Nigeria not a failed state — FG lambasts CFA
…Blames CFA report on Campbell, Rotberg opinion
By Ayo Fadimu
Barely 24 hours after the Federal Government expressed displeasure over the action of the United States of America based microblog giant Twitter for deleting President Muhammadu Buhari’s tweet on insecurity, the Federal government today condemned the declaration by the Council on Foreign Affairs (CFA) for declaring Nigeria a failed state.
The Federal Government while reacting through the Minister of Information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed said for anyone to declare Nigeria a failed state on the basis of its security challenges, is “preposterous.”
The Minister while reacting to the article published in a US based magazine which wrote that “Nigeria is at a point of no return with all the signs of a failed nation” stressed that “Nigeria is not and cannot be a failed state.”
Mohammed said the declaration by the Council did not represent an official U.S. policy.
“This declaration is merely the opinion of two persons, former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations John Campbell, and the President Emeritus of World Peace Foundation, Robert Rotberg.
“Declaring any nation a failed state is not done at the whims and caprices of one or two persons, no matter their status.
“Just because Nigeria is facing security challenges, which we have acknowledged and which we are tackling, does not automatically make the country a failed state,’’ he said.
“Yes, the Council on Foreign Relations is a prominent U.S. public policy Think Tank, but its opinion is not that of the U.S.
“Like former U.S. Senator Daniel Moynihan said, ‘You are entitled to your opinion but not your facts.’”
Mohammed reiterated that Nigeria did not meet the criteria for a nation to become a failed state.
He listed the criteria to include inability to provide public service and inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community.
“Yes, the non-state actors may be rampaging in some parts of the country, they have not and cannot overwhelm this government,” he said.
The minister noted that it was not the first time it was predicted that Nigeria would fail or break up.
“We were even once told that Nigeria would break up in 2015.
Nigerian NewsDirect reports that a former United States Ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, and a former Director with Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Prof. Robert Rotberg, have said it is time for the United States to acknowledge that Nigeria is a failed state.
Campbell and Rotberg said this is in light of the many security threats plaguing the country.
This was made known in an article titled, “The Giant of Africa is Failing” which was published in the May/June edition of Foreign Affairs magazine.
Both men stated that every part of Nigeria now faces insecurity which threatens the nation’s corporate existence.
The article read in part, “Nigeria’s worldwide companions, particularly the USA, should acknowledge that Nigeria is now a failed state. In recognition of that truth, they need to deepen their engagement with the nation and search to carry the present administration accountable for its failures, while additionally working with it to supply safety and proper financial system.”
Campbell and Rotberg noted that the security agents have been unable to curb crime due to the sophisticated weapons that the criminals in the country have known their possession.
They also spoke about the Buhari Administration, stating that the country had moved from being a weak one to a failed one.
“Underneath the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, a number of overlapping safety crises has remodelled Nigeria from a weak state right into a failed one. Buhari’s authorities has struggled to quell numerous Jihadi insurgencies, together with the one waged by the militant group Boko Haram,” the article read.
The duo alleged the Federal Government seemed to have given up in some areas and non-state actors had taken over while quasi-police organisations and militias controlled by state governments have become more common.
The authors stated that due to kidnappings and other crimes, several schools had been forced to shut down.
The article reads: “Regional quasi-police forces and militias—generally related to state governments however not often formally sanctioned—train de facto authority in some areas. However in lots of others, the federal authorities have successfully ceded management to militants and criminals.”
Campbell and Rotberg said that most failed states in Africa such as the Central African Republic, Somalia, and South Sudan are small or marginal but Nigeria, in contrast, boasts rising inhabitants of over 200 million people and could be the third-largest country on earth by 2050.
Campbell and Rotberg said happenings in Nigeria also affect other areas of Africa.
The article adds that Nigeria depends too much on oil and is regularly faced with economic disasters.
The authors wrote: “However the Nigerian state has long failed to supply its residents with social companies and Nigerian politics is basically an elite sport disassociated from governance.
“The Federal Government doesn’t or cannot tax the true wealth of the nation, stays too depending on income from oil and gasoline, and lurches from one fiscal disaster to a different. Corruption is structural, too, casting almost everybody as each perpetrator and sufferer.”
The authors recommended that through conferences, technical recommendations, and different instruments of “comfortable diplomacy,” the US ought to help civil society and Nigerian non-governmental organisations in their efforts to strengthen the nation’s democracy.
Similarly, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu also condemned the article in a statement in Abuja on Thursday.
In a letter addressed to the publishers of the magazine, the presidential aide frowned at the way and manner facts were being bent to support distorted opinions.
The letter read in part: “The latest article on Nigeria in Foreign Affairs titled ‘The Giant of Africa is Failing’ is unfair both to a magazine with such an esteemed pedigree and to its readers.
“Ambassador Campbell has been predicting the collapse of Nigeria for several years. He is of course entitled to his opinions, even where events consistently prove him wrong.
“But facts should not be bent to support distorted opinions.
“Let me give you one example.
“The authors write: ‘At an April meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Buhari reportedly requested that the headquarters of the U.S. Africa Command be moved from Germany to Nigeria so that it would be closer to the fight against jihadi groups in the country’s north.’
“President Buhari did not request that AFRICOM move to Nigeria. The transcript of the call with Secretary Blinken is available on the State Department’s own website.
“It’s not just a question of the invented addition of ‘to Nigeria’ with regard to AFRICOM. It sums up a piece that attempts – subtly but revealingly – to shift facts to suit an argument.”
According to Shehu, Nigeria faces multiple challenges, not least of which is the dissemination of fake news and prejudiced opinion.
He said, “This is something we have come to expect from partisan blogs and politically motivated lobbies.
“It is still a surprise, and a disappointment, to see them joined by Foreign Affairs,” Garba wrote.
