Under the cover of counterterrorism, AFRICOM is beefing up Nigeria’s military to ensure the free flow of oil to the West, and using the country as a proxy against China’s influence on the continent.
Last month, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times. It might as well have been written by the Pentagon. Buhari promoted Brand Nigeria, auctioning the country’s military services to Western powers, telling readers that Nigeria would lead Africa’s “war on terror” in exchange for foreign infrastructure investment. “Though some believe the war on terror [WOT] winds down with the US departure from Afghanistan,” he says, “the threat it was supposed to address burns fiercely on my continent.”

With Boko Haram and Islamic State operating in and near Nigeria, pushing a WOT narrative is easy. But counterterror means imperial intervention. So, why is the Pentagon really interested in Nigeria, a country with a GDP of around $430 billion – some $300 billion less than the Pentagon’s annual budget – a population with a 40 percent absolute poverty rate, and an infant mortality rate of 74 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared to 5.6 per 1,000 in the US?

A US Naval Postgraduate School doctoral thesis from over a decade ago offers a plausible explanation: the Gulf of Guinea, formed in part by Nigeria’s coastline, “has large deposits of hydrocarbons and other natural resources.” It added: “There is now a stiff international competition among industrialized nations including the United States, some European countries, China, Japan, and India.”

Since then, the US has been quietly transforming Nigeria’s police and military into a neo-colonial force that can support missions led by the US Africa Command (AFRICOM). Buhari’s offer makes US involvement in Nigeria appear as if Nigeria is asking for help, when in fact the stage is already set for AFRICOM.

The Pentagon’s broader aim is to stop China and Russia from gaining a foothold in the continent. In the meantime, it aims to crush any and all opposition groups that disrupt energy supplies so that oil giants can continue exploiting Nigeria’s resources.

A brief history of a complex country
It’s important to get an idea of Nigeria’s ethnic and regional complexities. The country’s 206 million people, nearly half of whom are Muslim and nearly half Christian, live north of the equator in West Africa. Their country has 36 states, seven of which are coastal. The country borders Cameroon in the east, Benin in the west, Chad in the northeast, and Niger in the north and northwest.

A US Strategic Studies Institute report from the mid-‘90s describes Nigeria as “an artificial state created according to colonial exigencies rather than ethnic coherence.” Its fragility explains the country’s susceptibility to ethnic, religious, and class warfare. The majority of Nigerian Muslims are Sunni, but Islam in the country spans the spectrum, from Sufism to Salafism. The Christian population is distributed among the Protestant majority as well as Anglicans, Baptists, Evangelicals, Catholics, Methodists, and Roman Catholics. Most of Nigeria’s Muslims live in the north in 12 states whose laws are based on sharia.

Nigeria boasts hundreds of languages and ethnicities, the largest groups being the Hausa (who make up 30 percent of the population), Yoruba (15.5), Igbo (a.k.a., Ibo 15.2), and Fulani (6 percent). There are, of course, exceptions, but in general the Hausa-Fulani and Kanuri peoples tend to be Muslim and the Igbo, Ijaw, and Ogoni Christian. Islam and Christianity tend to be mixed among the Yoruba. During the late-19th century “Scramble for Africa,” the British colonized the region, Christianizing the south and leaving in place the Islamic political structures in the north both for convenience and as a useful divide and rule technique.

Black gold, British rule
Drawing up “contracts” for energy companies, the Foreign Office (FO) created a monopoly for Anglo-Persian oil (later BP) and particularly for Shell. Prospecting contracts were awarded by the FO in the late-1930s, but it was as late as 1956 that financially viable amounts of black gold were struck. Most of the country’s oil is in the southern, Niger Delta region populated by the Ijaw and Ogoni peoples, hence there is little militant Islam in Nigeria’s illicit oil sector. Shell operations began in Ogoniland in 1958.

Nigeria gained slow and painful independence from Britain in 1960. Seven years later, armed Igbo fought a war of secession in the oil-rich south to try to form their own country, the Republic of Biafra. Under a One Nigeria policy, the British supported the central regime of General Yakubu Gowon during the Biafra War (1967-70). Fighting and blockade led to three million deaths. Biafra failed to secede.

The UK Labour government’s Commonwealth Minister, George Thomas, explained at the time: “The sole immediate British interest in Nigeria is that the Nigerian economy should be brought back to a condition in which our substantial trade and investment in the country can be further developed, and particularly so we can regain access to important oil installations.”

As the British Empire declined, the US gradually pursued the same policy in Nigeria. At first, the US considered supporting Biafra.

The Kennedy administration initiated $170 million in economic and military spending in Nigeria under a plan that continued until 1966, into the Johnson administration. William Haven North, who served as the Director for Central and West African Affairs for the US Agency of International Development (USAID) said: “The issue of supporting Biafra was also tied up with the question of oil interests; the major part of the oil reserves in Nigeria were in the Eastern Region with substantial American oil company investments.” In 1978, the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet began the regular exercises in the Gulf of Guinea that continue to the present.
Pentagon might consider Nigeria to be just another pawn in the new cold war chess game. However, any escalation of tensions in flashpoints, like Taiwan, could unintentionally trigger nuclear catastrophe. This appears to be a risk the Pentagon is willing to take to enforce “full spectrum dominance.”
Tj Coles

The same US that is on the verge of energy sufficency is trying to get Nigeria's oil...for free?

Okay....

All I'LL SAY is that exports of oil to the US from this country have been on the decline for a decade. Plus everyone is discovering oil

And finally, bad governance is what provided the soil for violent Islamism in this country, not the US, Iran or any other nation. Decades of bad governance.

This doesn't make any sense to me. No evidence.

Modrovdeux:
The same US that is on the verge of energy sufficency is trying to get Nigeria's oil...for free?

Okay....

All I'LL SAY is that exports of oil to the US from this country have been on the decline for a decade. Plus everyone is discovering oil

And finally, bad governance is what provided the soil for violent Islamism in this country, not the US, Iran or any other nation. Decades of bad governance.

With what technology?
Forget shiit no country can be energy sufficient in this century



Back to topic
I don’t believe all the crap written up there

Next!!!

Nigeria boasts hundreds of languages and ethnicities, the largest groups being the Hausa (who make up 30 percent of the population), Yoruba (15.5), Igbo (a.k.a., Ibo 15.2), and Fulani (6 percent)

Another e-war brewing

Kyase:

With what technology?
Forget shiit no country can be energy sufficient in this century



Back to topic
I don’t believe all the crap written up there

Next!!!

US oil imports have reduced over the years. They no longer import as much as they used to from Nigeria, Venezuela even Saudi. (the current oil price slump is as a result of Saudis playing chicken with US oil producers)

Below is a chart showing the drop...(source here)

Then there is green energy and the electric car is becoming more of a reality.

At some point, the US is going to eventually leave a lot of naitons behind with their oil. Nigeria is doing nothing to prepare for that future...instead, Bubu is looking for more oil....

Modrovdeux:


US oil imports have reduced over the years. They no longer import as much as they used to from Nigeria, Venezuela even Saudi. (the current oil price slump is as a result of Saudis playing chicken with US oil producers)

Below is a chart showing the drop...(source here)

Then there is green energy and the electric car is becoming more of a reality.

At some point, the US is going to eventually leave a lot of naitons behind with their oil. Nigeria is doing nothing to prepare for that future...instead, Bubu is looking for more oil....

Yes it’s import on crude has reduced
But let me tell you
The world will continue using the black gold for millions of years to come

Electric cars and what have you need the black gold to run

There’s limit to renewable energy that they won’t tell you but there’s......

Kyase:

Yes it’s import on crude has reduced
But let me tell you
The world will continue using the black gold for millions of years to come

Electric cars and what have you need the black gold to run

There’s limit to renewable energy that they won’t tell you but there’s......

I get your point...but at the end of the day, the US is going to be using more of its oil, than importing oil from other countries.

.

Modrovdeux:


I get your point...but at the end of the day, the US is going to be using more of its oil, than importing oil from other countries.

.

That’s is true
But it’s not yet time for that

The campaign against crude oil by the western world is just for them to get it cheap
The crude is here to stay for at least 5 million years to come and it will remain important till then

The USA needs crude with their population tripling in the next 50 years they definitely need it

It is a pity our politicians cannot see beyond their noses.

Why do we continue to dance in the shadows of these neo colonialists...

Why can’t Nigeria be the hub of manufacturing in Africa....this is the only true way out of this hole.

ohk now, this is a sane thread see two people up dia putting out their points without insults o

Bullshit.

America no send naija

Kyase:

Yes it’s import on crude has reduced
But let me tell you
The world will continue using the black gold for millions of years to come

Electric cars and what have you need the black gold to run

There’s limit to renewable energy that they won’t tell you but there’s......

This is gross exaggeration. Give it 100 years tops and crude oil will go the way of coal.

Thanks to fulani, evil Yoruba and their Jew partners.

Ola17:


This is gross exaggeration. Give it 100 years tops and crude oil will go the way of coal.

You can’t be serious

This is a complete confused write up. No cohesion and full with lots of fallacies.
The body of the write up is completely different from the headlines.
You can read for fun, but it's not worth the efforts

Kyase:

You can’t be serious

I’m serious Mallam.

France for example produces about 70% of her electricity from nuclear power, I’m sure in less than 100 years time, 100% of their electricity sources will move away from nuclear power to even more environmental friendly sources. There are ongoing researches to make this a reality; nuclear fusion for example.

Why do you think Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and other major oil producing countries are actively diversifying their economies away from oil?