Date Published: 12/31/09

TERRORISM: NIGERIA’S LATEST EXPORT By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Nigeria which ranks as the nation with the largest population of black people in the World is also known as the sixth or seventh largest crude oil exporter in the international community. The country was very recently in a very nebulous and ridiculous public opinion poll conducted by some strangers in far away developed western world ranked as the country with the happiest population on earth. This dubious opinion poll was cheered by reactionary forces in government here at home who saw it as a positive contribution to the so-called government’s effort to boost Nigeria’s fast waning international image. But the discerning populace in Nigeria laughed scornfully at that unverifiable opinion poll and dismissed it as a beer parlour talk which should not be granted relevance since it does not reflect the fact that Nigeria harbours the largest number of the poorest and heavily impoverished black human beings on this planet.

At best Nigeria could be regarded as a nation with sharp and contrasting opposites because most Nigerians live below extreme poverty level even when the nation is resource rich and ranks among the most respectable resource endowed nations. One credible estimate by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Director General stated that corruption among Nigeria’s political office holders accounted for the disappearance of over $400 billion that accrued to Nigeria from crude oil exports in the last four decades. Another contrasting episode that marks Nigeria out as one of the most unfortunate places to live is that the largest percentage of the revenue that accrues to the country from the exploration and sale of these huge mineral resources including crude oil are stolen by less than five percent of the populace that have hijacked the apparatus of civil governance and have imposed themselves as the political office holders.

Duncan Clarke in his book ‘’crude continent; the struggle for Africa’s oil prize’’ told us that ‘’during Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight -year tenure as President Nigeria earned $223 billion USD[United States Dollars]  in oil revenue. However basic living conditions worsened significantly for most Nigerians. Around 70% remained in survival mode, living on $1 USD per day [80% of oil revenues benefiting around 1% of the populace’’. The learned author also observed that; ‘’poverty in the oil-rich nation remains extreme. Hostility towards the oil-enriched elites, especially those that have clearly profited from the oil game in ways that cannot be readily explained by normal business skills, is overt. Impoverishment seems unlikely to go away whatever the buoyancy of oil revenues, at least in the medium term, and may be for decades’’. He continued thus; ‘’as oil developed, so corruption expanded in favour of middlemen, commission agents and those close to central power, especially within the state company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation [NNPC]’’.

The direct consequences of the extreme poverty afflicting clearly a majority of Nigerians, include but not limited to the fact that many families decided to rally round and sale some of their prized possessions to send one of their own abroad to the developed western world to seek for greener pastures even as most other persons especially the vulnerable members of the populace in Nigeria were caught in the dangerous traps of human traffickers who exported them like commodities to countries as far flung as Netherlands and Italy where they were subjected to some of the most atrocious enslavement as forced labourers and sex workers so as to pay back the expenses incurred by the kingpins involved in this despicable trade of human trafficking which is likened to a modern day slave trade.

In Europe, Nigerians constitute some of the largest population of trafficked persons thereby bringing international odium to Nigeria as a corporate entity as a nation whose bad eggs export human beings for forced labour and sex trade. Shortly before Christmas of 2009, the Libyan government deported over six hundred Nigerians who were arrested in Libya because of incomplete immigration documentations and invalid or forged papers. This unfortunate scenario is another terrible addition to the waning international image of Nigeria. In Asia and Far East, several Nigerians are languishing in different prison facilities because of petty crimes and other immigration offences even as several Nigerian citizens were executed in Countries like Indonesia, Singapore and Saudi Arabia for drug related offences.

Nigeria’s foreign minister Ojo Maduekwe introduced what he calls ‘citizenship diplomacy’ meaning that Government’s foreign policy objective would be guided by the protection and promotion of the human rights of Nigerian citizens wherever they live around the World. But the government has failed to protect and promote the interest of Nigerian citizens abroad even as Nigeria’s embassies are said to be starved of operational funds so much so that those of our fellow citizens who may require some forms of assistance are left to suffer especially if their relations back home are so impoverished to make any meaningful contribution to bail them out.

The 1999 constitution in section 19 provides that ‘’the foreign policy objectives of Nigeria shall be promotion and protection of the national interest, promotion of African integration and support for African Unity, promotion of international co-operation for the consolidation of Universal peace and mutual respect among all nations and elimination of discrimination in all its manifestations, respect for international law and treaty obligations and a promotion of a just World economic order’’. Since the return of civil democracy in Nigeria, it is a fact that none of these foreign policy objectives has been implemented with the interest of Nigerian citizens abroad deeply embedded. Nigeria agreed to hand over Bakassi peninsula after it lost at the International court of justice at the Hague, Netherlands in a legal matter instituted by our south eastern neighbour Cameroun but right now Nigerian citizens are daily brutalized and killed by Cameroonian gendarme and Nigeria is not doing anything to protect the lives and property of Nigerians in the Bakassi peninsula. How many Nigerians stranded abroad have been brought back to the country by Nigerian government in the last ten years? As a Nigerian, once you travel out of the shores of Nigeria, you are on your own. The citizenship diplomacy of the current administration is not working.

Back home over fourteen thousand Nigerians were killed by religious zealots and extremists especially in the streets of Kano, Bauchi, Plateau, Kaduna, Maiduguri, Katsina, Sokoto and Kafanchan in Kaduna State in the last ten Years by mindless Islamic extremists and others also killed in reprisals in some Southern Nigerian cities, but successive administrations have failed spectacularly to bring the culprits of these dastardly religious-motivated hate killings to justice in line with the principle of the rule of law enshrined in the constitution of Nigeria. Section 10 of the 1999 constitution forbids States from raising a particular religion as state religion but in the North Islam has being raised to the status of state religion by the state governments in clear breach of this provision. Even the Federal Government promotes religious extremism because it sponsors followers of Islam and Christianity to travel for religious pilgrimages. This is unconstitutional and can be seen as the reason why a Nigerian Mr. Umar Farouk AbdulMutalab could agree to become a suicide bomber in his alleged attempt to bomb a United States Airline allegedly on the instruction of international terrorism ring-al Qaeda in Yemen where his rich politically connected father said he [Umar Farouk AbdulMutalab] travelled for Islamic radicalization.

Nigerian government must punish religious bigots who kill for religion or else Nigeria’s latest export which is terrorism will become fashionable among these outlaws roaming the streets of Northern Nigeria. Most Nigerians would re-echo the unfortunate but realistic saying of Sergei Dreznim, the Russian musical writer of a song based on September 11 th 2001 attack on American soil by terrorists when he said; ‘’we are used to disasters in Russia. It sounds weird, but I felt at home on September 11 th.’’ The United States Government must compel Nigerian Government to tackle our home- based religious extremists who kill locals and get away with it before they start large scale export of terrorism to the United States and other developed climes.