Joint Statement on Nigeria by the US and the EU, January 30, 2010
We express our deep regret at the recent violence and tragic loss of lives in Jos, and extend our sympathies to the bereaved and injured.
We urge all parties to exercise restraint and seek peaceful means to resolve differences between religious and ethnic groups in Nigeria.
We call on the federal government to ensure that the perpetrators of acts of violence are brought to justice and to support interethnic and interfaith dialogue.
Nigeria is one of the most important countries in sub-Saharan Africa, a member of the UN Security Council, a global oil producer, a leader in ECOWAS, a major peacekeeping contributing country, and a stabilizing force in West Africa. Nigeria’s stability and democracy carry great significance beyond its immediate borders.We therefore extend our support to the people of Nigeria during the current period of uncertainty, caused by President Yar’Adua’s illness. We extend our best wishes to the president and his family, and join the Nigerian people in wishing him a full recovery.
Nigeria has expressed its resolve to adhere to constitutional processes during this difficult time. We commend that determination to address the current situation through appropriate democratic institutions. Nigeria’s continued commitment and adherence to its democratic norms and values are key to addressing the many challenges it faces, including electoral reform, post-amnesty programs in the Niger Delta, economic development, inter-faith discord and transparency. The gubernatorial elections in Anambra on 6 February will be a milestone in the journey towards electoral reform and a signal of Nigeria’s commitment to the principles of democracy.
We are committed to continue working with Nigeria on the internal issues it faces while working together as partners on the global stage.Signed: US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton; British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband; French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner; EU High Representative Catherine Ashton, London, United Kingdom
Translation: You are going down. Make it look believable. Kiss kiss hug hug, your friends at the NWO. Our motto: One big happy family!
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First let’s review what our esteemed leaders cite as the CAUSE of Nigeria’s problems: Yar’Adua’s illness.
As reported in The Guardian on January 8, 2010, Nigeria’s president has literally been missing for 45 days (now 68 days). Allegedly he went to Saudi Arabia for treatment of a health problem, without telling anyone, and he hasn’t been heard from since. Just up and left, he did. His absence has paralyzed the Nigerian government at a time of severe crisis. A constitutional crisis at the worst possible time, dragging on interminably. Nobody seems to have any power to unstick the problem.
How convenient is that? I suggest that it is exceedingly convenient for some people — who you might guess would be the sorts of people who like chaos and instability — while being impossibly inconvenient for Nigerians.
After all, Nigeria is a critically important country in West Africa, and West Africa is a critically important component in various contrived narratives driving our world to the brink of destruction. One need only look at the joint US and UN statement to realize that if Nigeria falls apart politically, it becomes a blow-up doll for the NWO mind-fuckers. That is why Hillary and friends very properly encourage the Nigerians to cross every democratic t and dot every democratic i, and color within the lines at all times please (rule of law rule of law), while they hope and pray for Yar’Adua’s “full recovery.” Surely they have also heard that:
President Umaru Yar’Adua is seriously brain damaged, is not able to recognise anyone, including his wife Turai, and can no longer perform the functions of the office of the president, according to multiple sources who have spoken to NEXT on Sunday.
That was two weeks ago. For all we know he may not even be alive.
But nobody wants to talk about that. They might loosen the log-jam. And the log-jam happens to be useful because it breeds chaos.
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Yesterday in Nigeria, a militant group called MEND called off a truce with the paralyzed Nigerian government. I guess that was to be expected, given the log-jam.
The main militant group in the oil-rich Niger Delta called off its cease-fire with the government Saturday morning, dealing a potential death blow to a presidential amnesty program aimed at ending violence that has crippled production in the West African nation.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta issued a statement saying it would no longer abide by the unconditional Oct. 25 cease-fire President Umaru Yar’Adua had negotiated with the group. The militants warned oil producers with pipelines and personnel working in the creeks and swamps of the Delta that it would wage an “an all-out onslaught” against them.
The MEND “warns all oil companies to halt operations as any operational installation attacked will be burnt to the ground,” the statement read. “Oil companies are responsible for the safety and welfare of their workers and will bear the guilt should any harm come upon their staff in the event of an attack.”
The group added: “Nothing will be spared.”
Militants in the Niger Delta have attacked pipelines, kidnapped petroleum company employees and fought government troops since January 2006. They demand that the federal government send more oil-industry funds to Nigeria’s southern region, which remains poor despite five decades of oil production.
In response, Shell has decided to sell off some assets in the Niger Delta. Chevron announced that 20,000 barrels of oil per day had been shut in due to sabotage threats.
The rebel group [MEND] was severely weakened after its senior leaders and thousands of others accepted clemency and disarmed under a presidential amnesty which ended last October. It is unclear who is now running the group.
Candidates include:
Ateke Tom: A former gang leader in Rivers State in the eastern Niger Delta for around a decade, Ateke Tom set up the Niger Delta Vigilante (NDV), one of several groups to enjoy strong backing from politicians who used them to help rig elections….Security sources say he was also heavily involved in oil bunkering, a lucrative trade in industrial quantities of stolen crude smuggled onto the international market.
Farah Dagogo: Also based in Rivers state, Dagogo started out as a top commander loyal to former militant leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, whose Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force turned over thousands of weapons in return for amnesty in 2004.
Government Tompolo: He was responsible in particular for attacks on Chevron and thought to be a major oil bunkerer. Security forces used helicopters and gunboats to attack his camps around Warri, capital of Delta state, last May.
Well, it was awfully good of those chaps to give such clear and menacing warnings so that the oil company people can get out of the way. Let’s give credit where credit is due. I mean, *some* terrorists would just go right in there and start firing away, bombing wedding parties and marketplaces, and killing a bunch of innocent people. You know what I’m saying?
All the same, Something Must Be Done.
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A helicopter flying from Bonny to Port Harcourt crashed on Tuesday afternoon at Isiokpo, near Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, killing all four persons aboard….The zonal coordinator of the Nigerian Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Emenike Umesi, said the four occupants comprised two pilots and two engineers, said to be of Lieutenant Commander Rank.
The NEMA chief, i
n charge of the south-south zone, said the aircraft took off from Bonny, which is home to the Liquefied Natural Gas plant….Security agents at the accident scene however said naval personnel recovered “some vital documents” at the scene.
Addressing journalists on the incident, Naval spokesperson, Commodore David Nabaida, said the names and identities of four dead naval officers were the Pilot of the Helicopter, Lt Commodore Ahmed Tijani Yusuf with official number NNL/2071; Co-Pilot, Lt Commodore Ahmadu Yahaya; Lt Commodore Mailafia Ibrahim, who is the Base Intelligence Officer, Delta and Seaman Illiya Uyuhili, the aircraft’s technician.
…He said the aircraft was on a routine patrol, to investigate a case of illegal bunkering around Akasa and had left from its Warri base and after carrying out its surveillance, was to go to Port Harcourt Airport to refuel before returning to its base but crashed a few kilometers to the airport.
Asked whether there was any connection of the crash with the remnant of militants still operating in the creeks, Nabaida said: “Absolutely not; as I told you, we were at the site of the aircraft accident, the President’s amnesty programme has been working, beside, there is nothing that shows that the crash is connected with anything militancy”.
Riiight. So even though two of the three possible suspected candidates who might be running MEND have been involved in oil bunkering in the past, there’s absolutely no reason to suspect that a naval helicopter investigating oil bunkering would be shot down by said militants, a couple of days before they called off their truce no less.
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In February 2007, National Geographic published a piece about the Niger Delta.
Nigeria had all the makings of an uplifting tale: poor African nation blessed with enormous sudden wealth. Visions of prosperity rose with the same force as the oil that first gushed from the Niger Delta’s marshy ground in 1956….
Everything looked possible—but everything went wrong.Dense, garbage-heaped slums stretch for miles. Choking black smoke from an open-air slaughterhouse rolls over housetops. Streets are cratered with potholes and ruts. Vicious gangs roam school grounds. Peddlers and beggars rush up to vehicles stalled in gas lines. This is Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s oil hub, capital of Rivers state, smack-dab in the middle of oil reserves bigger than the United States’ and Mexico’s combined. Port Harcourt should gleam; instead, it rots.
Beyond the city, within the labyrinth of creeks, rivers, and pipeline channels that vein the delta—one of the world’s largest wetlands—exists a netherworld. Villages and towns cling to the banks, little more than heaps of mud-walled huts and rusty shacks. Groups of hungry, half-naked children and sullen, idle adults wander dirt paths. There is no electricity, no clean water, no medicine, no schools. Fishing nets hang dry; dugout canoes sit unused on muddy banks. Decades of oil spills, acid rain from gas flares, and the stripping away of mangroves for pipelines have killed off fish.
Nigeria has been subverted by the very thing that gave it promise—oil, which accounts for 95 percent of the country’s export earnings and 80 percent of its revenue.
…The sense of relentless crisis has deepened since last year, when a secretive group of armed, hooded rebels operating under the name of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, intensified attacks on oil platforms and pumping stations, most operated by Shell Nigeria.
…With each disruption, the daily price of oil on the world market climbed. According to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, escalating violence in a region teeming with angry, frustrated people is creating a “militant time bomb.”
…Isaac Asume Osuoka, director of Social Action, Nigeria, believes that callousness toward the people of the delta stems from their economic irrelevance. “With all the oil money coming in, the state doesn’t need taxes from people. Rather than being a resource for the state, the people are impediments. There is no incentive anymore for the government to build schools or hospitals.”I can say this,” Osuoka said firmly. “Nigeria was a much better place without oil.”
Well, that’s just it. The poor people happen to be in the way, from the perspective of the very important people who would like to go about extracting Nigeria’s natural resources in peace and quiet, thank you very much.
No one can deny the sheer technological achievement of building an infrastructure to extract oil from a waterlogged equatorial forest. Intense swampy heat, nearly impenetrable mangrove thickets, swarming insects, and torrential downpours bedevil operations to this day. But mastering the physical environment has proved almost simple compared with dealing with the social and cultural landscape. The oil firms entered a region splintered by ethnic rivalries.
Ahh, yes, the impossible to please poor people and their interminable “ethnic rivalries.” That’s always a good justification. That way when the oil companies go in there to take over the natural resources and make life next to impossible for people who lived off the land, without providing any consolation prizes like electricity or clean water or schools or medicine, those damn poor people are bound to get all uppity and start causing trouble. Happens every time.
Who could have predicted??
“After 50 years, the oil companies are still searching for a way to operate successfully with communities,” says Antony Goldman, a London-based risk consultant. The delta is littered with failed projects started by oil companies and government agencies—water tanks without operating pumps, clinics with no medicine, schools with no teachers or books, fishponds with no fish. “The companies didn’t consult with villagers,” says Michael Watts, director of the African Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. “They basically handed out cash to chiefs. It wasn’t effective at all.”
A fifty fucking years learning curve? How about they know exactly what they’re doing. How about they do this on purpose. It’s a critical part of the business model to make the land inhospitable so that the people die or leave. The People Are In The Way. OK? That’s what’s going on. And everybody involved knows it. That’s why Hillary Clinton had to complain about all the corruption in Nigeria just this last week. It’s UNBELIEVABLE she says, making sure to mention patsy underpants. Yes, those corrupt Africans. Where do they get off?
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Well, it’s like this. Those corrupt African leaders hook up with corrupt leaders from The West. One big happy family. Even Lev Leviev.
1. Former Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo came under fire for selecting Yar’Adua, knowing him to be sickly. He vehemently denied this. Perish the thought.
2. But, last May US investigators asserted that Obasanjo and others took millions of dollars in bribes from American and European contractors, including Halliburton, to allow the companies to build a liquid natural gas plant in Bonny. This scandal goes back years and ensnares various countries and Important People of The West.
3. Another of the accused in that very scandal, Sani Abacha, has been fighting Swiss authorities for ten years over an estimated three billion dollars misappropriated from Nigeria and stashed in Swiss bank accounts. The money laundering case has dragged on for so long with the help of people in London and elsewhere (see time line here). The Swiss authorities ordered $350 million to be returned to Nigeria last week. An unnamed person in Monaco has been charged.
4. France would like to invest in Imo state (look at the map), to help Nigeria branch out from their dependence on oil and gas. More like a twig than a branch…
5. Nigeria and Angola vie for top petroleum producer spot, and Angola has been able to pull ahead in 2009 due to the violence in Nigeria. Lucky break for the Angola investors.
6. Angola hydrocarbon sector investors: Lev Leviev, China, India…
7. To insure that all these deals will go along smoothly, Angola’s parliament prepares to expand the powers of the president, making him head of state, head of government, and head of the armed forces. The new constitution eliminates the position of prime minister and adds a vice president. VPs are always very useful. And the president may serve two five year terms. All of which contrasts markedly from the situation in Nigeria.
So it looks like Nigeria will be violently dismantled and reassembled somewhere down the road, after the “militants” take over the place and wreck havoc, and tie into some drug smuggling or terrorist operations against The People of The West, justifying some military intervention or something.
And Angola will go on to a brighter future, perhaps marred by the occasional terrorist incident but otherwise firmly in the grip of a sponsored dictatorship.
That’s how it goes in the big happy family.
