Line in the sand

“Once you carry your own water, you will remember every drop”. African proverb.

A member of the US team that visited Nigeria recently to verify claims of genocide against Nigerian Christians, Congressman Riley Moore, has taken up huge space in our media. On his return to the US he released a statement and was shown on television recounting his findings and experiences when the team visited an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp in a part of Benue State. He leaves little room for doubting that his aim was to make major impact on audiences which include the US President, a very powerful American evangelical pressure group and a strong Nigeria diaspora lobby. He made the point that what he saw and heard during his visits were shocking. So shocking, he said, he had never seen anything like it. All these, he said, will be in the report the team is preparing for the US president.

Nigerians should have a fairly good idea of what the US team would say to a President who will be hard put to ignore advice from a team he sends to come back with what he expects. Indeed, the team is basically the distance President Trump needs between impulse and reason, having said all there is to say of a country he plans to affect in consonance with US interests. It will not be the quality and value of its report. The visit will be tokenism, a crude concession to diplomacy, and pretence at bridging the gap between contempt and respect for a nation that has played right into the hands of a US President eager to bully weakness.

The team cannot say it had a thorough interface with the many faces which make up Nigeria’s sorry state. It met the National Security Adviser. That will be for the optics. It met with groups it selected to meet with in selected parts of North Central Nigeria. That will reinforce its mission. It visited a part of Benue State where it interacted with Internally Displaced Persons in their camp. It heard shocking details of their experiences. These will be details Nigerians live with daily in a country that has no authentic figures for its routinely killed, abducted, displaced or raped in virtually every part of the country. They are victims of armed criminals, ethnic and communal conflicts, religious extremists, insurgents, separatists, and just about anyone who can afford to buy or rent a weapon. The team were not interested in IDPs in Borno, deserted villages in Zamfara and Katsina or the sit-home-damage in the South East.

The US President will use the report of the team as he deems fit, but it will almost certainly not be dumped. Fringe interests looking for vindication that the Christian population is being systematically wiped out will make extensive use of it. It will also likely provide some talking points at meetings of the joint US-Nigeria committee set up to design a faster end to the killings of Christians and the levels of insecurity swamping the country. The Nigerian side of this joint team may try to punch a few holes in the report, but its hands have been tied by the very nature of the responses of Nigeria to the US threat from the onset.

The Joint Committee says all there is to say about the manner Nigerian leadership has created the context for the neck-deep involvement of the US in the manner Nigeria treats its sensitive weaknesses and protects its assets. It was caught unawares by the build-up of hostility and crude representations of the state of its security by Trump and the choreographed follow-up of intense propaganda. Its reaction to these was predictable: panic and attempts to placate a President who insults you and threatened to sort you out. A timid response by a poorly-assembled team told the US what it needed to know. Nigeria is panicking and ready to do deals.

Now Nigeria sits with the US and discusses how the US wants to deal with Nigeria’s problems. The details regarding the power of this Committee are sketchy, but it will be reasonable to assume that the Committee itself is a concession by the US in place of tougher responses to problems it identifies in Nigeria and decides to deal with on its own terms. The US will of course put a few sweeteners on the table, such as improved cooperation on improving intelligence and possibly assistance with military hardware and training. The devil in this arrangement is what the US wants, now and the future. Regarding now, it has a lot more than it could have dreamt. It doesn’t just have a foot at the door. It has the entire room. It will decide the parameters of this collaboration, how long it lasts and what the outcome will be. It will have its own version of outcomes, including options in the event of failures to achieve goals within time lines.

Significantly, the basic strategic interests of the US are unlikely to be explicitly made known to Nigeria. It will be foolish to assume that the collaboration which allows the US to become a key stakeholder in Nigeria’s security in the short and long terms will be without a price. It cannot be an end to genocide against Nigerian Christians, because the US knows that argument has been laid to rest. A partnership with Nigeria to defeat ISWAP, Boko Haram, Lakurawa, Mamuda, IPOB/ESN, bandits and kidnappers in military terms will require massive overhaul of Nigeria’s defence and security systems and assets. It will involve strong political will and key changes in political structures and institutions which enable armed criminality to push the Nigerian state to its back against the wall, which is where it is now. It will involve designing a security framework which leverages available support from foreign partners on terms that are consistent with Nigeria’s basic interests. It will involve designing economic strategies that make the Nigerian economy capable of optimising its full potential, including how the rest of the world can partner with it in this respect. The only way the US can be of use to itself is to put itself at the heart of these fundamental requirements for Nigeria to defeat insecurity and design a new framework for its future.

Nigeria does not need to surrender its sovereignty, dignity and even its entire future to any country. We are to blame for letting the door open for opportunistic interests to walk in and claim ownership. We need friends and a strong leadership committed to ridding all citizens of threats. We are being set up to play to the interests of other countries. It is not too late to draw a line in the sand. Nigeria can overcome its current challenges, and we need countries like the US to work us towards that goal. We must say no, thank you, to countries that want to re-colonise us.

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