On the scale of official grandeur and hospitality, President Muhammadu Buhari’s official visit to Washington this week ranks second on the scale of Washington’s hospitality to Nigerian leaders. The first was the official visit of Nigeria’s first Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa, from 25th -28th July 1961. As President Barack Obama’s guest, President Buhari will be accommodated in Blair House, official quarters for foreign leader guests of the US president. Balewa stayed in the same house as guest of President J.F. Kennedy in 1961.
There have of course been routine visits to Washington by intervening Nigerian leaders arguably more as part of the ritual of inter state relationships than as a show of strategic confidence in Nigeria’s gravity as an important ally.
What unites the two visits (Balewa’s and Buhari’s) is that they were predicated on high hopes. Today, there is hope that perhaps Nigeria is once again poised to rise to the challenge of its manifest destiny as Africa’s leading nation. This is similar to the hope that briefly at independence in 1960. At certain moments in their life, a conspiracy of factors points or redirects nations to discover or rediscover their manifest destiny. Whether or not they seize the moment is an entirely different matter.
From the run up to the 2015 elections, Washington has not disguised its renewed interest in Nigeria’s democratic future and its expected leadership in the security of both the Gulf of Guinea and the Sahel. US Secretary of State John Kerry was quickly dispatched to Lagos to alert both then President Goodluck Jonathan and candidate Buhari about the importance of the 2015 elections to the world and to the US in particular. President Obama addressed the Nigerian people on the eve of the elections.
In spite of assurances by the top contenders that they would behave themselves whichever way the elections went, so concerned was the US government about the possibility of a violent outcome that it dispatched some warships, a couple of marines and rescue helicopters to neighbouring Ghana with a well rehearsed plan to extract US citizens from Nigeria if matters got out of hand. Things turned out differently, to the delight of both Nigerians and the US.
Kerry returned to Abuja on May 29th, to bid Jonathan farewell and wish Buhari a successful tenure. This week’s summer summit between the leading lights of the Obama administration and Buhari’s hurriedly assembled entourage of governors, party faithful, friends and sundry bureaucrats is consistent with Washington’s renewed engagement with Abuja.
The aftermath of the 2015 presidential election and the ascendancy of President Buhari raise the hope that Nigeria could perhaps retrieve itself from the abyss of habitual degeneration and perennial fear of implosion. More importantly, the new administration in Nigeria raises the hope that perhaps Nigeria is ready to assume the role of a reliable ally in the major strategic interests of the US in Africa. It is in that general atmosphere that this week’s Washington visit by Buhari has meaning.
Relations between Washington and Abuja have remained tenuous, characterised mostly by mutual suspicion. Both Americans and Nigerians are inherently proud and boisterous people. While Americans remain frozen with the stereotype of the ugly Nigerian, Nigerians insist that there is a general goodness about our nation and people that the Americans need to see, acknowledge and respect. At the official level, Washington has hungered for a credible leadership in Nigeria that it could engage with. Our succession of mostly shallow and dubious leaders in the last two decades has been a major setback in growing relations between the two countries.
Therefore, beyond the diplomatic niceties and backslapping that will feature in Washington, there are clear expectations on both sides. Washington expects a great deal from President Buhari whose CIA folder has been mostly uneventful in the last three decades.
Whatever the noble objectives of this visit may be, we must admit that President Buhari is in Washington on a rather weak pedestal. He has not yet fully formed a government. The Nigerians who will be confronting their US opposite numbers may not be the ones with the political portfolios to carry through whatever agreements are reached at the meetings. More disastrously, Buhari has not articulated any known foreign policy position into which his engagement with the US could fit.
Nonetheless, Buhari is a strong man who happens also to believe strongly in strong national institutions. President Obama once said that Africa needs strong institutions, not necessarily strong men. But he forgot that only strong leaders can foster and sustain strong institutions in the fragile states of Africa.
This former dictator sought a return to power through the best traditions of democratic party politics. He has a strong military pedigree; some of it acquired at apex US military institutions. He is stern, disciplined and nearly indifferent to materialism. He has indicated a firm commitment to tackle terrorism, corruption and general economic hopelessness, areas that coincide with US concerns about Nigeria. But these areas of convergence between the interests of both nations do not exhaust the possibilities open to the Washington summit.
Top of that interest today is the threat posed by Boko Haram and the danger of it forming part of the larger global network of ISIS. Boko Haram threatens Nigeria’s unity and territorial integrity and also threatens the capacity of the US and the West to halt ISIS’ possible southward push. Nigeria occupies a strategic position in relation to two potent threats to today’s global order. To the north, the spread of ISIS and dangerous fundamentalism. To the south, the threat of sea piracy and oil related terrorism in the Niger Delta and the larger Gulf of Guinea threaten the fragile international energy balance given the volatility in the Middle East.
It is in Nigeria’s interest to ensure an uninterrupted income stream from its oil and gas resources if its economy is to survive and stave off increasing inequality and frightening youth unemployment. Nigeria also needs to restore its internal security from the terrorist scourge if the nation is to survive. These twin priorities indicate a strong convergence between the national interests of both Nigeria and the United States.
Ideally, a strong Nigeria should serve as a guarantor of order on behalf of the international system in the Gulf of Guinea and the Sahel. Both threats dictate a strengthening of Nigeria’s defence and security capabilities which are currently in a questionable state. Past administrations have not fully exploited the possibilities in military assistance and co-operation with the United States.
Nigeria needs help to discharge what amounts to a global security imperative. Egypt has continued to receive an average of $3 billion annually in military assistance to provide a bulwark against radical extremist regimes in the Middle East. Nigeria’s new defence and security responsibility on behalf of the international system is no less important and I expect Buhari and his delegation to push this argument even further.
There remains an arguable connection between rampant corruption and terrorist financing. Nigerian corruption is international in nature and its linkage to the funding of terrorism is an area not yet fully explored. Buhari’s anti corruption commitment requires intense international cooperation both in terms of exchange of information on financial flows and forensic capability.
There is a strong and legitimate reservation in Nigeria about placing too much hope in externally driven solutions to Nigeria’s problems. Perhaps we do not need the endorsement of Washington to realise ourselves. We may not need the approval of the American leadership to chase away Boko Haram, stop kidnappers and assassins or rein in rampaging corruption. But no one can deny the fact that the United States remains the world’s most important nation on most global strategic matters. Its support can increase the traction of our leadership in addressing our challenges.
Nigerians have a right to remain suspicious of America’s motives on major international issues. Some may even doubt the effectiveness of its military supremacy in the light of recent misadventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. But the fact remains that it is important where any nation stands in its relations with Washington.
One lesson which I hope President Buhari and his fledgling administration will take home from Washington is that the American nation and its informing dream is built on self confidence and man’s ability to rise above the challenges that threaten his existence through his own effort. It will still be up to Buhari to show leadership in the myriad of challenges that today assail us. That burden cannot, incidentally, be outsourced. Washington can only show understanding and perhaps lend a hand to the extent dictated by its strategic own interests.
THISDAY
END
Be the first to comment