Nigeria Is Becoming Irrelevant – Ambassador Lyman

Nigeria Is Becoming Irrelevant – Ambassador Lyman Written by By Princeton N. Lyman 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 humour 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 favour 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. But I wonder if all this emphasis on Nigeria's importance creates a tendency to 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 will remain important to everybody because of all those reasons that are strategically important. 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. Yes, Nigeria is a major oil producer, but Brazil is now launching a 10-year programme 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. 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. 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. 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 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 opposition, 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 symbolised more of the significant trends, issues and importance that one wants to put on Africa than Nigeria. 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, 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 (have) got to do something about it." •Lyman, former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria and South Africa, presented this paper at the Achebe Colloquium held December 11, 2009, at Brown University, USA.