Oh yeah, Eket. The place you have to fly to work if you don't want to get shot! I'm sure your sources in Exxon Mobil aren't going to let anything out - probably because they don't know :roll eyes:.
Meanwhile, I see our beloved President is gathering accolades worldwide for his handling go the missing schoolgirls and allowing our country to be taken over by Boko Haram and Ansaru
Boko Haram has exposed Jonathan’s ineptitude
WHO’s afraid of Boko Haram? It would appear that the Nigerian government of Goodluck Jonathan is. It has demonstrated rank incompetence and callous indifference to the recent kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls by the militant group.
Boko Haram has already killed about 5,000 civilians since 2009. This situation raises fundamental questions about the ability of Nigeria’s political elite to protect its own corporate interests. The state is becoming a crippled Leviathan unable to exert a monopoly of the use of force over its own territory: perhaps the greatest indictment of a leadership that has often confused kleptocratic avarice with democratic governance.
The government has failed woefully even to develop an effective communication strategy to deal with this crisis. Its crude attempt to focus global attention on the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Nigeria’s new status as Africa’s largest economy backfired spectacularly. The WEF was entirely overshadowed by the sad case of the missing girls. This situation shone a harsh light on the Nigerian government, exposing the poverty of thought and action in Abuja. With the eyes of the world glued on Nigeria, Jonathan’s administration did not cover itself in glory.
"Boko Haram" translates as "western education is a sin". The Salafist militants are living embodiments of the grievances of an impoverished northern Nigeria, where poverty rates are 15% higher than in the south. They have ties with jihadists in Somalia and Mali, and seek to implement sharia law throughout Nigeria. Their actions have been reminiscent of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army, which wants to implement the biblical 10 commandments, in their atavism, and similar to the nihilism of the Mozambique National Resistance.
Jonathan’s accepting US surveillance and intelligence assistance could be politically dangerous for him. It is a humiliating sign of the weakness of his own army, which has struggled with equipment, and logistical and other capabilities, not just in battling Boko Haram in Nigeria’s volatile northeast, but in conducting United Nations peacekeeping missions in Liberia and Sudan’s Darfur region. The $6bn annual security budget is clearly not reaching the army.
The military has ruled Nigeria for 39 of its 54 years of independent statehood. Its often talented officers have traditionally claimed to be the guardians of national unity, intervening in politics to save the country from the decadence of corrupt politicians (though venal military regimes between 1985 and 1998 saw grotesque levels of corruption). The army will surely be seething at Jonathan’s decision to bring in western experts.
One of Jonathan’s predecessors, Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007), recently criticised him for turning to foreign assistance. One should, however, remember that Obasanjo’s army chief, the respected Victor Malu, had, in 2001, criticised the president’s own decision to bring in Americans to train the Nigerian army, noting that this action compromised national security. Malu later raised eyebrows by expressing regret at not having staged a coup against Obasanjo.
A period of silence from Obasanjo — who has criticised all of his successors and suffers from messianic delusions — would be welcome. It is also important to note that Obasanjo’s own presidency failed to professionalise and re-equip the Nigerian army. The dangers of intimacy that Malu raised in 2001 still exist today. No one should be under any illusions that US drones flying over Nigeria will collect information only about missing schoolgirls. The fact that Jonathan chose to attend a summit on Boko Haram in Paris, rather than organising one in West Africa, is another sign of a failure of leadership.
If Nigeria really was a regional superpower, why would it need the president of France to bring it together with Benin, Niger, Chad and Cameroon? This is the same France that had sought to dismember Nigeria during the country’s civil war of 1967-70, and has more recently sent troops to Côte d’Ivoire and Mali, both members of the Nigeria-created Economic Community of West African States. France recently announced that it would send an additional 3,000 troops mostly to West Africa, meaning that nearly 10,000 French troops could soon be deployed on the continent. When policy makers in Abuja awake from their deep slumber, they will find themselves encircled by foreign interests that will surely constrain Nigeria’s projection of power in its own region.
The lack of strategic thinking in Abuja is not only alarming, but reverses 40 years of foreign and security policy. Jonathan must hope that a good showing by Nigeria’s Super Eagles in the Soccer World Cup in Brazil will be a welcome distraction from the Boko Haram debacle. He has, however, scored one of the most spectacular own goals in his inept and disastrous handling of this crisis.