U.S. Govt. Report Says Nigeria Will Vanish Within 15 Years

The United States National Intelligence Council, a body of senior intelligence community officials, has issued a report flatly stating that Nigeria will have vanished from the roster of nations within 15 years, the ThisDay Online Website reported. President Olusegun Obasanjo sharply criticized the report.

Since the appearance of CIA Director Porter Goss, a former Congressman from Florida and onetime CIA analyst, before the Senate Intelligence Committee last Fall, the nation's intelligence community has been warning of an imminent collapse of Nigeria, the world's fifth-largest oil producer and the largest in Africa.

ERHC On The Move believes the report's emergence was likely the work of lobbying by ExxonMobil, which is angry that its non-bid for Block 4 of the Joint Development Zone was not accepted by the Nigeria-Sao Tome and Principe Joint Development Authority because it was months late, and in a fit of pique declined to exercise its right to two 25 percent preferential options in any of the five blocks currently on offer.

Update, 9:35pm EDT, 5/26/05: In a response from the American consul in Nigeria, the federal government was urged not to merely dismiss the report or consider it an affront. In essemce, the American official said, things can change. Here is the response story:

U.S. urges Nigeria to take intelligence report seriously
The United States (US) has urged the Federal Government to take the recently released report of its National Intelligence Council (NIC) very seriously and not consider it as an affront of any sort. The report entitled, mapping Sub Saharan Africa's future which had already drawn a presidential remark, had among others hinted of a high possibility of a break up of Nigeria. Briefing reporters in Abuja on Thursday, the U.S. country public affairs counsellor for Nigeria, Mrs Claudia Anyaso, said that grave as the 17 paged report appears, there are always the time honoured "interventions along the line that could change and save things provided well meaning citizens, do not just sit back and do nothing." The American counsellor's detailed clarification were elicited at a joint briefing with Democracy and Governance Officer of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Mr. Stephen Herbaly which sought to x-ray USAID's support for civil society in Nigeria and a new programme budgeted to hit $8 million in the next five years.

Thursday's Vanguard also had a story on the report. Here are the first two paragraphs of that story:

Obasanjo denounces US intelligence reports
by Emmanuel Aziken
Posted to the Web: Wednesday, May 25, 2005

ABUJA — President Olusegun Obasanjo has denounced a United States Intelligence assessment of Nigeria as a nation heading towards failure, and vowed to prove the lowly report on Nigeria as a product of the prophets of doom among the US intelligence community.

President Obasanjo reacted in a letter conveying to the Senate the report of the United States Intelligence Council in which Nigeria was rated as being managed by leaders at war with one another and headed towards possible self-implosion.

A high-ranking official in the region hinted earlier this week that "major oil interests" were behind much of the disruption being experienced in the JDA's second licensing round of oil-rich blocks located in the Gulf of Guinea Joint Development Zone, where ownership is shared on a 60:40 basis by Nigeria and Sao Tome and Principe under a 2001 treaty.

Here is the ThisDay Online story from May 25 editions:

US Intelligence: Nigeria 'll Fail in 15 Years
They are living in the past, says Obasanjo
by Kola Ologbondiyan
05.25.2005

ABUJA --The United States National Intelligence Council in a document entitled "Mapping Sub-Saharan Africa's Future" has predicted "outright collapse of Nigeria" as a nation-state within the next 15 years.

In a swift response, President Olusegun Obasanjo described the prediction as "glib(ly) talk" arising from "dubious or diabolical benchmarks."

On page 17 of the report under the heading "Downside Risks," the US Intelligence claimed that "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 most important would be a junior officer coup that could destabilize the country to the extent that open warfare breaks out in many places in a sustained manner. If Nigeria were to become a failed state, it could drag down a large part of the West Africa 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.”

According to the introductory part of the report captioned "summary", "the National Intelligence Council recently convened a group of top US experts on Sub-Saharan Africa to discuss likely trends in the region over the next 15 years. The group discussed several major issues or drivers that will affect Africa, including globalization and its impact on political development and economic growth, patterns of conflict, terrorism, democratisation, etc.

Obasanjo's 7-paragraph reaction to the document dated May 17, 2005, which was addressed to Senate President Ken Nnamani, and read on the floor was titled "Report of the US Intelligence Council."

It read: "As a means of informing ourselves, I hereby forward a copy of the United States National Intelligence Council document on "Mapping Sub-Saharan Africa's Future" for your attention. 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.

"As a person who has participated in similar so-called "expert group" on issues, situations and regions, I know that the predictions and projections can be wide off the mark because both politics and economics cannot be absolutely predicted and their dynamics can fool the greatest and best expert. But it is important for us to know that we are being rated low, not because of what is happening to us from outside but because of what we do to, for and by ourselves internally.

"I believe that it is only God and ourselves that can map our present and future. No outsider can do that accurately for us. I know that some people glibly talk of the probability of Nigeria as a failed State. I believe that they are living in the past and incapable of noticing and appreciating the positive strides we are making on all fronts and the determination of the Nigerian people to join hands to consolidate democracy and promote sustainable growth and development.

"Because they are stuck to old ideas and dreams as well as stereotypes about us and our capabilities, they cannot see the New Nigeria that we are building collectively as we move beyond the past but allowing the past and present to strengthen and sustain our future.
"Similar experts at the beginning of the second half of the 20th Century predicted worse scenarios for South East Asia. In fact, at the dawn of independence in Africa, Africa's chances were rated much better than that of South East Asia, but because they pulled themselves together, the predictions and projections about them have been proven false. In the case of Africa, the reverse has been true as the early favourable predictions and projections for the continent have remained largely unattained.

"If our detractors cannot see our far-reaching reforms, our fight against waste and corruption, the new culture of prudence and service delivery that is gradually emerging, the various political reforms including the on-going National Political Reform Conference as well as the sacrifices our people are making to ensure economic progress and democratic consolidation as indicators of progress and a radical departure from the past, then they must have some dubious or diabolical benchmarks for measuring efforts at ensuring oneness, unity, stability, indivisibility, prosperity, development and growth of our dear country.

"Our performance in the last three years has, in my view, been very good just as our performance in ensuring stability, peace, economic progress and good governance in West Africa and, indeed, the whole of Africa.

"I believe that we can and should disprove the modern experts of the United States Intelligence Council who are like the prophets of doom and by the Grace of God, for Nigeria in this first decade of the 21st Century, we must be determined to show that we are neither a basket case nor walking on a banana peel.

"I wish you well as you read the report and would very much appreciate your reactions, perspectives and suggestions. For me, it is a challenge and it calls for extra work. We owe that much to our people, to Africa, humanity and to God Almighty, our Creator. May God bless Nigeria and Africa.”