 Published
March 27th, 2010
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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