Understanding Nigeria’s problems
Eric Margolis
Published — Saturday 17 May 2014
The kidnapping of some 200 girls in northern Nigeria
has sparked world outrage. It’s a perfect media sensation: Exotic locale and
remarkably nasty kidnappers from a northern rebel movement, Boko Haram.
I’ve long been a connoisseur of Third World nasties,
starting way back in the 60s with Haiti’s voodoo chief, Papa Doc.
Most have been nobodies who achieved instant international prominence by
shooting off their mouths, making lurid threats and committing some dramatic
outrage.
The latest is Boko Haram’s chief, a certain Abubakar Shekau.
This lunatic has become a world bogeyman by kidnapping the schoolgirls,
gleefully prancing in front of TV cameras and vowing to sell them into marital
slavery.
Howls of fury erupted from leftist women’s groups in the US,
and from President Barack Obama’s
liberal warrior women, Susan Rice
and UN Ambassador Susan Powers. Hillary Clinton lost no time in jumping
on this vote-winning issue.
In a truly heartwarming gesture, China says it will send
“specialists” to aid the hunt for the missing girls. This is really about China’s race for Africa’s resources and its
growing competition there with the US
and Europe. The US wants its troops there before
the Chinese arrive.
Few people anywhere cared much about the thousands of Afghan
villagers just buried alive by a monster mudslide. Even fewer that Boko Haram’s
previous rampages in northern Nigeria
have killed over 1,500 civilians. Or that the Nigerian army and police’s brutal
reprisals killed thousands of Muslim villagers.
Few outraged westerners knew that stealing girls is a
traditional pastime in sub-Saharan Africa and
child brides are second only to cattle rustling. There was no understanding in Washington that the
tribal chaos and bloodshed now seething in South
Sudan is merely a continuation of traditional raiding for cattle and women
between rival Dinka and Neuer tribes. Washington
failed to take this into account when it engineered the breakup of Sudan to create South Sudan as an oil-rich US
vassal state.
American foreign policy reacts to oil and gas as my cats do
to catnip. Now, under the pretext of deep concern for the missing schoolgirls,
the US and Nigeria’s former colonial master, Britain, are rushing intelligence agents and
special forces to this vast nation of 170 million, Africa’s
largest.
Faux humanitarian missions are the rage for western
intervention in the Third World. Libya and Syria offer vivid recent examples. US special forces are now operating out of Djibouti and Uganda
in east Africa, ostensibly hunting fanatics of
the Lord’s Resistance Army, a bunch of drug-crazed primitives hiding in dense
forests. The US air base in Djibouti
is being expanded to accommodate 4,000 military personnel and more attack
drones.
Nigeria
is Africa’s leading oil and gas producer. Over
40 percent of its exports go to the United States,
supplying 10 percent of America’s
energy needs. Nearby Angola
has become another major energy supplier to the US.
Nigeria
has important mineral and farming assets. Yet it remains mired in the deepest,
shameful poverty. One percent of the population controls all the wealth and
steals billions annually. In fact, the UN estimates almost all of Nigeria’s vast oil wealth has been stolen,
squandered or stashed in Switzerland.
Oil revenues flow directly to the government, then to powerful state governors.
The only thing that trickles down to Nigerians is rain.
Northern Nigeria, mostly
Muslim, is dirt poor. Oil wealth
goes to the better off Christian south. The north’s Hausa and Fulani peoples
have bitterly resented the massive theft of the nation’s resources by the more
nimble southerners favored by British colonial rule. In fact, Britain was at fault for creating the
multi-ethnic mess that is Nigeria, another colonial Frankenstein state,
like Iraq or Burma.
Boko uses the idiom of Islam but there is nothing Islamic
about it. As in other parts of the Muslim world, reformers call for imposition
of Islamic law as an antidote to endemic corruption of governments and courts
that has been too often fostered by western colonialism.
Screaming “Islamic terrorism” won’t defuse Nigeria’s
coming explosion. Considered one of the world’s most corrupt nations, Nigeria
has to clean up its act — and fast.
Nigeria
Shell resumes Nigerian oil exports (Past Research on Nigeria)
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Note: Nigeria was a Davis Manafort client.
Viktor F.
Yanukovich is a Davis Manafort client,
and was the president of the Ukraine.
Richard H. Davis
is a managing director at Davis Manafort,
and a trustee at the Committee for
Economic Development.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Committee for Economic Development.
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Donna
S. Morea was a trustee at the Committee
for Economic Development, and the EVP for the CGI Group Inc.
CGI Group Inc.
was the Obamacare contractor that
developed Healthcare.gov web site.
Obamacare
is Barack Obama’s signature policy
initiative.
R.
Eden Martin is the president of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP
Michelle
Obama was a lawyer at Sidley Austin
LLP.
Barack
Obama was an intern at Sidley Austin
LLP.
Newton
N. Minow is a senior counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP, and a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago.
W. James
McNerney Jr. is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and the chairman & president & CEO for the Boeing Company.
Barbara G. Fast
was a VP at the Boeing Company, and
a VP for the CGI Group Inc.
Kenneth M.
Duberstein was a VP at the Committee
for Economic Development, is a director at the Boeing Company, and a trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Committee for Economic Development, the Brookings Institution (think tank), and the International Rescue Committee.
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society, and is a
board member for the International
Crisis Group.
Thomas R.
Pickering was the SVP for the Boeing
Company, a U.S.
ambassador for Nigeria,
is a co-chair for the International
Crisis Group, and a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Samantha
Power was a board member for the International
Crisis Group, a director at the International
Rescue Committee, is married to Cass
R. Sunstein, and the U.S.
ambassador at the United Nations for
the Barack Obama administration.
Cass R. Sunstein
is married to Samantha Power, and a senior
fellow at the Brookings Institution (think
tank).
Susan
E. Rice was the U.S.
ambassador at the United Nations for
the Barack Obama administration, a senior
fellow at the Brookings Institution (think
tank), and is the White House national security adviser for the Barack Obama administration.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
was a visiting fellow at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), and the minister of finance for Nigeria.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Brookings Institution (think tank).
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society, is the founder
& chairman for the Open Society
Foundations, and a co-chair, national finance council at Ready for Hillary.
Open
Society Foundations was a funder for the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
Susie Tompkins
Buell is a national finance council member at Ready for Hillary, and was a funder for the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
Hillary Rodham
Clinton is a principal at the Bill,
Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the candidate for the 2016 Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential
campaign, and was the secretary at the U.S.
Department of State for the Barack
Obama administration.
John
F. Kerry is the secretary at the U.S.
Department of State for the Barack
Obama administration, and married to Teresa
Heinz Kerry.
Teresa Heinz
Kerry is married to John F. Kerry,
and an honorary trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank).
Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and the minister of finance for
Nigeria.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Brookings Institution (think tank), and the Center for American Progress.
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society, and a
supporter for the Center for American
Progress.
John Prendergast
is a fellow at the Center for American
Progress, and a co-founder for the Satellite
Sentinel Project.
George
Clooney is a co-founder for the Satellite
Sentinel Project, and a messenger of peace for the United Nations.
Satellite
Sentinel Project monitors activities in South Sudan & Sudan,
and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
analyzes their images.
Harvard
Humanitarian Initiative is collaborates with Harvard University.
Lawrence H. Summers is a distinguished
senior fellow at the Center for American
Progress, a professor; former president for Harvard University, was the National Economic Council chairman for
the Barack Obama administration, a
trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg
conference participant (think tank).
Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and the minister of finance for
Nigeria.
Thomas R.
Pickering is a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and was a U.S. ambassador for Nigeria.
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