Nigeria's fall can sink region
2005-05-25 09:50
Abuja - Nigeria could collapse into anarchy and drag its whole region into bloodshed and chaos, according to a report by United States (US) intelligence experts sent to Nigerian lawmakers by President Olusegun Obasanjo on Tuesday.
The Nigerian leader said he had taken the unusual step of passing out a report from the US National Intelligence Council on Africa's medium-term prospects in order to encourage Nigerians to work together for stability.
"I am sending this to you not because I am alarmed by the report but because if we know what others think of us and about us, we can prevent what they project for us," Obasanjo said, in a letter to the Nigerian senate president.
Unrest continues, shaky democracy
With violent unrest continuing in several regions, including the oil-rich Niger Delta and the restive Muslim north, many here worry that the country's shaky six-year-old experiment with democratic rule may yet end in disaster.
The American report, which is entitled "Mapping Sub-Saharan Africa's Future", notes in a section on violent disorder that: "20 000 people have been killed in Nigeria while that country has maintained its democratic facade".
The document does not represent the US government's official views, but was published on the website of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in March as the conclusions of a conference of experts on the continent.
A bleak future
The panel paints a bleak picture for Africa over the next 15 years, warning poverty, corruption and disease will continue to undermine fragile states. They point to several factors, which could provoke conflict and collapse.
"While currently Nigeria's leaders are locked in a bad marriage that all dislike but dare not leave, there are possibilities that could disrupt the precarious equilibrium in Abuja," the report adds.
"The most important would be a junior officer coup could destabilise the country to the extent that open warfare breaks out in many places in a sustained manner," it continues.
"If Nigeria were to become a failed state, it could drag down a large part of the West African region. Even state failure in small countries such as Liberia has the effect of destabilising entire neighbourhoods.
"If millions were to flee a collapsed Nigeria, the surrounding countries up to and including Ghana would be destabilised.
"Further, a failed Nigeria probably could not be reconstituted for many years — if ever — and not without massive international assistance," it says.
In his letter to lawmakers, Obasanjo, a former military ruler who was elected to office in 1999 and who must stand down in 2007 after two terms in office, defended his record of slow economic and political reform.
"I believe we can and should disprove the modern experts of the United States Intelligence Council who are like prophets of doom," he wrote.
A day earlier, the EU said it would provide support personnel, training and equipment — including anything from vehicles, weapons and tents — for the mission.
An estimated 300 000 people have died and 2.4 million displaced since the Sudanese government launched a crackdown on an uprising by ethnic rebels in February 2003.
The budget for the current AU mission is already $221m — almost quadruple the 53-member bloc's annual budget — and is being paid for almost entirely by the European Union, EU members and the United States.
The first expansion of the operation is expected to push the cost to $400m with the possible second enhancement to increase the budget to $700m, according to AU officials.