[ 2012-01-07 ]

Lagos Dissents Under IMF Hegemony
...Nigeria: The Next Front for AFRICOM

On a recent trip to West Africa, the newly
appointed managing director of the International
Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde ordered the
governments of Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon, Ghana
and Chad to relinquish vital fuel subsidies. Much
to the dismay of the population of these nations,
the prices of fuel and transport have near tripled
over night without notice, causing widespread
violence on the streets of the Nigerian capital of
Abuja and its economic center, Lagos. Much like
the IMF induced riots in Indonesia during the 1997
Asian Financial Crisis, public discontent in
Nigeria is channelled towards an incompetent and
self-serving domestic elite, compliant to the
interests of fraudulent foreign institutions.

Although Nigeria holds the most proven oil
reserves in Africa behind Libya, it's people are
now expected to pay a fee closer to what the
average American pays for the cost of fuel, an
exorbitant sum in contrast to its regional
neighbours. Alternatively, other oil producing
nations such as Venezuela, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia
offer their populations fuel for as little as
$0.12 USD per gallon. While Lagos has one of
Africa's highest concentration of billionaires,
the vast majority of the population struggle daily
on less than $2.00 USD. Amid a staggering 47%
youth unemployment rate and thousands of annual
deaths related to preventable diseases, the IMF
has pulled the rug out from under a nation where
safe drinking water is a luxury to around 80% of
it's populace.

Although Nigeria produces 2.4 million barrels of
crude oil a day intended for export use, the
country struggles with generating sufficient
electrical power and maintaining its
infrastructure. Ironically enough, less than 6% of
bank depositors own 88% of all bank deposits in
Nigeria. Goldman Sachs employees line its domestic
government, in addition to the former Vice
President of the World Bank, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala,
who is widely considered by many to be the de
facto Prime Minister. Even after decades of
producing lucrative oil exports, Nigeria has
failed to maintain it's own refineries, forcing it
to illogically purchase oil imports from other
nations. Society at large has not benefited from
Nigeria's natural riches, so it comes as no
surprise that a severe level of distrust is held
towards the government, who claims the fuel
subsidy needs to be lifted in order to divert
funds towards improving the quality of life within
the country.

Like so many other nations, Nigerian people have
suffered from a systematically reduced living
standard after being subjected to the IMF's
Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP). Before a
loan can be taken from the World Bank or IMF, a
country must first follow strict economic
policies, which include currency devaluation,
lifting of trade tariffs, the removal of subsidies
and detrimental budget cuts to critical public
sector health and education services.

SAPs encourage borrower countries to focus on the
production and export of domestic commodities and
resources to increase foreign exchange, which can
often be subject to dramatic fluctuations in
value. Without the protection of price controls
and an authentic currency rate, extreme inflation
and poverty subsist to the point of civil unrest,
as seen in a wide array of countries around the
world (usually in former colonial protectorates).
The people of Nigeria have been one of the world's
most vocal against IMF-induced austerity measures,
student protests have been met with heavy handed
repression since 1986 and several times since
then, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. As
a testament to the success of the loan, the
average laborer in Nigeria earned 35% more in the
1970's than he would of in 2012.

Working through the direct representation of
Western Financial Institutions and the IMF in
Nigeria's Government, a new IMF conditionality
calls for the creation of a Sovereign Wealth Fund.
Olusegun Aganga, the former Nigerian Minister of
Finance commented on how the SWF was hastily
pushed through and enacted prior to the countries
national elections. If huge savings are amassed
from oil exports and austerity measures, one
cannot realistically expect that these funds will
be invested towards infrastructure development
based on the current track record of the Nigerian
Government. Further more, it is increasingly more
likely that any proceeds from a SWF would be
beneficial to Western institutions and markets,
which initially demanded its creation. Nigerian
philanthropist Bukar Usman prophetically writes
“I have genuine fears that the SWF would serve
us no better than other foreign-recommended
"remedies" which we had implemented to our own
detriment in the past or are being pushed to
implement today.”

The abrupt simultaneous removal of fuel subsidies
in several West African nations is a clear
indication of who is really in charge of things in
post-colonial Africa. The timing of its
cushion-less implementation could not be any
worse, Nigeria's president Goodluck Jonathan
recently declared a state of emergency after forty
people were killed in a church bombing on
Christmas day, an act allegedly committed by the
Islamist separatist group, Boko Haram. The group
advocates dividing the predominately Muslim
northern states from the Christian southern
states, a similar predicament to the recent
division of Sudan.

As the United States African Command (AFRICOM)
begins to gain a foothold into the continent with
its troops officially present in Eritrea and
Uganda in an effort to maintain security and
remove other theocratic religious groups such as
the Lord's Resistance Army, the sectarian violence
in Nigeria provides a convenient pretext for
military intervention in the continuing resource
war. For further insight into this theory, it is
interesting to note that United States Army War
College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania conducted a
series of African war game scenarios in
preparation for the Pentagon's expansion of
AFRICOM under the Obama Administration.

In the presence of US State Department Officials,
employees from The Rand Corporation and Israeli
military personnel, a military exercise was
undertaken which tested how AFRICOM would respond
to a disintegrating Nigeria on the verge of
collapse amidst civil war. The scenario envisioned
rebel factions vying for control of the Niger
Delta oil fields (the source of one of America's
top oil imports), which would potentially be
secured by some 20,000 U.S. troops if a
US-friendly coup failed to take place At a press
conference at the House Armed Services Committee
on March 13, 2008, AFRICOM Commander, General
William Ward then went on to brazenly state the
priority issue of America's growing dependence on
African oil would be furthered by AFRICOM
operating under the principle theatre-goal of
“combating terrorism”.

At an AFRICOM Conference held at Fort McNair on
February 18, 2008, Vice Admiral Robert T. Moeller
openly declared the guiding principle of AFRICOM
was to protect “the free flow of natural
resources from Africa to the global market”,
before citing China's increasing presence in the
region as challenging to American interests. After
the unwarranted snatch-and-grab regime change
conducted in Libya, nurturing economic
destabilization, civil unrest and sectarian
conflict in Nigeria is an ultimately tangible
effort to secure Africa's second largest oil
reserves. During the pillage of Libya, its SFW
accounts worth over 1.2 billion USD were frozen
and essentially absorbed by Franco-Anglo-American
powers; it would realistic to assume that much the
same would occur if Nigeria failed to comply with
Western interests. While agents of foreign capital
have already infiltrated its government, there is
little doubt that Nigeria will become a new front
in the War on Terror.

Nile Bowie is a freelance writer and
photojournalist; he's regularly contributed to
Tony Cartalucci's Land Destroyer Report and Alex
Jones' Infowars.

Global Research Articles by Nile Bowie

Source - Modern Ghana

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