More startling revelations about the way the United States and international oil companies view and treat Nigeria have continued to emerge from some of the US embassy cables released by a whistle-blowing website, WikiLeaks.
One of the cables details discussions at a meeting between the US Assisitant Under Secretary of State, Mr. Johnnie Carson, and some executives of the IOCs in Lagos on February 7, 2010.
During the meeting, which looked at the challenges facing Nigeria and suggested ways of tackling them, Carson warned that “Nigeria had the possibility of becoming the next Pakistan in 25 years.”
Pakistan is generally described as the hotbed of religious crisis and a poor terrorist nation. It’s history has been characterised by political instability and conflicts. It is home to terrorist organisations such as Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed; one of the most active militant islamist terrorist organisations in South Asia.
Another cable mentioned a former Shell Petroleum Development Company Vice-President for Sub-Saharan Africa, Africa, Ms. Ann Pickard, as claiming that some key officials in the administration of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua took huge sums from oil firms as bribes.
At the February meeting, Carson said Washington viewed Nigeria as the most important country in Africa because of its huge population, large hydro-carbon deposit, peace keeping role in ECOWAS, seat in the United Nations Security Council and its financial market strength.
Carson noted that there was no way the US would not be interested in Nigeria given its enoumous potential and large Muslim population (seventh in the world) were capable of eclipsing Egypt by 2015.
He argued that for the US not to have a presence in Northern Nigeria was akin to having no presence in Egypt. For this reason, he added, the US was planning to have a consulate in Kano.
When told that the US was underepresented diplomatically, economically, commercially and militarily in the South-South and South-East, he admitted that Washington must return to Enugu, and Port Harcourt.
Carson, who described Cape Town, South Africa as being 100 times a better living place than Lagos, said, “Some places are more important than others within the Federal System of Nigeria.
“Lagos is one of the one of the most important places. It is bigger and more important than Cape Town even though the latter is 100 times better in terms of livability.”
The cable quoted him as saying, “No presence means no access, which leads to no influence. Without influence, you have nothing.”
Carson reportedly said that when he served in Nigeria from 1969 to 1971, the US had its embassy in Lagos with consulates in Ibadan, Kaduna, and briefly in Port Harcourt. It also had an Information Service post in Kano.
The Under Secretary of State pointed out that when Nigeria had a population at 50 million and did not produce oil, the United States was better and more broadly represented.
He added that with an embassy in Abuja and a consulate in Lagos now, the United States had experienced a huge loss in Nigeria.
The Washington top official added that the US expected a stable, legal, democratic and constitutional government in Nigeria with no military involvement.
He said that it was important for the Nigerian government to do better in the 2011 general elections because in 2007, only 10 per cent of Nigerian voters saw ballot papers.
Source: Information Nigeria
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