5. These repeated flare-ups and the widening of fault lines they have equally exposed have been of concern to many Nigerian and non-Nigerian academic and policy analysts. Using the tools of their profession, many of these analysts have conducted scenario studies that stress the urgency of addressing these fault lines and the rising insecurity they generate. Some of these studies, particularly those conducted by scholars and analysts from the United States of America (US), have been predicting the eventual failure of the Nigerian state since the mid-1990s. The most apocalyptic of these US-based scenarios was conducted in 2008 by a team of four Air force officer-engineers at the Air University (AU), Alabama, US entitled Failed State 2030: Nigeria- a Case Study. They used Nigeria to represent its fourth scenario of a failed state in a vital area of US interest as part of a five-part Blue Horizon scenario study. Failed State 2030: Nigeria-a Case Study was later published in 2011. Like other studies by US security and intelligence agencies, this Blue Horizon study reinforced the possibility of Nigeria's failure by 2030 due to the fragilities of a "failed state" deriving from the country's unresolved socio-cultural, political and economic challenges.
6. In February 2012, the Office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria directed the Commandant, National Defence College, Abuja, R/Admiral ... through the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) to make a comprehensive review of the Failed State 2030: Nigeria- a Case Study and offer a counter-strategy on the issues raised in the report. Consequently, in March 2012, the Commandant, NDC duly constituted a committee of NDC directing staff and research faculty composed of Air Cdre ... (Chairman), Prof OC Iheduru (Member), Dr ... (Member) and ... (esq) (Secretary), and mandated them to make a comprehensive review of the publication and offer a counter-strategy on the claims contained in it.
AIM
7. The aim of this paper therefore, is to appraise the Failed State 2030: Nigeria as a Case Study report with a view to proffering appropriate response strategies to the central challenges identified in this and other similar scenario reports about the future of Nigeria.
18. Given the concerns and the effect a failed or failing Nigeria would have on its interests, various arms of the United States military and security establishments have conducted series of future scenario studies and war games since the mid-1990s in preparation for Nigeria's possible implosion. Most of the scenario projections have come out of the United States National Intelligence Council (NIC). Its most audacious scenario study was a 2005 report suggesting that Nigeria risked disintegration by 2015. The latest scenario study about a possible collapse of Nigeria was conducted by four air force colonels at the US Air University in 2008. Published years later in February 2011, the Failed State 2030: Nigeria—a Case Study contends that Nigeria exhibits extraordinarily complex demographics, culture of corruption, and failing national infrastructure. This is worsened by the country's long history of dangerously destabilizing religious and ethnic violence and potentials for future military coups d'état. It concludes that if urgent steps were not taken to address these danger signals, Nigeria risked collapse in 2030. More importantly, the authors explored the likely technological response of the US air Force to this apocalyptic scenario.
CONTEXTUALISING AMERICAN "OBSESSION" WITH A FAILING NIGERIA
19. Although the 2011 Air University occasional paper is a student project, many Nigerians are understandably concerned about what may seem like "American obsession" with the possibility of a failed Nigeria. In February 2012, the U. S. ambassador to Nigeria, Terrence McCulley had to embark on an orchestrated campaign to deny media reports and popular concerns among many Nigerians that the U.S. government, rather than U.S.-based researchers and analysts, was the author of these recurring reports of imminent collapse of their country.[i] Whether or not these reports reflect official US government positions, Americans are interested in Nigeria's future for several reasons. Firstly, Nigeria's geo-strategic importance to US energy security has been consistently emphasized by US policy and strategic thinkers: it is estimated that Nigeria and the entire GoG would provide up to 25 per cent of US light, sweet crude oil imports by 2030. Secondly, Nigeria's large and growing population would present a critical challenge to global, and indeed, US economy if it fails. Nigeria's population which has grown at an average rate of 2 per cent since 2008 is projected to reach over 225 million by 2030. Thirdly, the US expects Nigeria to play a critical role in the development and stability of other African nations, given its strategic position in Africa.
20. In line with these concerns, therefore, US policy and strategic planners have consistently conducted studies and simulated scenarios about Nigeria's possible failure, with a view to avoiding it or recommending ways that the US would respond and cope with its consequences. The US National Intelligence Council (NIC) has played a lead role in these scenario studies. Its 2010 scenario study forecast that Nigeria will not have the potential to play the role of a leader in West Africa because its economic mismanagement, corruption, and political instability will not be resolved over the next 15 years. Similarly, an NIC-sponsored one-day conference of US experts on Africa in January 2005 participants predicted that Nigeria would fail by 2015, if some of its fault lines were not properly managed and controlled.
21. The conference concluded that a failed Nigerian state could drag down a large part of the West African region. Clearly, if millions of people were to flee a collapsed Nigeria, the surrounding countries, up to and including Ghana, would be destabilized. Further, a failed Nigeria probably could not be reconstituted for many years if ever, and not without massive international assistance. The 2005 projections on Nigeria elicited so much apprehension that the Olusegun Obasanjo administration promptly arrested the leaders of several militant groups in the country, amongst which were the leaders of 'Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra' (MASSOB), the 'Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force' (NDPVF), Asari Dokubo and Gani Adams of the O'odua People's Congress (OPC).
22. The year 2008, however, marked a watershed in United States' interest in the future of Nigeria. This is evidenced by a proliferation of simulation studies and exercises on Nigeria's likely implosion by several US security and intelligence outfits in that year. A National Intelligence Council report entitled "Democratization in Africa: What Progress Towards Institutionalization", published in February 2008, posited that despite the return to democracy in 1999, ethnic and religious conflicts had persisted with an estimated 14,000 deaths in political and communal clashes, with much of the violence taking resource, ethnic and religious tones. This conclusion may have formed the basis for a later report by the same agency in November 2008, where it further asserted that the encroaching desertification in the north as well as the religious clashes between Muslims and Christians, among other factors, point to a conceivable outbreak of another Biafra-like civil war, only this time along North-South lines. The report entitled "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World" contended further that unless employment conditions change dramatically, Nigeria will remain ripe for continued instability and state failure. It therefore, warned that Nigeria's eventual failure may require military intervention by outside powers to stabilize energy flows and guarantee security in the region, thus reinforcing the need for US preparedness.
23. It was also in 2008, that the study under review was commissioned. The Failed State 2030: Nigeria-a Case Study shows that the various trends pointing to Nigeria's possible failure could be used to develop strategies or war games to help the US avoid or test potential responses to the calamity of failed states. By design or coincidence, the U. S. military in May 2008, conducted a war games called Unified Quest 2008 to ascertain how its military might respond to a war in parts of Africa, including Nigeria. Among other scenarios, the war game envisioned the deployment of 20,000 US troops to maintain security in the Niger Delta oil fields within a dissolved anarchic Nigeria. The war game, however, ended without U.S. military intervention because one of the rival factions in the Nigerian army executed a successful coup and formed a government that sought stability in the country, thereby guaranteeing the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market which is one of the guiding principles of AFRICOM.[ii]
24. A joint report authored by the NIC and South Africa- based Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in 2010 reinforced the same sentiments expressed in the Failed State 2030 monograph. While noting the significant leadership potential that Nigeria holds in the stability and development of Africa, the report contended that internal conflict or collapse of a populous Nigeria would likely overwhelm international conflict management efforts, given the difficult challenges that smaller countries, such as Sudan or Somalia, have so far posed to the international community.
25. Finally, the 2012 annual report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended that Nigeria should be designated as a "Country of Particular Concern" (CPC). The USCIRF claims to be "an independent, bipartisan U. S. Federal Government commission" with principal responsibilities to review the facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom internationally and make policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State and Congress. However, its commissioners are appointed by the US President and the leadership of both political parties in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The commission premised it recommendation on the fact that over 14,000 Nigerians had been killed in religiously-related violence between Muslims and Christians since 1999. Significantly, the USCIRF also noted that "the government of Nigeria continues to fail to prevent and contain acts of religiously-related violence, prevent reprisal attacks, or bring those responsible for such violence to justice." Other countries recommended for CPC status in 2012 were Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Vietnam, while countries on its watch-list include Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia and Venezuela. Nigeria which had been on USCIRF's watch-list since 2002, was first recommended for CPC status in 2009.[iii]
26. These military and security reports have been complemented by a number of recent books that have predicted the collapse of the Nigerian state, namely Karl Maier, This House Has Fallen (2002), Robert Calderis, The Trouble with Africa (2007), and Roy Cullen, The Poverty of Corrupt Nations (2008).[iv] Most of these books owe their apocalyptic trade mark to the lurid portrayal of state failure in Africa in Robert Kaplan's article in the Atlantic Monthly in 1994 which warned that a "coming anarchy" from Africa would engulf much of the post-Cold war world. That article became required reading in the Clinton White House that year.[v] James Campbell, the former US ambassador to Nigeria and the Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the US Council on Foreign Relations, capped these dire predictions with his Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink in 2010. Campbell's grand thesis is that whereas Nigeria had been resilient in surviving a civil war, the confluence of intensified ethnic and religious violence in the Middle Belt, the insurrection in the Delta, and the paralysis of the Presidency at the time of the 2011 elections would be the defining moments of Nigeria's state failure.[vi]
HIGHLIGHTS OF FAILED STATE 2030 NIGERIA—A CASE STUDY
27. The contexts of the perceived U. S. "obsession" with a failing Nigeria identified in the preceding section can be further enriched with a highlight of the main findings of the Failed State 2030 Nigeria—a Case Study. As noted earlier, the report is a 2008 study authored by four air force colonels at the Air University Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama USA. The "failed-state" scenario painted in the study is one of four that comprised the Blue Horizons study of a resurgent Russia, a peer China, a successful jihadist insurgency against a friendly state in the Middle East, and a failed state in a vital area of US interest conducted by the university in 2008.
28. Using Nigeria as a case study for its fourth scenario, the report (published in February 2011 as Occasional Paper 167), describes how a failed state in 2030 may impact the United States and the global economy. It also identifies critical capabilities and technologies the US Air Force should possess to respond to a failed state, "especially one of vital interest to the US and at the cusp of a civil war."[vii] Nigeria was chosen because of its vast oil wealth which could be up to 25 percent of US light, sweet crude oil imports by 2030. In addition, Nigeria's large population, strategic position in Africa, and the assumption that its failure would significantly affect the US and the global economy, were part of the rationale for the study.
29. The central question which the monograph sought to answer was, "Are there technologies and capabilities the US Air Force could invest in now to prepare itself to respond in 2030 to the challenges and surprises a failed state poses to the United States and the world?"[viii] To address these questions, Chapter 2 of the book provides an unusually brief definition of "state failure" using omnibus indicators that would send sparks flying among serious scholars. The brief outline of the history of Nigeria through the study year 2008 presented in this chapter is probably the best one could expect from military engineers who had never studied nor engaged Nigeria, except through a crash course of ad hoc lectures and series of interviews of some Nigerian military and civilian personnel as part of the methodology for their study. Nonetheless, it provides a context for their understanding of the evolution of the Nigerian state that helped them identify key vectors that they contend could cause the Nigerian state to implode in 2030.
30. In Chapter 3 they argue that while Nigeria's rich social and cultural makeup offers hope for a successful future for Nigeria, deep fissures within its "extraordinarily complex demographic and cultural makeup could become the fault lines that shatter the nation." Similarly, Chapter 4, begins on a cautious note of hope for Nigeria's current and future political situation, but correctly reminds that this hope is bounded by the reality that institutional government corruption and a combination of religious and cultural factionalism is endemic and pervasive. If the poor quality of Nigeria's governance is left unchecked, these can ultimately corrode the social contract between the government and the people and bring about the failure of the Nigerian state, the book contends.
31. Chapter 5 takes on the complexities of Nigeria's "one commodity" petroleum economy. It notes that while the price of oil will likely continue to rise and fall and although Nigerian government budgets use a lower oil price as a basis for planning, "Nigeria's oligarchs" reap 80 percent of the oil profits. Three economic scenarios—The Nightmare Continues, The Dream Is Realized, and The Dream Is Derailed—are explored, with the authors noting that a failure by the government to rein in corruption could derail Nigeria's economy and bring about failure of the state. In chapter 6, the book addresses Nigeria's military capabilities and technology while examining the role of Nigeria's military in politics and in preserving this ethnically complex nation. It notes that Nigeria's military has had a relatively consistent constitutional role because it has overthrown five elected governments, even as the support it receives from the government and the people is inconsistent. A lack of support for the military or a highly fragmented Nigerian military in 2030 during a time of national crisis could also bring down Nigeria.
32. Chapter 7 is actually the "meat" of the publication (35 pages in all, compared to an average of 10 pages in other chapters) in that it is here that the authors develop a sequence of events connecting the Nigeria of today to one potential future outcome. It paints a picture of what "day-to-day" Nigeria may look like in 2030 and presents a plausible scenario for a systemic collapse of governance and Nigeria's failure under the weight of multiple cross-cutting social and cultural issues, infrastructure, the economy, the government, and the influence of outside elements. In their own words:
By 2030 the social contract between the weakened federal government and the Nigerian people is effectively broken. An attempt to restore confidence through a national election sweeps the electorally dominant Islamic political structure into power. Buoyed by its electoral success, the new government threatens to ruin family criminal enterprises and confiscate the wealth of the business oligarchs. Its ultimate end state is to rebrand Nigeria as an Islamic republic. The culmination of these negative trends and political actions sparks a violent reaction from the non-Islamic population, the criminal family enterprises, and the oligarchs. In this case, the state fails.[ix]
33. Although the authors claim that Nigeria is on the cusp of a civil war, they also acknowledge that Nigeria becoming a failed state is not a foregone conclusion. If Nigeria fails however, it would be akin to a piece of fine china dropped on a tile floor, it would simply shatter into potentially hundreds of pieces, a threat too great to ignore. The attendant humanitarian crisis unfolding in the wake of failure and the hard work and cost to repair the damage could take two generations to make Nigeria viable again. A recent study by Oxford University economist Paul Collier and his colleague Lisa Chauvet contends that the total cost of a single country falling into the "fragile state" category, for itself and its neighbours, may reach US$85 billion. This is a gargantuan sum equivalent to 70 per cent of worldwide official development assistance from international donors in 2009.[x] More alarming, according to the authors of Failed State 2030, is the threat that failure poses to the livelihood, security, and general way of life of a projected quarter billion Nigerians by 2030, the effect of which could quickly spread and cause a humanitarian disaster of previously unimagined proportions in the region.
34. What then would the US do, and what are some of the desired key capabilities and technologies the US Air Force could use to respond to this scenario in 2030? Chapter 8 attempts to answer these questions, even as the authors contend that the required set of capabilities would apply to any failed state on the brink of civil war. These capabilities are important to future peace operations, peacekeeping, peace enforcement, peacemaking, peace building and have applicability that range far beyond the scenario painted here. Peace enforcement operations in a failed-state scenario in 2030 will require capabilities to anticipate impending threats, understand the operating environment and capabilities of the belligerents, engage with the appropriate force, survive in a highly stressed environment with a small operational and support footprint, rapidly deploy response forces and supplies to the operating area, and quickly replenish materiel and people in order to sustain forces.
35. Failed State 2030 Nigeria—a Case Study concludes that despite its best efforts, Nigeria has a long-term struggle ahead to remain a viable state, much less a top-20 economy. While its vast sweet-crude-oil wealth potentially provides Nigeria with great power and influence, the government's history of rampant corruption and inability and unwillingness to invest in its human resources, industrial infrastructure and the people's welfare could doom it to failure. The US cannot ignore such a failure because Nigeria will likely account for over 25 percent of US oil imports by 2030, even as other large economies depend on an uninterrupted flow of oil from Nigeria.
[i] See Seyi Gesinde, Abiodun Awolaja and Laolu Afolabi, "US Didn't Predict Nigeria's Break Up by 2015 –Ambassador," Tribune, 2 February 2012; http://www.saturday.tribune.com.ng/index.php/news/35397-us-didnt-predict-nigerias-break-up-by-2015-ambassador; accessed 1 April 2012, among numerous newspaper headlines on this issue.
[ii] See Paul Ohia. US Army Prepares for Nigeria's Possible Break-Up. ThisDay, 17 August 2009; http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=151826; accessed 17August 2009; and Jacob Kubeka. US Army Prepares for Nigeria's Possible Break-Up. National Accord (Abuja), 4 January 2012; http://www.nationalaccordnewspaper.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4266:us-army-prepares-for-nigerias-possible-break-up-&catid=35:national-news&Itemid=63; accessed 4 January 2012.
[iii] Tokunbo Adedoja, "Report Wants Nigeria Tagged Country of Particular Concern," ThisDay, 22 Mar 2012.
[iv] See Karl Maier. This House Has Fallen: Nigeria in Crisis. New York: Basic Books, 2002; Robert Calderis. The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn't Working. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; and Roy Cullen. The Poverty of Corrupt Nations. Toronto: Blue Butterfly Books, 2008.
[v] Kaplan, "The Coming Anarchy," op cit.
[vi] John Campbell, Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, for Council on Foreign Relations, 2010, p. 131.
[vii] Failed State 2030, p vii.
[viii] Op cit., p. 4.
[ix] Op. cit., p. 65.
[x] Quoted in Stewart Patrick, Weak Links: Fragile States, Global Threats and International Security. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 55.
Various ethnicities but mainly the North and the SW supported Buhari.People had various reasons, some ethnic, some truly nationalistic.Can you direct me to where I can get info on this- ', American intelligence agencies predicted EVERYTHING that is currently happening--and that WILL HAPPEN-back in 2011, but Nigerians could care less.'thanksToyin--On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 at 09:56, Okey Iheduru <okeyiheduru@gmail.com> wrote:Too late, fellows. Prof. Oyebode and all others now shedding crocodile tears and doing last-minute "mea culpa" were warned but hatred and vain hope of an imminent ethnic harvest blinded them all. The PMB effect will be with Nigeria over the next 50 years, if the country survives its current race to the precipice. By the way, American intelligence agencies predicted EVERYTHING that is currently happening--and that WILL HAPPEN-back in 2011, but Nigerians could care less. #BringBackCluless?--On Tue, 30 Jul 2019, 11:52 pm Moses Ochonu, <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:
.
"I voted for him in 2015; I took the trouble to join the queue and vote for him. I thought anything but Jonathan. Jonathan was clueless but now we got a worse person than Jonathan, so I didn't believe he deserved a second term. Some people taunted me for supporting him but I told them I was extremely sorry. ....
This man can't move Nigeria anywhere; the country is collapsing under him. It's the young people I feel sorry for"
—-Professor Akin Oyebode, emeritus professor of constitutional and international law, university of Lagos.
Sent from my iPhone
--
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Just published "The African Corporation, 'Africapitalism' and Regional Integration in Africa" (September 2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781785362538.
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