 1
June 2006
 With
a massive population of 130 million, which is ethnically
and religiously strained, Nigeria is heading toward
disaster and the stakes are high for both Nigeria and the
West.
The Niger Delta has one of
the biggest reserves of oil on the planet: 35 billion bbl.
of black gold – the largest of any African country and the
eight largest on earth. The region takes up 50,000 sq km
in southern Nigeria and is also home to some of Africa’s
poorest people and is on the top scale of some of the
worlds worst environmental destruction. It exports some
2.5 million barrels of oil a day, and the government plans
to double that amount by 2010.
As a result, since the
September 11th attacks against America, the
Bush administration has positioned Nigeria as an
alternative to the unstable and volatile regions in the
Middle East and South America. In 2002, the White House
declared the oil of Africa a “strategic national
interest”, or in other words the United States would use
military force, if necessary, to protect it. So Nigeria’s
troubles could soon become America’s and like Iraq and
Afganistan could cost dearly in both blood and money.
Nigeria was cobbled
together to serve the then British Empire’s economic
interests. Having established the Royal Niger Company to
exploit resources in the Niger Delta, and expanded inland
from there, the British found themselves by the late
nineteenth century ruling territories and peoples – some
250 ethnic groups in all, that had never coexisted in a
single state. They ran Nigeria as three separate
‘administrative zones’, divided along ethnic and religious
lines. The Muslim north, scorched and poor and with half
the country’s population, would eventually gain supremacy
over the army. Though a succession of military
dictatorships, it would dominate and plunder the oil rich
south, whose largest ethnic groups – the Yoruba in the
west and the Igbo in the east – together account for only
39% of the population. Democracy has also favoured the
north, which, united by Islam and voting as a bloc, has
determined the outcome of virtually all elections. In
Nigeria, one generally votes for one’s religious or ethic
brothers and as a result, whoever holds the presidency
faces a dilemma: either let the country break up or use
violence to hold it together.
Top and most prevalent
among the country’s troubles is corruption. Since
independence from Britain in 1960, approximately $400
billion has been stolen. That is as much as all the
western aid given to all of Africa in almost 40 years and
it amounts to six times the American help given to
post-war Europe under the Marshall Plan.
During the last 25 years,
Nigeria earned more than $300 billion in oil revenues,
however, annual per capita income plummeted from $1000 to
$390. Over two thirds of the population live in abject
poverty, a third is illiterate and 40% have no safe water
supply. The country’s elites bear most of the blame. As
a journalist Karl Maier, whose writings ‘This House Has
Fallen’ has put it, Nigeria is a “criminally mismanaged
corporation where the bosses are armed and have barricaded
themselves inside the company safe”. Nigeria’s
similarities to Saudi Arabia are striking: corruption, oil
wealth, a restless Muslim population and value to the US
as an energy supplier. Osama bin Laden has called Nigeria
“ripe for liberation”.
The “ripening” began soon
after what seemed the dawn of a new era: the sudden death,
in 1998, of the military dictator Sani Abacha and the
subsequent election to the presidency of the retired
general Olusegun Obasanjo. As a Christian, he would
appeal to 40% of Nigerians and as a professional soldier,
he had clout in the north as well. It was hoped his
election would convert Nigeria from a pariah state left
behind by Abacha into an internationally respected
regional power.
Sixty two percent of
Nigerians voted for Obasanjo in 1999. Announcing that he
was “fully committed to using all appropriate means and
resources to ensure that every man, woman, and child will
perceive and reap the benefits of democracy,” he
established a commission to investigate allegations of
corruption. However, to date nothing much has resulted,
except the fact the commission has accused Obasanjo
himself of taking bribes.
Obasanjo’s few genuine
achievements – among them allowing more freedom of the
press and winning forgiveness for 60% of the country’s $30
billion foreign debt (a drop in the ocean when taking into
account the $400 billion stolen from government coffers
since independence) – have failed to alleviate his
people’s misery.
Obasanjo still talks of
improving his people’s lives, but his rhetoric hardly
sounds over the din of mayhem and rage. Nigeria appears
to be sliding into the abyss, its hastily erected façade
of modernity quickly disintegrating and leaving city
dwellers in particular struggling to survive in near
apocalyptic desolation. Lagos, the countries commercial
capital, with a population of 13 million souls, is in
chaos. Armed robbers emerge from the slums to pillage
cars stuck in gridlocks so chocked with traffic that the
fourteen mile trip from the airport to the city centre
usually takes four hours. Electricity blackouts of twelve
hours a day are common.
The U.N. Human Development
Index ranks Nigeria as having one of the worlds worst
standards of living, below that of Haiti and Bangladesh.
For all its oil wealth , and after seven years of
governance by one of Africa’s most highly touted
democrats, Nigeria has become the largest failed state on
earth.
Nigeria is cursed by
religious and ethnic tensions. During Obasanjo’s rule,
the most lethal period of unrest in the country’s history,
more than 10,000 people have died. Of this unrest, one of
the worst zones of conflict is that of the Niger Delta.
On a recent visit to
Nigeria, Chinese President Hu Jintao signed deals to
increase Chinese oil exploration and production. But
Nigeria’s role as a stable producer has taken a hammering
of late. Militant attacks have cut production by 20%,
hitting companies such as Royal Dutch Shell. Since the
1950’s, when oil was first discovered , the Delta have
made the country and oil companies such as Chevron, Agip,
Exxon Mobil and Shell hundreds of billions of dollars.
Nigeria currently earns more than $3billion a month from
oil – which accounts for some 95% of its export earnings
and 40% of its GDP. But the vast majority of the people
of the Delta still live in severe and dreadful poverty.
Corruption doesn’t help. A
Nigerian government audit of the oil industry last month
showed discrepancies worth hundreds of millions of dollars
between what oil companies say they paid the government
and what authorities say they received.
The security forces that
Nigerians expected Obasanjo to bring under control still
act as a law onto themselves, extorting and killing with
impunity. Armed robbers outgun the police, who receive
their salaries months late. Many officers have turned to
releasing accused criminals from jail in return for
bribes. Across much of the country anarchy reigns.
It is common knowledge that
Obasanjo may seek a third term in next year’s elections,
although he is constitutionally prohibited from doing so.
Whether or not he stays on, his country’s troubles may
eventually entangle the United States. One particularly
ominous scenario looms: rebels may succeed in oil
extraction in the Delta, drying up the revenues on which
the northern elites and Western oil companies depend. If,
in response, a northern Muslim general were to oust the
president and seize power, the United States would find
itself facing an Islamic population almost five times
Saudi Arabia’s, radicalised and in control of the abundant
oil reserves that America has vowed to protect. Should
that day come, it could herald a military intervention far
more massive than the current Iraqi campaign.
AC
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