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President Umaru Yar'Adua has clarified an agreement he made with President George W. Bush regarding military cooperation between Nigeria and United States.
•As AC says he is sellout
President Umaru Yar'Adua has clarified an agreement he made with President George W. Bush regarding military cooperation between Nigeria and United States.
In an interview with VOA (Hausa Service), President Yar'Adua said that contrary to some media reports, he did not agree to allow the U.S. to establish military bases in Nigeria when the two leaders met on Thursday in Washington. Rather, Yar'Adua said he agreed to a partnership with the U.S. military's new Africa Command, AFRICOM.
According the president, that includes accepting U.S. assistance, weapons, equipment and logistical support to establish a stand-by force made-up of troops contributed by African countries.
Yar'Adua said he and Bush also discussed the situation in Nigeria's volatile Niger Delta region.
He explained that his government would soon sign a peace agreement that will include all the militant groups operating in the oil-producing region.
The United States is seeking an African headquarters for AFRICOM, which is currently operating out of Stuttgart, Germany.
The United States said AFRICOM will help African countries confront terrorism, natural disasters and other factors that could affect their stability. But several countries, including Libya and South Africa, have expressed concern that the command will increase U.S. influence on the continent.
Meanwhile, the Action Congress (AC) has said President Umaru Yar'Adua will be elevating expediency over Nigeria's sovereignty if indeed his apparently arm-twisted endorsement of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) is true.
In a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said such a volte face will be condemnable, especially since the AC has it on good authority that President Yar'Adua succumbed to the allure of US recognition of his illegitimate administration in endorsing the controversial AFRICOM.
'The spectre of a President who will do anything to hang onto power, no matter how illegitimately obtained, is saddening and it is definitely not the stuff of which great leaders are made," AC said.
The party said the tepid denial of the endorsement by the President, in an interview with the Hausa Service of the VOA, was not enough to mitigate the confusion created by the reported White House endorsement.
'President Yar'Adua's purported support for AFRICOM was widely reported by the world media. Therefore, any denial must be made available to the same platform for it to be credible.
'The President must also go beyond such denial to assure Nigerians that they have not been dragged into a quagmire with the controversial support for the equally controversial AFRICOM.
'This is particularly important considering that the decision rejecting AFRICOM was taken after a National Council of State meeting and announced with fanfare by a state governor, speaking on behalf of the President,'' AC said.
The party said the agenda of AFRICOM is to station American military forces in Africa, through the establishment of military bases in the Gulf of Guinea, which includes our own Niger Delta - an area which sits atop a stupendous oil reserve greater than that of the entire Middle East.
'What other rationale can the U.S. have for establishing military bases in this area if not to control the oil? Granting the US permission to establish a military base in Nigeria or near the Nigerian territory will only increase the vulnerability of our country to terrorist attacks as evident from the wave of terrorism in countries who harbour American forces such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, just to mention a few.
'Furthermore, allowing the US to establish a military base in the Gulf of Guinea can only worsen the problem of the Niger Delta. Given the US interest in Nigeria's oil and the U.S. penchant for meddlesomeness, the setting up of a military base in the oil region will internationalise the crisis and make Nigeria to lose whatever control it has over it, with dire consequences for its sovereignty.
'We agree totally with the editorial opinion of the Vanguard of Thursday 13th December, 2007 that it is impossible for any government in this country to ignore the fact that almost half of our citizens are Moslems and they do not subscribe to branding any of their brothers anywhere as terrorists, as the US has been doing since the start of its war on terrorism.
'We also endorse the position of the editorial that it will be fool hardy for any Nigerian government to ignore the fact that no government that has accepted the protection of the US, including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey which has a large percentage of Muslims, has experienced peace since the early 1990s.
In fact all such countries ha ve had cause to regret their romance with the U.S
'We therefore call on the National Assembly not to allow the President to sign this AFRICOM treaty, which will be tantamount to signing away Nigeria's sovereignty,'' AC said.
'If however it is true the President has not endorsed AFRICOM, he should say so unequivocally,'' the party added.