Why Nigeria?
Corry, John
"Why Nigeria?" Of the military regimes that have ruled Nigeria for twenty-five of its thirty-five years of independence, the current rule of Gen. Sani Abacha is indisputably the cruelest and most...
...When that didn't work, he was going to forbid all international calls from the The American Spectator • May 1996 hotels...
...Olusegun Obasanjo...
...Babangida, meanwhile, was promising and postponing free elections, but no one in Washington seemed to mind...
...Babangida seized power in a coup in 1985...
...U.S.-Nigeria relations have grown worse ever since, even though the Abacha government has announced the timetable it will observe as it moves toward national elections...
...He was a fake...
...Security officers now maintain order, and undercover agents look for the drug runners...
...When some loonier members of the Black Caucus demanded that black Americans be given reparations similar to those awarded to Japanese-Americans who had been interned in World War II, he gave a speech and agreed...
...law firm that had begun to represent the Babangida government a few months before...
...There are about 250 ethnic groups in Nigeria, and most of its people are rich shades of chocolate, except some in the Niger Delta, who tend toward café au lait...
...The game is to send a letter or fax (faxes, of course, use phone lines, which is why Abacha wanted to block international calls) saying a large sum of money lies fallow in a Nigerian bank or other institution, and officials need help in getting it out...
...The comparison was absurd—there is nothing remotely like apartheid in Nigeria —but wonderfully effective...
...Muhammadu Buhari a few months later...
...Murtala Muhammed as head of state...
...Many built houses on the Victoria Island section of Lagos after the government obligingly bulldozed the poor people's shacks that had stood in their way...
...But the Clinton administration saw no ambiguities...
...TransAfrica and its acolytes aside, though, it is simply impossible to cast it as a totalitarian state, or to liken it, as the administration has blithely done, to North Korea, Libya, and Cuba...
...In 1975, there was another coup, this one bloodless, in which army colonels installed Gen...
...Trials were held in secret...
...dollars from the Nigerian central bank at the official exchange rate of 22 naira to the dollar...
...The Abacha government may be unlovely, but so far it has kept its word...
...He only has found a new cause...
...Multilateral sanctions would be sought against Nigeria...
...An essayist in ThisDay says that "Abacha loyalists care only for their stomachs...
...The 5o,000 figure was preposterous, and indeed the State Department estimate of a total prison population of 65,000 meant that Nigeria, a country of more than loo million people, jailed its citizens in far fewer numbers proportionately than did the United States or Western Europe.' Meanwhile, the press is no better guide than the State Department...
...Babangida twice executed groups of coup plotters...
...6 `hey don't do things by half here," an expatriate British businessman said in Lagos...
...If Clinton did not meet with the Nigerian president, he told McLarty, it might be seen as a sign he was not committed to civil rights...
...The preamble to the report said there might be as many as 50,000 political prisoners in Nigeria...
...Death sentences were announced only after they had been carried out...
...Nigeria sometimes seems as crooked as a corkscrew, and the venality of its politicians and nouveau businessmen may be apparent...
...A mutually beneficial partnership was born, even though Jackson has never come cheaply...
...once they had been childhood friends...
...That was in 1985...
...Babangida also executed one of his own ministers...
...Nigeria," it declared, "presents a more classic picture of human rights abuse [than Cuba] as the regime of Gen...
...You couldn't make a bloody phone call or send a fax to London or New York except from one of the big hotels...
...Abiola helped finance the coup...
...He wanted $400,000, for example, to visit war-torn Angola on his 1986 trip—$200,000 for himself, and $200,000 for his entourage —but the Angolan government rejected the request, and Jackson dropped Angola from the itinerary...
...would act on its own...
...At the same time, bills to punish Nigeria were introduced in the House and Senate...
...Abacha decided he wanted to stop the four-nineteen scams, and he put a hold on all international direct dialing...
...Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni dissidents were hanged after being convicted of inciting a riot that led to the murders of four pro-government chiefs...
...They complain about its disappearance quite openly...
...Robinson may insist there is not a "scintilla of evidence" anyone plotted a coup...
...Nigeria is opaque...
...Babangida also contributed $150,000 to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation...
...It may not be exactly inviting, but at least it is no longer dangerous...
...the Europeans were too sensible —the U.S...
...Policy pronouncements are altered to suit them...
...They would have gone to prison...
...Then Abiola also asked Abacha to intervene...
...The administration, as usual, is listening to all the wrong people...
...Now, he said, even though desire had fled, he still admired the women...
...In 1975, the army voluntarily surrendered power, and Shehu Shagari won the presidency in a democratic election...
...None of this might matter, except that when Robinson and other prominent black Americans speak, the Clinton White House listens...
...In August he named an interim government, and resigned...
...In November, a former foreign minister placed ads in Nigerian newspapers asking Abacha, the only military man in the interim government, to intervene and "save the nation...
...Abacha, however, has put Abiola in prison...
...But as the businessman said, the government goes over the top...
...Nigeria has its problems...
...He was by then a very rich man—the head of Nigerian ITT, and the owner of an airline and a chain of newspapers...
...Besides, Abuja is the capital, and coups happen...
...The government put the fear of God into everyone...
...The scam is infantile but remarkably successful...
...In the years to come, Jackson often praised Babangida as a statesman...
...He had married one Yoruba woman, and then lived with another, but neither relationship had lasted...
...Few Nigerians were surprised, or seemed to much care, when Abacha then threw him in jail...
...Subsequently, the New Republic had a tantrum over Louis Farrakhan's African tour, particularly because he visited the "Nigerian tyrant, Sani Abacha...
...The reality here is incidental...
...20 hotel decor is international-tourist Africa, to be sure —Noga is actually an acronym for an Israeli investor —but the metal detectors at the entrance of the Hilton are indigenous...
...The interim government promised to hold elections in six months, but Abiola demanded that he be named president immediately...
...Indeed, the executive director of TransAfrica is a very great fake, operating in a foreign-policy area that attracts other great fakes, con men, and tricksters...
...24 May 1996 • The American Spectator...
...The administration and TransAfrica support him, too...
...Robinson discovered Nigeria last year...
...Oit JESSE JACKSON HAS NEVER COME CHEAPLY...
...Abacha also has shut down the so-called "distressed banks...
...Thy Nigeria...
...It canceled direct flights between the U.S...
...He also said that reports of a coup plot in Nigeria were "a fantasy concoction," an excuse to allow Abacha to jail his opponents...
...Secession talk was heard...
...and Nigeria, severed military ties, and restricted the visas of Nigerian officials, their families, and Nigerians who "benefit" from the Nigerian government...
...One of them is Randall Robinson...
...One group actually had a coup underway...
...The next year Babangida lent Jackson his jet...
...Babangida's time, however, was running out...
...Much of the protest that arose after the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa last 23 THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF TRANSAFRICA IS A VERY GREAT FAKE, OPERATING IN AN AREA THAT ATTRACTS OTHER GREAT FAKES...
...Airline passengers once were robbed there, while drug runners came and went freely...
...A columnist in the Vanguard, while dismissing Louis Farrakhan as "a hypocrite," "a hired mouth," and a "demagogue," wonders why, "when we've earned more petro-dollars than in the sixties, we've become poorer than we used to be...
...That is Nigerian Realpolitik...
...Meanwhile, the Lagos airport has been cleaned up...
...Jesse Jackson was among them, although not long before he had been an apologist for Ibrahim Babangida, whose regime in Nigeria was far nastier than the one he and Robinson are now opposing...
...Nothing like that had ever happened in Nigeria before...
...He staged a coup, and got rid of Buhari...
...His wife, Maryam, was widely regarded in Nigeria as the country's richest drug trafficker...
...Note now that neither the New Republic, nor, apparently, any other prominent American news organization, reported that Farrakhan also visited, and was warmly received by, Nelson Mandela...
...In addition to Jesse Jackson, Babangida had the Congressional Black Caucus on his side...
...There has been a surfeit of guns in Nigeria since the late-196o's civil war, and recently there has been an increase in armed robberies...
...Metal May 1996 • The American Spectator '! i AS THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION SPEEDS TO BRAND IT A PARIAH, QUESTIONS ARISE ABOUT WHAT NIGERIA'S SHARPEST CRITICS OWE TO ITS PREVIOUS AND EVEN MORE REPREHENSIBLE RULERS...
...In March, in its annual human rights report, the State Department lumped Nigeria in with Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea as a "rogue" or "pariah" state...
...So I knew Robinson had only been pretending to fast...
...Babangida, however, moved first...
...At least a dozen young army officers among the second group lost their lives...
...Even the market women were afraid someone would ask, where did you get that money...
...November was self-serving...
...At an African and African-American conference in Libreville, Gabon, in May 1993, he called him "one of the great leader-servants of the modern world in our time...
...Under the categories "detained," "awaiting trial," "coup plot suspects," and "alleged coup convicts," it identified 86 political prisoners by name...
...The same month that Jackson praised him in Gabon, Washington & Christian collected $200,000, up front, to represent the National Fertilizer Company of Nigeria...
...The meeting never took place, but Babangida appreciated the efforts being made on his behalf...
...The government is referred to, derisively, as "the army boys...
...Robinson and TransAfrica have also enlisted editorial writers and columnists in their campaign...
...Abacha, the New Republic insisted, "maintains order so that Nigeria can freely export its two major products, oil and drugs, without its destitute citizens inquiring into what happens to the resulting hard currency...
...A case was mount-ed against Babangida, then the army chief of staff, and his wife...
...Robinson, however, has never been in Nigeria, either...
...He was also explaining how "the Africa bug" had bitten him...
...Times columnist Bob Herbert agreed...
...People have gone to jail," a Nigerian journalist says...
...Nigeria is still miserably poor—the average income is only $300 a year—but by any reasonable measure, its government is no worse, and in some ways it is better, than governments that have gone before...
...He quoted Robinson, who said there was not a "scintilla of evidence" that anyone had plotted a coup...
...Clinton was praising him for his courage...
...Nigeria finally held elections in June 1993...
...A year later, he put his presidential jet at Jackson's disposal while Jackson toured southern Africa...
...Buhari declared a "war against indiscipline," and told Nigerians they must stand in queues, and no longer push and shove...
...All around you," he said, "there's always a new Nefertiti...
...22 May 19 9 6 The American Spectator and it was hard to know what possessed the Wall Street Journal, except that one of its people was reading the Times...
...It is true that Nigerians have shown a talent for money laundering and smuggling — Ibos have the franchise on that, while Yorubas run credit-card scams—but the drugs are from Asia, and they are really not a product...
...I saw him on CNN when he said he was going to a Chinese restaurant to celebrate the end of his fast over Haiti," a Muslim civil servant here recalls...
...Nigerians are less skeptical...
...The Times was in its best Council on Foreign Relations–liberal establishment mood, although four times in its editorial it referred to the capital of Nigeria as Lagos and not Abuja...
...It is also unlikely that a civil liberties group would be allowed to take out ads in a rogue state...
...The JOHN CORRY is The American Spectator's senior correspondent...
...One of its first tasks, after it was paid $396,000, was to arrange a meeting between Babangida and Bill Clinton...
...In a country that suffered a bloody civil war, and where coups have been real and not imagined, 86 does not seem like an inordinately high number, or at least not high enough to make the country a "rogue" or "pariah" state...
...Everywhere in Nigeria you notice striking women...
...Shagari was re-elected in 1983, but then was overthrown in a coup led by Gen...
...Presumably they were, although the attempts by environmental groups — Greenpeace, in particular—to depict Saro-Wiwa as a victim of Shell Oil and a martyr to the ecological movement were cynical...
...Randall Robinson, executive director of TransAfrica, testifying before the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs Abuja The capital of Nigeria is in the middle of a savannah, with nothing else much around it except lumpy hills and Gwari villages...
...It sweeps up the just and the unjust alike...
...Jesse Jackson offered to mediate, although no one paid much attention...
...The distressed banks would buy U.S...
...their newspapers treat it as a running topic...
...Jackson made at least one phone call to Clinton to get him to agree...
...The conference was attended by sixteen African heads of state, as well as the representatives of black American companies eager to get some of their business...
...Green-peace and TransAfrica, after all, both agreed on the Abacha government's iniquities...
...But more important, ordinary Nigerians inquire all the time into what happens to the hard currency...
...In other words, Abacha was invited to assume the presidency...
...Six months later, in a fit of caprice, Abiola declared himself president...
...Thus a letter writer in the Guardian criticizes "our avaricious generals...
...The houses are extraordinarily ugly, and almost worth a trip to see...
...The company, of course, was run by Babangida...
...In 1990, he received the Chairman's Award for Excellence at the Congressional Black Caucus Awards Dinner...
...He was thought to have a financial agreement with Abiola, Babangida, or both...
...Then it would sell them for twice as much at the unofficial exchange rate...
...Babangida supporters were handsomely rewarded...
...Trying to block all international calls was an overreaction, although it did show a desire to lessen corruption...
...The extent of Jackson's financial arrangements with Babangida probably will never be known, although presumably they were generous...
...Their trial was considered a sham, with the verdicts a foregone conclusion...
...Former supporters of Babangida professed shock about Abacha...
...He was assassinated soon after in a failed coup attempt, and replaced by his chief of staff, Gen...
...If the recipient will send back the name of his bank and account number, along with money to cover the cost of the transaction, the much larger sum of money will be deposited in his account...
...That was only pin money for him...
...Abiola appeared to be the winner, although Babangida annulled the elections before the results were announced...
...The Abacha government also closed used-car dealerships in Lagos that drug traffickers used as fronts...
...The Times suggested in February that to restore democracy in Nigeria, the U.S...
...Never before has Nigeria had a government as ruinous and oppressive as that of Gen...
...Sani Abacha continues ruthlessly to suppress dissent...
...Pious assertions about this being the cruelest and most corrupt government Nigeria has ever endured are nonsense...
...The government always goes over the top," the British businessman continued...
...Jackson was there with Robert Washington of Washington & Christian, the Washington, D.C...
...The report itself, though, estimated Nigeria's total prison population, criminal and political, as only 65,000...
...perception is what counts...
...Models of the huts adorn the salmon and copper air-conditioned lobby of the Nicon Noga Hilton in Abuja...
...You change the color, and there is not much distinction between the South African situation of the past and Nigeria today," he said...
...Sani Abacha," the New York Times declared after Robinson held his first press conference...
...We had them for sure," a retired civil servant in Lagos recalls...
...Its candidate now for president of Nigeria is Moshood K. 0. Abiola...
...One, built by a retired naval officer, looks like a battleship...
...SaroWiwa was a political figure, and the government, rightly or wrongly, feared he was leading the Delta region into secession...
...The British left Nigeria in 1960...
...Using the four-nineteen scams-419 is a section in the Nigerian legal code — Nigerians have bilked gullible, greedy foreigners of untold, uncounted millions...
...He was sipping a Gulder beer at the bar in the Sheraton, while explicating on the whimsicality of life in Nigeria...
...Abiola also began making friends...
...If multilateral sanctions could not be obtained—which they could not...
...When Dele Giwa, a Nigerianjournalist who once was a clerk on the metropolitan desk of the New York Times, appeared to be ready to write about this, he was blown up by a package bomb...
...That same week, a Wall Street Journal editorial casually indicted Nigeria as one of those countries "whose governments are known sponsors of international terrorism...
...But that's the way things are done here...
...Robinson put together a group of prominent black Americans to lobby for a democratic Nigeria...
...By John Corry The American Spectator • May 1996 21 detectors are ubiquitous for very good reasons...
...A sign nearby warned hotel guests to beware of "fraudulent activities...
...Consequently, the administration announced a policy review...
...Herbert had never been in Nigeria, but he knew...
...It is unclear how many Nigerians died during his regime —some people simply "disappeared" —but whatever the number, no one in Washington protested...
...Death sentences were commuted and sentences shortened for alleged coup plotters...
...HE WANTED $400,000, FOR EXAMPLE, TO VISIT WAR-TORN ANGOLA ON HIS 1986 TRIP...
...Well, thank God he didn't, or we'd all have been put out of business...
...But when he did the administration responded to a Black Caucus whim...
...The second group, knowledgeable Nigerians insist, talked about a coup, but did nothing to put it into action...
...Abiola was a paymaster for the coup...
...nothing like it has happened since...
...you must understand the history here...
...Babangida, though, responded the same way in both instances...
...Nigeria was drifting toward chaos...
...The elected government that replaced them was overthrown in a coup in 1966...
...ought to consider, among other things, an embargo, a disinvestment campaign, and an assets freeze...
...Later he played the race card with White House chief of staff Mack McLarty...
...No one was ever arrested for his murder...
...Nigeria had never been accused of exporting terrorism before, 'In February, the anti-government Civil Liberties Organization in Lagos took out full-page ads in Nigerian newspapers that called for the release of all political prisoners...
...He also declared a war against corruption...
...TransAfrica and its presumed constituency are important in an election year...
...four-nineteen faxes and letters have turned up even in rural areas of Vietnam and China...
...A three-year civil war followed in which at least 500,000 people died...
...That was hypocrisy of a high order...
...Local elections, as promised, were held in March...
...Sani Abacha is indisputably the cruelest and most corrupt...
...The Gwari build mud huts with conical roofs of woven sticks...
...The Nefertiti allusion was overdrawn, but not by very much...
...Cars were bought in the United States, and then shipped to Nigeria and sold in money-laundering operations...
...But Muslims know about fasting, and we know if you ended a fast with a Chinese dinner, you would get sick...
Vol. 29 • May 1996 • No. 5
