Johnnie Carson is the United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. His recent speech at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC on April 9, 2012 was entitled “Nigeria, One Year After Elections” but may have been more appropriately entitled “Appeasing Boko Haram (and its Sponsors): A Marshall Plan for Northern Nigeria”. After initial platitudes, Carson explained his theory – “Nigerians are hungry for progress and improvement in their lives, but Northern Nigerians feel this need most acutely. Life in Nigeria for many is tough, but across the North, life is grim.” He cited vague statistics purporting that while life for Southern Nigerians is merely tough, life is brutish and grim in Northern Nigeria. Actually, Carson, life is grim all over Nigeria!

According to Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, relative poverty was 69 percent in 2010 (112.5million people); absolute poverty was 60.9 percent (99.2million people); and $ per day poverty was 61.2 percent. The Bureau projected 2011 poverty prevalence as 71.5 percent, 61.9 percent and 62.8 percent for relative, absolute and $/day poverty, respectively. A few facts expose the distorted propaganda Carson has swallowed – Niger State, up North, has lowest poverty prevalence nationally with 43.6 percent relative and 33.9 percent $/day poverty; Borno (Boko Haram’s home) has 61.1 percent relative poverty, significantly lower than Ogun (69 percent) and Anambra (68 percent). Benue has higher poverty (74.1 percent) than Kano (72.3 percent). Poverty is more prevalent in South-East’s Ebonyi (80.4 percent) than Northern Gombe (79.8 percent), Jigawa (79 percent), Kaduna (73 percent), Kano (72.3 percent), Nasarawa (71.7 percent), Taraba (76.3 percent), Yobe (79.6 percent), and Zamfara (80.2 percent). Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial, industrial and financial capital, has relative poverty of 59.2 percent. Edo in the South has higher poverty (72.5 percent) than Kano, Nasarawa, Borno and Niger in the North; and poverty levels in “oil rich” Bayelsa, Rivers and Delta States are 57.9 percent, 58.6 percent and 70.1 percent, respectively.

When Carson declares that “poverty in Northern Nigeria is increasing”, he makes no point. Actually, poverty is increasing EVERYWHERE in Nigeria! Again, NBS says relative poverty rose from 27.2 percent nationwide in 1980 to 69 percent in 2010. While higher poverty levels prevail in parts of the North, Nigerian poverty is incapable of North-South compartmentalisation. The 67 percent of South-Easterners who are poor are not different from the 76.3 percent North-Easterners or 77.7 percent North-Westerners in the same condition. Almost 60 percent of South-Westerners (59.1 percent), 67.5 percent in the North-Central, and 63.8 percent in South-South are poor. Poverty is acute, dear Assistant Secretary, everywhere in Nigeria!

Relying on this distorted overview of Nigerian poverty (sold by a well-motivated cast including John Campbell, Jean Herscovits, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and his Financial Times friends, especially William Wallis), Carson could only go wrong. Before his predictably defective conclusion, however, he asserts that the 2011 elections were fair and transparent, but then subtly implies that since most Northerners voted for the opposition, something must be done to appease them (John Campbell recommends, and Wallis/Xan Rice of Financial Times hint government should appoint “strong Northerners”, whatever that means, into government!) – shouldn’t Cameron also co-opt strong Labourites into his coalition (and invite London looters and rioters for dialogue)? Actually, Obama tried and it incensed rather than appease angry Republicans. The fact, however, is that Northerners are ruling party chairman, vice-president, Senate president, House speaker, head of civil service, ministers of Defence, Federal Capital Territory, Interior, Water Resources, Education, Transport, chiefs of Navy and Air Force, Central Bank governor, Chief Justice, Court of Appeal president, Inspector-General of Police, etc. No other region of Nigeria can boast a richer haul!

Carson asserts that “religion is not driving extremist violence in Jos or Northern Nigeria”. It is not necessary to explain how he arrived at this conclusion. Boko Haram victims and Northern Christians bombed to death in their churches (and several pastors decapitated by Boko Haram) may find it difficult agreeing with him, but then dead people are of no strategic significance to the US. There is a confounding portion of Carson’s speech – he acknowledges the hypothesis that Boko Haram is “being funded by a handful of resentful politicians nursing their wounds from the last election” but turns to preaching and exhortation – “This would be deeply unfortunate if true,” he says, “but I have not seen any evidence” to support the theory. Ignoring the fact that he offered no evidence in support of his other suppositions, one would then expect him to proffer alternative theories regarding Boko Haram funding since evidently it cannot be the Northern poor providing sophisticated arms and ammunition, IEDs, AK47s, training, logistics, and operational intelligence for Boko Haram. Who does Carson suggest is funding Boko Haram, or isn’t that question worth pursuing?

Based on faulty diagnosis, Carson’s prescriptions are inevitably incomplete – the Nigerian government should establish a new social contract with Northern citizens (there’s an excellent social contract with the South?); government should de-emphasise the use of the military (to give Boko Haram room to re-group as its sponsors and apologists want?); government should create a ministry of Northern Affairs (not original – Sanusi Lamido already told the Financial Times about a Marshall plan!; and complaints about special funding status for Lagos, and massive erosion and infrastructural collapse in the South-East and South-West minus Lagos are irrelevant?); and a comprehensive economic strategy (presumably for the North too!) to address social and economic context of Boko Haram.

The fact that Southern poverty manifests in economic dimensions – armed robbery, kidnapping, “area boys”, gang violence, drug and human trafficking, fraud, white collar crimes and 419, prostitution, and desperate emigration amongst others, rather than religious extremism and fundamentalist terror – was rather remote for Carson and his advisers to grasp. The millions of Southern poor can go to hell, resort to revolution or form their own terror groups to get attention!

Source: http://www.businessdayonline.com/NG/index.php/analysis/columnists/36138-johnnie-carson-the-us-and-boko-haram