Decoding the US Alarm on Nigeria

Parroting the line of the jaundiced nationalist, some folks in the government and the National Assembly have indicated that the U.S. wishes our country bad. They wish to see Nigeria fall and slide giddy down to chaos and disintegration, according to them.That may be the most indulgent and preposterous line voiced in public debate in a long time.I must say that the report did not come out of an altruistic American love for Nigerians. It is not because America necessarily loves to see Nigeria rise to robustness either politically or economically. Far from it. America takes care of America first. And there is nothing wrong with that. I would like to see Nigeria take care of its own, a thing that seems out of character with our government.The U.S. could not spend millions of dollars to sponsor studies and reports of nations around the world if it did not see its interests and even survival in the exercise. The country, as some of our miseducated officials do not know, undertakes tons of such reports everywhere in the world. This does not always involve the government but also myriads of think tanks whose resources the government also uses.These studies add to the pool of the country’s knowledge and inform its strategy for relating with the world.In the case of Nigeria, the U.S. loves our oil, and would not have access to much of this wealth if the country collapses. The U.S. president, George W. Bush, who hates to travel to other countries, has visited Nigeria. And he did that in his first term. Does anyone think that this man who left the U.S. only once in his life before he became president suddenly developed love for Nigeria and Africa. This is the man who once described Africa as a country.The main thrust of his visit is that a happy and prosperous Nigeria helps his job, and provides more oil to the U.S. which consumes a large chunk of the world’s energy resources.Why would the U.S. government want the source of that incredible resource go to waste on the platter of official recklessness of Nigerians?The U.S. also understands that Nigeria accommodates the largest concentration of black people in the world with a population of about 100 million. How could that situation give the U.S. peace of mind? The collapse of Nigeria would also mean a huge refugee problem for the U.S.Liberia, which is just a fraction of a region of Nigeria, created unspeakable refugee problem when it broke down. The country broke down about a decade ago and we are still not sure when real peace will enrobe that nation again. Imagine if what befell Sergeant Doe’s nation affected our people.When the nation collapsed, America absorbed many refugees, and they had to be fed, clothed, schooled and culturally adjusted to their new homes. This costs the U.S. a huge sum of money and institutional energy.There is hardly a city you will visit in the U.S. without a big Ethiopian or Somali community. Most of them came to the U.S. over the disintegration of their countries. The bloody madness between the Hutus and Tutsis in the 1990’s wore on with the United States ignoring it. The Clinton Administration said it was not its cup of tea. But after the cup ran over with millions dead, the same country had to devote hundreds of millions of dollars towards its rehabilitation. Both Clinton and the then secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, paid personal visits and shed tears at what they saw. They regretted their lackadaisical approach to the tragedy.Presently, the world is enveloped by the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. The U.S. has declared the crisis genocide, thanks to Colin Powell, and millions in aid is pouring there from the U.S.This is no apology for the U.S., which has and continues to do a lot of wrong and right in the world. But the U.S. understands that as a superpower with investments around the world, when a nation collapses, it loses part of its wealth. Eventually, it will have to play a role in its correction. During the Tsunami crisis, many critics railed at the country for its tentative approach to the tragedy in terms of money and other resources. Now, two of its ex-presidents are at the top of the relief project.During the Clinton Administration, the U.S. declared the AIDS crisis in Africa a security threat to the U.S. The reason was that the disease was taking away the young and vital segment of the population, and the consequence in the long run would be lack of resources and depreciating wealth with implications for government breakdown, civil wars and disintegration. That’s why the country stepped up its drive to put down the causes and effects of the disease.The response of Obj is more than a little comical, considering that it was the same man who would not see enough of Bush. He is like the despised lover who keeps showing up and not getting respect. Suddenly, he thinks Bush and his government think ill of Nigeria.The irony of the report is that we had to wait for such ideas to be expressed by a superpower like the U.S. for it to generate some local hubbub. Not long ago, Lagos State Governor, Bola Tinubu, asserted that Nigeria as is currently constituted cannot endure. Professor Adebayo Williams once noted that future hoists a scenario of what he calls 'revolutionary anarchy.' No one listened.Rather than live in denial, a responsible government would call the experts and try to work out a plan to avert the fulfilment of the predictions. They did not say it was a certainty but a possibility if Nigeria continued in its present path. I don’t expect Obj to devise a redemptive policy because he would not know one if he saw it. I really fear for my country and my people because of the myopic oligarchy that runs it.