Princeton N. Lyman, the
former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria and South Africa,
delivered a very poignant speech on the panel titled “The Nigerian State and
U.S. Strategic Interests” at the Achebe Colloquium at Brown University, USA.
TRANSCRIPT OF SPEECH (TAKEN DIRECTLY FROM THE VIDEO SPEECH)
Thank you very much Prof. Keller and thanks to the organizers of this conference. It is such a privilege to be here in a conference in honor of Prof. Achebe, an inspiration and teacher to all of us.
I have a long connection
to Nigeria. Not only was I Ambassador there, I
have travelled to and from Nigeria for a number of years and have a deep and
abiding vital emotional attachment to the Nigerian people, their magnificence,
their courage, artistic brilliance, their irony, sense of humor in the face of
challenges etc.
And I hope that we keep that in mind when I say some things that I think are counter to what we normally say about Nigeria. And I say that with all due respect to Eric Silla who is doing a magnificent work at State Department and to our good friend from the legislature, because I have a feeling that we both Nigerians and Americans may be doing Nigeria and Nigerians no favor by stressing Nigeria’s strategic importance.
I know all the arguments:
it is a major oil producer, it is the most
populous country in Africa, it has made major contributions to Africa in
peacekeeping, and of course negatively if Nigeria were to fall apart the ripple
effects would be tremendous, etc.. But I wonder if all this emphasis on
Nigeria’s importance creates a tendency of inflate Nigeria’s opinion of its own
invulnerability.
Among much of the elite
today, I have the feeling that there is a belief that Nigeria is too big to
fail, too important to be ignored, and that Nigerians can go on ignoring some
of the most fundamental challenges they
have many of which we have talked about: disgraceful lack of
infrastructure, the growing problems of unemployment, the failure to deal with
the underlying problems in the Niger-Delta, the failure to consolidate
democracy and somehow feel will remain important to everybody because of all
those reasons that are strategically important.
And I am not sure that that is helpful.
Let me sort of deconstruct those elements of Nigeria’s importance, and ask whether they are as relevant as they have been.
We often hear that one in five Africans is a Nigerian. What does it mean? Do we ever say one in five Asians is a Chinese? Chinese power comes not just for the fact that it has a lot of people but it has harnessed the entrepreneurial talent and economic capacity and all the other talents of China to make her a major economic force and political force.
What does it mean that one in five Africans is Nigeria? It does not mean anything to a Namibian or a South African. It is a kind of conceit. What makes it important is what is happening to the people of Nigerian. Are their talents being tapped? Are they becoming an economic force? Is all that potential being used?
And the answer is “Not really.”
And oil, yes, Nigeria is a major oil producer, but Brazil is now launching a 10-year program that is going to make it one of the major oil producers in the world. And every other country in Africa is now beginning to produce oil.
And Angola is rivalling Nigeria in oil production, and the United States has just discovered a huge gas reserve which is going to replace some of our dependence on imported energy.
So if you look ahead ten years, is Nigeria really going to be that relevant as a major oil producer, or just another of another of the many oil producers while the world moves on to alternative sources of energy and other sources of supply.
And what about its influence, its contributions to the continent? As our representative from the parliament talked about, there is a great history of those contributions. But that is history.
Is Nigeria really playing a major role today in the crisis in Niger on its border, or in Guinea, or in Darfur, or after many many promises making any contributions to Somalia?
The answer is no, Nigeria is today NOT making a major impact, on its region, or on the African Union or on the big problems of Africa that it was making before.
What about its economic influence?
Well, as we have talked
about earlier, there is a de industrialization going on in Nigeria a lack of
infrastructure, a lack of power means that with imported goods under
globalization, Nigerian factories are closing, more and more people are
becoming unemployed. and Nigeria is becoming a kind of
society that imports and exports and lives off the oil, which does not
make it a significant economic entity.
Now, of course, on the negative side, the collapse of Nigeria would be enormous, but is that a point to make Nigeria strategically important?
Years ago, I worked for an
Assistant Secretary of State who had the longest tenure in that job in the
1980s and I remember in one meeting a minister from a country not very friendly
to the United States came in and was berating the Assistant Secretary on all
the evils of the United States and
all its dire plots and in things in Africa and was going on and on and
finally the Assistant Secretary cut him off and said: “You know, the biggest
danger for your relationship with the United States is not our oppostion but
that we will find you irrelevant.”
The point is that Nigeria
can become much less relevant to the United States. We have already seen
evidence of it. When President Obama went to Ghana and not to Nigeria, he was
sending a message, that Ghana symbolized
more of the significant trends, issues and importance that one wants to put on
Africa than Nigeria.
And when I was asked by
journalists why President Obama did not go to Nigeria, I said “what would he
gain from going? Would Nigeria be a good model for democracy, would it be a
model for good governance, would he
obtain new commitments on Darfur or Somalia or strengthen the African Union or
in Niger or elsewhere?”
No he would not, so he did not go.
And when Secretary Clinton did go, indeed but she also went to Angola and who would have thought years ago that Angola would be the most stable country in the Gulf of Guinea and establish a binational commission in Angola.
So the handwriting may already be on the wall, and that is a sad commentary.
Because what it means is that Nigeria’s most important strategic importance in the end could be that it has failed.
And that is a sad sad conclusion. It does not have to happen, but I think that we ought to stop talking about what a great country it is, and how terribly important it is to us and talk about what it would take for Nigeria to be that important and great.
And that takes an enormous amount of commitment. And you don’t need saints, you don’t need leaders like Nelson Mandela in every state, because you are not going to get them.
I served in South Korea in
the middle of the 1960s and it was time when South Korea was poor and
considered hopeless, but it was becoming to turn around, later to become to
every person’s amazement then the eleventh
largest economy in the world. And I remember the economist in my mission
saying, you know it did not bother him that the leading elites in the
government of South Korea were taking 15 – 20 percent off the top of every
project, as long as every project was a good one, and that was the difference.
The leadership at the time was determined to solve the fundamental economic issues
of South Korea economy and turn its economy around.
It has not happened in Nigeria today.
You don’t need saints. It
needs
leaders who say “You know we could be becoming irrelevant, and we got to do
something about it.”
Thank you!
POSTSCRIPT: The conclusion of Ambassador Princeton N. Lyman’s speech has always
been my opinion and position. Nations are never governed by saints but by
performers who may be crooked but are straightened out by strong institutions.
Nigerians, unfortunately, continue to delude ourselves that there are Angels
who will help turn everyone into good guys while ignoring and neglecting the
priorities of good governance like solid infrastructure, education, healthcare,
rule of law, employment and so on. Monumental tragedy is beckoning, sadly.
SOURCE; thebreakingtimes.com
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