PENTAGONS VOICE, ESAUS LITTLE FINGER We have observed two issues emanating from the US intervention in the Nigerian Boko menace. 1. They have debunked the claim our president made at the Paris summit that Boko Haram was an arm of Al Qaeda. The United States insists that the group is a terrorist organization of its own type. This cat and dog on the ID of Boko Haram has been on for a long time between the United States and the Nigerian government. It has profound implications which direction the tree falls. The US has steadfastly held the position that Boko Haram is a home brew, distilled from the evil broth of aggressive poverty, ignorance and gross injustice demonstrated in unfair distribution of wealth where some are gorging in the presence of others who are starving. The Nigerian authorities always parry this narrative, preferring to cast terrorist group as a device of local political foes of the president or to blame it outright as an Al Qaeda export all the way from the crags of Waziristan. Here is the heart of the issue: The American perspective lays a heavy burden of responsibility on government. It clearly indicts the government on corruption and finds a sustainable solution to the problem in government discharging its duties to the people. The Nigerian governments position absolves it of both blame and responsibility and points accusing fingers at others. The Americans wont drop their narrative because it spreads a wide net that demands that institutional gross ineptitude, inefficiency be addressed as the root cause of the Nigerian problem. This tells me that America is here primarily to officially discredit this establishment, indict it and set in motion processes of dismantling it in the mid-term on long-term, using the abducted girls issue as a pretext. Barack Obama has never hidden his disdain for the corrupt Nigerian establishment, avoiding it like a plague even as he toured Africa. Nigerian leaders have sensed it and it is the reason they stick to their policy of denial. But mark it, within weeks something must snap and one of these positions will win out and decide the direction Nigeria will take with respect to the import of Boko Haram and generally in effect, on the future of the country. 2. The Americans appear to have seized control of operations and negotiations going by the swiftness with which the Federal government ruled out exchange of prisoners with Boko Haram. That was an unmistakeable voice of the Pentagon. If they have taken over in this regard, you might as well concede the other to them.
Posted on: Tue, 20 May 2014 07:33:18 +0000
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