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Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 12:04:54 EDT
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Subject: [AfricaMatters] What Clinton Should Have Done in Nigeria
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A Statement of the Africa Fund and the Africa Policy Information Center - Washington, DC, August 21, 2000
US Policy Towards Nigeria: Agenda for Justice
For too long Clinton Administration policy towards oil-rich Nigeria has cynically condemned military rule while pursuing a tacit accommodation of the generals on behalf of US economic and political interests. Now
the Administration has announced that support for Nigeria's year-old democracy is a top foreign policy priority, and the President will deliverthat message personally during his upcoming visit. But the increasing
militarization of US-Nigerian relations, Washington's official silence on the brutal repression of environmental protesters in the Niger Delta oil
fields, and its refusal to provide the debt relief needed to re-start the economy belies a genuine US commitment to human rights and social justice.
If the President is serious about protecting human rights instead of corporate wrongs in Nigeria, and advancing democracy instead of a potential future military dictatorship for that country's 120 million people, he should do the following:
Cancel the Debt
Despite important progress by the Obasanjo government in rooting out corruption and mismanagement, Nigeria's fragile democracy is still burdened by over $30 billion in debt. Virtually all of the debt was incurred by illegal military dictatorships whose leaders siphoned billions of dollars into private US and European banks against the will of the Nigerian people. Washington holds nearly a billion dollars of this illegitimate debt, yet the US and other wealthy Western creditor nations demand that Nigeria forego the schools, hospitals, roads and factories its people so desperately need to pay these odious debts. President Obasanjo has repeatedly called for debt relief, but he has been rebuffed.
If President Clinton is serious about supporting democracy he should immediately and unilaterally cancel Nigeria's US debt and publicly pressure Europe to follow suit. Despite evidence of stolen Nigerian funds in US banks, investigators seeking the return of the money say
that US law enforcement and Treasury officials have refused to cooperate. The White House should provide the same level of assistance to Nigeria that it provided the "Nazi Gold" investigation, promptly return any stolen funds and prosecute banking officials involved in laundering the dictators' accounts. The US should also greatly increase its $100 million economic aid package. Amounting to less than one dollar per person, current aid levels are grossly inadequate to the urgent human needs of the Nigerian people. This sum pales in comparison to the $1.3 billion recently authorized for the corrupt and brutal Colombian oligarchy. US military aid should be reprogrammed to finance health and education for Nigeria's children.
Support Human Rights and Corporate Accountability in the Oil Fields
For decades multinational oil companies, including Shell, Exxon-Mobil, Chevron and Texaco, have operated behind the bayonets of successive Nigerian military regimes, financing the dictatorships and pocketing
billions of dollars while returning nothing to the oil producing communities except pollution, repression and grinding poverty. Industry service companies like Haliburton and Wilbros have also been accused of human rights and environmental abuses. President Clinton must go to the Niger Delta oil fields and meet with the authentic representatives of the oil-producing communities, including the Movement for the Survival
of the Ogoni people (MOSOP), the Ijaw National Congress and the Ijaw Youth Council, and with community-based human rights and environmental organizations like Environmental Rights Action and the Niger Delta Human and Environmental Rescue Organization. He must speak out against corporate collaboration with Nigerian security forces that meet even peaceful protests with brutality and violence. He must condemn the industrial double standard that has left the Niger Delta the
most polluted oil-producing region on earth and threatens the global environment. US relations with the Obasanjo government should be conditioned on respect for human rights, political inclusion and economic and environmental justice in the oil fields.
Suspend US Military Ties
Just months after the Nigerian army systematically destroyed the Niger Delta town of Odi, Defense Secretary William Cohen announced the resumption of full US-Nigeria military relations. Pentagon officials say
that the initial $10 million program will emphasize civil control of the military and human rights training, but past US involvement with brutal militaries in Latin America and Asia make such claims highly suspect.
Significantly, the former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha himself received similar training in the US prior to his illegal seizure of power in 1993 and Washington still took no effective action.
The announcement earlier this month that Washington will arm and train five Nigerian battalions for counterinsurgency operations means that the US will spend about as much on the military as it will on economic development. More recently the Nigerian press has reported on US plans to provide eight fast attack
patrol vessels to the Nigerian Armed Forces for policing the Niger Delta.
The Administration's failure to link military aid to improvements in human rights and its previous betrayal of the winner of Nigeria's 1993 Presidential election in favor of constructive engagement with Abacha suggest that the US is more concerned about protecting US interests by promoting "stability" including possibly under a future military dictator. The US priority should be the promotion of human rights and democracy for Nigerians to build and define their own stability.
Acknowledge US Peacekeeping Responsibilities in Africa
For most of the past decade the Clinton Administration has refused to support international peacekeeping efforts in Africa despite its clear responsibility to do so under the United Nations charter. Washington's
abandonment of Africa allowed conflicts in central and west Africa to become protracted regional crises and shifted much of the burden of peacekeeping to Nigeria, which has sacrificed hundreds of lives and billions of dollars on what are clearly international peacekeeping
obligations.
Maintaining the peace is as much an international
responsibility in Africa as it is in Eastern Europe, the Middle East or Asia, and no amount of training of African armies for peacekeeping removes the continent from the international security umbrella. President Clinton must end this racial double standard in US foreign policy towards Africa and mobilize far greater resources to attack the underlying economic and social causes of conflict in Africa as well as meeting its obligations to international peacekeeping in Africa.
Announce a new US policy on HIV/AIDS in Africa
The most important continent-wide challenge facing Africa is the devastating AIDS pandemic. An estimated 14 million Africans have lost their lives to AIDS including over 2 million in '98. AIDS has surpassed malaria as the leading cause of death in Africa, and kills many more people than war. But because Africa is the epicenter of this 21st Century plague, the wealthy western world has been slow to act.
Consequently, the world is perpetuating a global apartheid that keeps Africa impoverished. The recent US proposal to loan Africa $1 billion a year at commercial rates for the purchase of anti-viral AIDS drugs is a
cruel hoax at best and a vivid example of overnment- subsidized corporate greed at worst. The plan aims to protect American pharmaceutical companies threatened by African rights under the World Trade Organization rules to pursue parallel imports and compulsory licensing of anti-AIDS drugs. The US government is prepared to push
Africa further into debt to prevent Africans from getting cheaper drugs. African governments already spend more on debt repayment to wealthy nations than on their own countries' health and education combined. In
this election year, the candidates for President and for Congress should consider dedicating a modest 5 percent of the annual budget surplus -- approximately $9.5 billion this year -- to a global health emergency fund. This would still fall short of the effort needed. But it
would be a leap above the paltry $325 million in President Clinton's current request to Congress for HIV/AIDS worldwide. And it would send a signal that U.S. politicians may share a sense of global responsibility rather than regarding globalization only as an opportunity for corporate profit.
************
Salih Booker
Interim Executive Director
Africa Policy Information Center (APIC)
110 Maryland Avenue, NE Suite 509
Washington, DC 20002
Tel. 202-546-7961
Fax. 202-546-1545
Email. [log in to unmask]
www.africapolicy.org
...and
Interim Executive Director
The Africa Fund
50 Broad Street, Suite 711
New York, NY 10004-2307
Tel. 212-785-1024
Fax. 212-785-1078
Email. [log in to unmask]
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