – with different regions warming up to Africa in a renewed dig for resources and bid for alliances (which I also call a “charm offensive.”)
But while UK and France had strong historical ties and alliances in Africa (Anglophone and Francophone countries) non-colonial powers like Russia, China and USA didn’t – except of course for Liberia.
A nation born with the help of freed enslaved African Americans, Liberia is essentially America’s only longstanding historical tie to Africa. Yet when it was embroiled in a horrific civil war, who helped Liberia out and brought peace? Nigeria!
The question arises – if Nigeria spent $12Billion and hundreds of military lives to protect by proxy America’s lone African child, why would it locate its troops in an adjacent French-speaking country that was susceptible to a coup rather than a military ally and top trade partner that was no longer vulnerable to coups?
It’s a very complicated situation but it originates with policy ambivalence and the Niger debacle is just the latest manifestation of America’s aforesaid schizophrenic Nigeria policy.
In May 2023, the first known deadly US embassy convoy ambush, following years of US cover up of attacks on American diplomats and citizens like Special Agent in Charge Jennifer Dent amongst others, occurred in south east Nigeria.
While mass killings continued in intensity with triple digit fatalities in Benue, Plateau, Niger and Kaduna states in a couple of months since the elections, the US has continued to paper over islamist genocide by unlawfully delisting Nigeria from review and citation for egregious religious persecution since President Biden assumed the presidency.
As stated in my letter to President Biden, “Nigeria had been subject to derogatory designation since the inception of the International Religious Freedom Act over two decades ago, including ironically under your Obama/Biden administration, until you came and illegally and surreptitiously dropped Nigeria’s designation as a Country of Particular Concern – even as a Christian schoolgirl was burnt alive on video in a government school by Muslims and no one convicted since last year.
The US is not just cuddling transnational terrorism by both the Fulani militia and ISIS West Africa but
glossing over a religious apartheid and genocide in Nigeria, both politically and terroristically, while continuing to endanger American lives.
Ironically, Secretary of State Blinken’s latest blackout of Nigeria’s religious freedom crises came weeks after ordering the unprecedented evacuation of most American diplomats and their families out of Abuja due to islamists‘ bombing attempt on American diplomats’ homes in Nigeria in October – and Gen. Buhari’s inability to secure them!
Buhari’s delegation to your US Africa Presidential Summit last December stayed in DC hotels alongside hundreds of US diplomats displaced from Abuja for weeks. The US denial of the ongoing religious genocide at the expense of refugee American diplomatic families was an unspeakable travesty and slight of their service.
As such the State Department’s State of Denial continues to claim the lives of Nigerians needlessly and threaten the lives of Americans as well. As Dr King said, “injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice everywhere!” “
For years, the US had denied the global jihadist links and aspirations of Boko Haram and other terrorist groups, falsely claiming that the killings in Nigeria were local, not religious and about poverty.
This denial served two purposes: firstly to avoid the optics of USA being involved in an “anti-Muslim” conflict in Nigeria (which I called the “see no jihad, say “no jihad” policy”) but it also unfortunately helped the Boko Haram insurgency spiral out of control and metastasize into a sub regional terror group holding multi-territorial swathes with global affiliations.
Therefore to avoid dealing with reality, the US set itself up because reality wouldn’t avoid dealing with it!
When in 2014, Boko Haram abducted almost 300 schoolgirls sparking the global #Bringbackourgirls campaign, President Obama’s response was to send US troops NOT to Nigeria but to Chad – a French-speaking country ruled by a military autocrat!
In fairness, Obama also helped Nigeria establish a counter terrorism intelligence fusion center and a multidisciplinary investigation team to help locate the abducted Chibok schoolgirls but my interaction with the team didn’t inspire much confidence.
However in anonymous remarks to a newspaper, a U.S. military source claimed that after they planned a raid of Boko Haram’s camp with demobilizing gas to safely rescue the girls, the attack team arrived only to find the terrorists wearing gas masks!
The stark fact is that America did not trust the Nigerian military but also secretly knew that terrorism posed a threat to Americans in Nigeria despite its public claims that Boko Haram was just a local affair!
Twenty years ago, this year, I arrived Jigawa state on my first tour of duty as Country Representative of a U.S. government donor agency to Nigeria. What I saw alarmed me. I was welcomed to a village where we had built 400 houses by children wearing Osama Bin Laden hats – apparently the most popular name the year after the 911 terror attacks on the US.
Although dismissed by my HQ in DC as just the norm, nine years later when a U.S. consulate was proposed to be built in the northwest Kano state, I opposed it knowing that Americans would not be safe there.
In 2012, I wrote, “terror group Boko Haram has made the government itself and Christians in particular its declared target, but in a remarkable twist, the US has managed to point disapproving fingers at Nigeria’s mild-mannered accidental president former zoology professor Goodluck Jonathan. According to the US, Nigeria’s Muslim north feel uncared for by Jonathan and must get more federal checks…
The disingenuous US policy on the situation is disturbing on several levels. It borders on being a “ransom demand” on behalf of a region that has not hidden its disdain for all things western – most especially the US itself – for decades and is now using violent extremism to political advantage. Alternatively it hovers on the verge of being a “re-victimization of the victim.” The US is either negotiating for the terrorists or blaming the victim or both!
Incidentally, just the day before the State Department’s top diplomat on Africa unfolded its key policy thoughts, Boko Haram attempted two signature AlQaeda-style church bombings on Easter Sunday. Ambassador Johnnie Carson did not so much as use his speech to condemn the attacks. Instead he maintained that the attacks were “not religious” and claimed that both churches and mosques had been targeted by Boko Haram. However when I pointed out to him that there is no single account of a mosque being bombed, he simply had no response.
Instead the Assistant Secretary of State for Africa went to extremes to paint a picture of a pervasively poor northern region in need of more money as an antidote to terror. It was an unspeakable US apologetic for terror that would gall even the most jaded cynic of US foreign policy intentions.
(Re) Carson’s remarks at the Center for Strategic International Studies..
Not only is the US interpretation of the realities in Nigeria patently false, its resulting position seems to justify terrorism and vilify the victims…
Carson did not give credit to the Christians whose restraint in the midst of extreme provocation is singularly responsible for the postponement – thus far – of a religious war in Africa’s biggest country.
Worse still rather than proffer aid or assistance to the thousands of internally displaced persons from the northern crisis (hundreds of Christians were killed and over 500 churches destroyed in a 48-hour window last year unrelated to the terror ) US is urging aid to the people responsible for this violence!
The absurdity of the US position is best illustrated by its own response to the 911 terror attacks. Using exaggerated intelligence the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan to capture and contain terrorists. It set up a Department of Homeland security. But instead of helping Nigeria to set up a similar Department of Homeland Security to deal with this lethal emerging threat, the US criticizes Nigeria and says it should create a Ministry for northern affairs – not to care for victims of the violence but for the aggressors!
This is just as ludicrous as if the US government sided with a dissident Osama Bin Laden against the oil-rich Saudi king insisting he give more money to Bin Laden sympathizers to make them less extremist!
(Nigeria has the highest single day casualty of 2012 with 200 killed on Jan 20) or the thousands killed in the last dozen years. In a nutshell the US says the violence is not religious, the terrorists are not terrorists, the victims are guilty of making the aggressors poor and the aggressors should be rewarded with more resources from more peaceful regions.” https://justiceforjos.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/nigerias-persecuted-christians-deserve-better-than-current-us-foreign-policy/
There are two important things to note here. One is that Carson’s remarks that the US would build a consulate in Kano in April 2012 came three months after Boko Haram attacked all military, police and intelligence sites in the city, mounted killing checkpoints and killed over 200 people including 40 policemen and women.
My flight from Abuja to Amsterdam via Kano was diverted because of the ongoing attack and KLM, the only western airline flying to Kano, stopped after decades. Later intel said BH had planned to seize the Kano airport that day (and possibly our flight the target) for a 911-style attack.
If you think this was bad enough that the US was still planning to put Americans in this hotbed, wait for this.
Just eight months earlier, a colleague, Vernice an American attorney who worked as a diplomat at the United Nations building in Abuja, survived its suicide bombing by Boko Haram the very same August day we were scheduled to meet.
I was later to find that the bomb attacks on her (and before her) Jennifer Dent, an FBI agent also serving as a diplomat at the US embassy in Abuja, in 2011 were covered up by the U.S. government till this day (a dozen years later.)
Why? All because the US didn’t want to aid Nigeria in fighting islamist terrorists for the optics. Rather the US sent troops to Muslim majority Chad to help fight Boko Haram in Nigeria and then sent troops and a drone site to Muslim majority Niger as well.
The US then tacitly supported Gen. Mohammed Buhari, an Islamist, against Dr Jonathan Goodluck a Christian. Senator Tinubu hired a top ex-Obama official as election consultant and their All Progressives Congress opposition party APC (essentially a north/south Muslim coalition) won the election.
Within weeks of coming to power, Gen. Buhari was feted in Washington with White House directives to all cabinet ministers to facilitate his visit – the fastest US visit of any Nigerian leader ever.
At a public event, Gen. Buhari made a startling indictment of his hosts saying starkly that the US government had “aided and abetted” Boko Haram by refusing arms sales to his predecessor Dr Jonathan Goodluck.
With Niger now ruled by Buhari, a Muslim, the US finally agreed to arms sales to Nigeria. Ironically the US also got Buhari to expel South African mercenaries who Jonathan had hired to achieve decisive victories against the terrorists late in his tenure. Why would the US not give significant help to Jonathan but rather place troops in neighboring Muslim countries of Chad and Niger but then turn around when a Muslim took over Nigeria to have South African mercenaries kicked out?
The endangered American base in Niger today would have been located in Nigeria if:
-If the US trusted the Nigerian army
– If the US was truthful about global jihadi terrorism ties to Nigeria
– If the president of Nigeria was a Muslim previously
The US needs Nigeria’s army again now to fight Niger’s army so that their bases, infrastructure and troops are secure, by proxy as Nigeria did for them in Liberia three decades ago.
And who better to war against a Muslim west African country on behalf of America than old pal Nigeria headed by a Muslim president dogged by illegitimacy on whom the US has derogatory records?
And what better opportunity would a president-elect from a flawed election denounced by the European and US observers have to curry favor with the west and cure his birth defects than to sacrifice a few good men?
In politics, there is no greater love than this, but to sacrifice your friends for your career.
Yesterday, Nigeria’s senator reportedly rejected the president’s war authorization by over 90% in a closed door session meant to save him public humiliation, although he had already mobilized the troops.
Sadly it is another US policy push heading for disaster. The US had tried to pressure President Jonathan to legalize gay marriage and it backfired resulting in an over 90% endorsement of the criminalization of homosexuality instead. Apparently the US did not learn from recent history…
The bigger irony is that in trying to push Nigeria to reverse the Niger coup militarily, the US risks triggering a coup in Nigeria.
The army is overstretched on deployment in 30 out of 36 states while fighting two wars – against ISIS and the Fulani militia both ranked 1st and 4th deadliest terror groups at one point by the Global Terrorism Index. The coupists in Niger have given the same complaints that Nigerian troops have and there is just so much the military can take (in fact conditions in Nigeria are worse.)
Will Tinubu really go the way of US president Bush who invaded Iraq on a false basis, some think, to distract from his election legitimacy or will he like Qatar bribe the US with host facilities to relocate their Niger base to? After all, America is in Niger largely because of Nigeria but instead of Nigeria.
Section 5 (4) of the Nigerian constitution, provides thus;
Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions of this section:-
(a) the President shall not declare a state of war between the Federation and another country except with the sanction of a resolution of both Houses of the National Assembly, sitting in a joint session; and
(b) except with the prior approval of the Senate, no member of the armed forces of the Federation shall be deployed on combat duty outside Nigeria.
Now section sub section 5 of the same section adds this;
Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (4) of this section, the President, in consultation with the National Defence Council, may deploy members of the armed forces of the Federation on a limited combat duty outside Nigeria if he is satisfied that the national security is under imminent threat or danger:
Provided that the President shall, within seven days of actual combat engagement, seek the consent of the Senate and the Senate shall thereafter give or refuse the said consent within 14 days.
Section 217 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria allows military action defending Nigeria from external aggression; and maintaining its territorial integrity and securing its borders from violation on land, sea, or air; or perform such other functions as may be prescribed by an Act of the National Assembly.
Regardless of what horse trading is going on today with the senators planned meeting with the president, the senate cannot pass an act for war authorization this week because the House of Representatives has already gone on recess. Mr. Tinubu does not even have a cabinet or a defense council. Any declaration of war now would be illegal.
The seven-day deadline to the coupists ended hours ago.
More in our next installment.
Emmanuel Ogebe
