What is America up to in Nigeria?

The two-hour ses­sion on Nigeria’s security challenges at the Africa Centre of the Atlantic Council in Washington last Wednesday was an interesting outing after which one could not but ask: what is America’s interest in the Nigerian elections?

A million and one an­swers could come from different pundits but one that would defy the lowest quality logic is any insin­uation about democracy, no matter how ill-defined.

The representatives of America’s core inter­est in the hall, ranging from parliament, to In­tel, media, policy groups and others could thinly disguise that there is an ulterior motive behind the U.S. position on issues in Nigeria in recent times with scant regard for our national interest but ev­erything about their own agenda for our country .

Kudos must however be given to the Director Gen­eral of the National In­telligence Agency (NIA), Ambassador Ayodele Oke, and the Chief of Defence Intelligence, Rear Ad­miral Gbariel Okoi, for brilliantly standing up to American hypocrisy at the highly explosive ses­sion.

With graphic details, the two gentlemen showed how Nigerian troops have in the last four weeks gallantly routed the in­surgents from 12 out of the 14 local governments they had hitherto held on to with a promise to clear them from all occu­pied territories before the March 28 elections. They however acknowledged that it might be difficult to eliminate “sleeper cells “ given the intrinsic nature of terrorism.

They came out clearly that the flushing of Boko Haram from these terri­tories has created an at­mosphere where elections can hold simultaneously in all parts of Nigeria as stipulated by the constitu­tion that the entire coun­try shall be a single entity for the president of Nige­ria.

The uninitiated would have expected the Ameri­cans to give it to our troops for the great job they have done in these past four weeks knowing that it took them 10 years to hunt down Osama. They, rather, were sounding like offi­cials of a you-know-politi­cal party in Nigeria when it came to question time.They wanted to know why it took the troops so long to achieve this feat.

Admiral Okoi did not mince words in telling the Americans that they refused to sell the arms needed to Nigeria under Leahy Act but that some other friends of Nigeria eventually helped out. He also hit the American Intelligence for sharing whatever information they had on terror acts in Nigeria “24 hours after the deed is done”.

By far the most annoy­ing of the session was when officials of the Na­tional Democratic Insti­tute (NDI) and the Nation­al Republican Institute (NRI) condescendingly tried to create the impres­sion that Ambassador Oke was using their reports on the shoddy preparations for February 14 elections by INEC to shield the al­leged security arm-twist­ing of the electoral body.

Ambassador Oke im­pressively and in a very diplomatic way told the folks not to think too much of themselves as Nigeria attaches nothing more to their reports than stating the facts known on the streets of Nigeria that INEC was not ready for the polls despite the vaunted claims by Jega. He pointed out that INEC had distributed over 10 million PVCs after the shift in the polls dates and wondered if they would have wished all these peo­ple disenfranchised when there was no law of Nige­ria violated by the adjust­ment .The testing of the card readers for the first time three weeks after the polls should have held was another incontrovertible evidence that INEC mere­ly used the security as the fall guy.

He was emphatic that the Nigerian elections is about Nigerians and that nobody should pretend to love us more than our­selves.He added that there is no responsible govern­ment in the world that would compromise the se­curity of its citizens and jokingly asked if those who were pontificating from their cosy offices in Washington would have sent their people to go and observe elections in places under Boko Haram control.

It was clear at the end of the whole session that American grouse had nothing to do with democ­racy in Nigeria as they ought to have been hap­pier with an arrangement that allowed many more Nigerians to exercise their franchise within the time permitted by the law.It was as if there was an agenda for Nigeria which would have been hastened by cfloppy elections.

By the way,only incorri­gible fools would be taken in that these folks are about democracy.Did they show half of the indigna­tion they are showing now over a legal shift in elec­tion dates when we had a free and fair election annulled?If they are mad with Nigeria over a shift of elections within the law why are they befriending monarchs in the Middle East who don’t conduct elections at all?Audacity of hypocrisy!

By the way,I shared with with the Nigerian Ambas­sador to America,Prof Adefuye that Governor Jang was lamenting a day earlier that he had yet to receive his PVC and the diplomat responded “I’m yet to get mine either”.