On Jun 4, 2012, at 11:03 AM, G. Ugo Nwokeji wrote:
> I am no big fan of Murtala and Obasanjo, but it is notably ironic that while they were planning a transition to democracy, a principal representative of the world's most prominent democracy was calculating and looking forward to, not how to help the Nigerian leadership achieve that aim, but how his country could benefit from a bazar of coups.
Any nation state is going to defend its perceived national interest. I hope yours does the same. What strikes me about this is not the self interest, but how wrong it is.
Indeed, it's embarrassing to read how wrong the US diplomats were about Murtala Muhammad and Olusegun Obasanjo:
> MUHAMMED andObasanjo are advocates of a NATO-type military command within the OAU having the avowed objective of strengthening liberation movements. More responsibility may bring more realism.
This echoes Kissingers choice of NSSM39 Option 2, which changed US policy by claiming that "The whites are there to stay and the only way change can come is through them." even after the Portuguese revolution had blown up in Kissinger's face. He just did not believe blacks could win against whites. The Nigerian government was much more realistic, at least about Africa, than the US government was.
> On the other hand, formidable ethnic and developmental problems could convince the new leadership that they should deal repressively with the domestic scene while joining militant Arabs and Africans in organizing a Pan African jihad for liberation.
Let me repeat that for emphasis, if only because it is SO wrong:
> they should deal repressively with the domestic scene
This is said officially, if privately, when almost the first act of the new Nigerian government had been to appoint a Constitutional Convention to write a new Constitution, with a firm date for return to democratic government. That date held, whether anyone else at the time believed in it or not.
It is a fact that for most of Nigeria's independence it has been under military rule. It is also a fact that any Nigerian military government that denied being in transition to democratic elections was deposed by other military forces within months. Nigerians used to joke that they didn't have military or civilian government, only permanent transition government.
As an American I can only hope that the State Department has been able to get more competent African specialists than it had 37 years ago.
As Africans you should pass this around for a laugh to all those people who think America is some all-knowing god and see CIA conspiracies behind every door. The ignorance and ineffectiveness of the State Department is exposed.
John Edward Philips <http://human.cc.hirosaki-u.ac.jp/philips/>
International Society, College of Humanities, Hirosaki University
"Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto." -Terentius Afer
<http://www.boydell.co.uk/www.urpress.com/80462561.HTM>
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