Nigerian Nightmares

I don't write about Africa, its issues, cultures, politics, or history, as often as I want because, like most educated white Americans, I don't know enough about it. Not writing about what you don't know is a good thing; remaining ignorant about important matters isn't.

I've also not written much about Clinton, since, at this point, it seems like piling on -- after Chris Hitchens got done with him, there wasn't much left to say. What can one add to Hitch's bill of indictment that trumps abuser of women, war criminal, and corrupter of democracy?

But the chance to comment on Clinton's recent speech to the joint Nigerian Assembly is too tempting to pass up. My comments will be limited because his hypocrisy is vast.

More than two years ago, I came to Africa for the longest visit ever by an American President to build a new partnership with your continent. But sadly, in Nigeria, an illegitimate government was killing its people and squandering your resources.

The bloody reign of General Sani Abacha was illegitimate, but Abacha wasn't alone, either in killing Nigerians or squandering their resources. He was joined by Shell and Chevron and a host of other Western, mostly US, oil companies.

As the source of roughly 8.5% of America's oil imports, the Niger Delta is the playground of oil giants, who 's 3,100 miles of pipelines reek massive environmental spoilage on the land and its inhabitants. (A 1995 UN Report says that the mouth of the Niger River is the most endangered river delta in the world.) Constant pipeline explosions kill hundreds of Nigerians a year. Nigerians in the Delta are so poor, so desperate, that they "steal" oil from the pipelines to sell in an underground economy. As Derrick Jackson says that "small fires are so common that local officials no longer attempt to put them out. The large fires defy any attempt to put them out. Two years ago, an explosion in the town of Jesse killed about 1,000 people."

Paul Ekadi, President of the Ijaw National Congress USA, representing the largest ethnic group in the oil-producing region of the Niger Delta, said, speaking last year: "There have been many incidents of violence against environmental protestors [in 1999], several of them involving the complicity or even the participation of Chevron equipment and personnel. This continues today. The most recent was a full-scale battle in the streets of the main oil-producing city, Warri, in July, where the Nigerian news media reported that Chevron helicopters were used to supply and transport Itsekiri militants into the war zone... Despite the recent presidential elections, unless multinational oil corporations end their systematic human rights and environmental abuses in the Niger Delta, democracy will not be achieved in Nigeria."

You have begun to walk the long road to repair the wrongs and errors of the past, and to build bridges to a better future. The road is harder and the rewards are slower than all hoped it would be when you began. But what is most important is that today you are moving forward, not backward. And I am here because your fight -- your fight for democracy and human rights, for equity and economic growth, for peace and tolerance -- your fight is America's fight and the world's fight.

Walking the long road to democracy is important for Nigeria, but so is being able to walk that road without the active interference of US-based multinational oil corporations. That the road to democracy is "harder and the rewards are slower" is owed, in large part, to the degree to which these corporations disdain democracy and work actively to oppose it. Clinton is right, but not in the way that he means: Nigeria's fight for democracy is America's fight, which is the world's fight. We're all fighting the antidemocratic, corrosive forces of corporate dominance.

Indeed, the whole world has a big stake in your success -- and not simply because of your size or the wealth of your natural resources, or even your capacity to help lift this entire continent to peace and prosperity; but also because so many of the great human dramas of our time are being played out on the Nigerian stage...

Now, at last, you have your country back. Nigerians are electing their leaders, acting to cut corruption and investigate past abuses, shedding light on human rights violations, turning a fearless press into a free press. It is a brave beginning.

Clinton's failure to mention that, in fact, it's US-based oil corporations, as well as corporations that rely on cheap oil, like Ford and GM, that have a "big stake in [Nigeria's] success" is hypocritical beyond measure. Having their "country back" has not, so far, meant that Chevron doesn't use the military in the Niger Delta to persecute Nigerian activists.

Achebe championed it, Sunny Ade sang for it. Journalists like Akinwumi Adesukar fought for it. Lawyers like Gani Fawehinmi testified for it... And most important, the people of Nigeria voted for it...

Democracy depends upon a political culture that welcomes spirited debate without letting politics become a blood sport. It depends on strong institutions, an independent judiciary, a military under firm civilian control.

Sure, they voted for it. But will they get the democratic society they've chosen? Being true to his essential cowardice, Clinton hasn't a single word for the slain Ken Saro Wiwa, Ogoni leader and human rights activist. In 1995 Saro Wiwa and eight activists were executed for demanding that oil corporations stop trampeling the Ogoni people's human and environmental rights. In 1995, the multinational Oil giants Shell, Mobile, Chevron and Texaco contributed 80% of Nigeria's annual revenue. (The struggle for dignity for Ken Saro Wiwa has long continued.)

Could it be that mentioning Saro Wiwa, which would've given Clinton another stone to throw at Abacha, but would also have meant mentioning Shell, was too much hypocrisy even for Clinton? Could it be that Shell and Chevron's "blood sport" in Nigeria continues unabated?

It requires the contributions of women and men alike. I must say I am very glad to see a number of women in this audience today, and also I am glad that Nigerian women have their own Vital Voices program -- (applause) -- a program that my wife has worked very hard for, both in Africa and all around the world.

While Clinton has been supportive of a woman's right to choose an abortion, being a male ally of women, and their struggles for justice, isn't exhausted by one's stance on abortion. In fact, as Katherine MacKinnon has argued, in Feminism Unmodified (pp. 93-102), support for abortion rights may just be support of additional mechanisms of male control over women's bodies. Given this argument, and Clinton's history, it's reasonable to conclude that his support for abortion does not mean what it's sometimes taken to mean -- namely, that he isn't in fact a useful ally of women. One's treatment of actual women, perhaps especially the ones from whom one gets sexual favors, is equally important. On this matter, Clinton's record ranges from bad to terrible or horrifying. Clinton's championing of the cause of Nigerian women is at best yet another display of hypocrisy; given his history, he simply cannot mean it, no matter how many times he says it.

It is not for me to tell you how to resolve all the issues that I follow more closely than you might imagine I do. You're a free people, an independent people, and you must resolve them. All I can tell you is what I have seen and experienced these last years as President in the United States...

But Clinton reserves the right to insist upon Nigerian policy "liberalizations," as his administration has around the world, in, for example, Vietnam on 24 August. These are the policies of the World Bank and IMF, which as Oronto Douglas, Saro Wiwa's attorney, says, have "wiped out the middle class, destroyed our educational system, impoverished the people and been a source of pain in our country. What we have right now is a tiny cabal of extremely rich people and millions of people who are extremely poor. This was not the case before the IMF and World Bank started tinkering with our economy." Clinton's goal is to defend that "tinkering." As he says, "I believe we have two broad challenges. The first is to work together to help Nigeria prepare its economy for success in the 21st century, and then to make Nigeria the engine of economic growth and renewal across the continent..." -- all of which has its customary meaning: Nigeria must prepare its economy for the success of US corporations in the 21st century, and it must be lead other African nations into doing the same.

The challenge is to make sure any foreign involvement in your economy promotes equitable development, lifting people and communities that have given much for Nigeria's economic progress, but so far have gained too little from it.

One wonders if the desperately poor and abused Nigerians in the Delta feel like they've been "lifted up" or been the recepients of "equitable development." Trade liberalization and unfettered corporate freedom created their utter impoverishment; increasing such measures will do nothing but impoverish them further.

Neither the people, nor the private sector want a future in which investors exist in fortified islands surrounded by seas of misery. Democracy gives us a chance to avoid that future.

Clinton is nothing if not tricky. His claim that "neither the people, nor the private sector want a future in which investors exist in fortified islands surrounded by seas of misery" is reptilian in its sliminess. Of course no one wants to be treated as the Nigerian Delta peoples have been treated, but Clinton deviously assimiliates that indisputable sentiment to the utterly disputable -- because utterly false -- claim that "the private sector" doesn't want them to be treated that way either. What nonsense. The "private sector" and the World Bank, IMF are the chief agents of misery in the Nigerian Delta. Of course Clinton couches all of this nonsense in terms of the future, failing to say anything helpful or accurate about either the past or the present -- the past in which US-based corporations have been responsible for the murders of activists, or the present in which hundreds of Nigerians die yearly, while untold thousands suffer daily, from the environmental spoilage of US oil interests.

Democracy might give Nigeria (and America and the rest of the world) a chance to prevent the present from becoming the future; but Nigeria doesn't have a democracy, any more than America does, so it's quite literally beside the point.

Of course, I'm thinking especially of the Niger Delta. I hope government and business will forge a partnership with local people to bring real, lasting social progress, a clean environment and economic opportunity.

Clinton, recall, is the boy from Hope who became the President of hope. But the only things he's willing to say about the Nigerian Delta are fatuous. Clinton talks here of hope, not justice or action, but his actions belie even his cheap talk. He's not willing to fight or work or struggle for the Nigerian Delta. He's not willing even to peep the names "Exxon" or "Chevron" or "Saro Wiwa." Talk of "partnership" between "government and business" on the one side and "local people" on the other side is pure Clintonese, redolent of his creepy relativism about police brutality. There can be no just or sane partnership in the Nigerian Delta until the radically asymmetrical power relation between foreign business and local people is reversed. Any talk of partnership without redistribution of power is pro-business propaganda, which is exactly par for Clinton's course.

We face, of course, another obstacle to Nigeria's economic development, the burden of debt that past governments left on your shoulders...We are prepared to support a substantial reduction of Nigeria's debts on a multilateral basis, as long as your economic and financial reforms continue to make progress...

In other words, we'll take our Western boot off your Nigerian neck, but only if you'll continue to reshape your society and economy in ways that ease the present and future conversion of your natural resources into our corporate profits.

This week, the first of five Nigerian peacekeeping battalions began working with American military trainers and receiving American equipment. With battalions from Ghana and other African nations, they will receive almost $60 million in support to be a commanding force for peace in Sierra Leone and an integral part of Nigeria's democratization.

What a great idea, let's train the Nigerian military, which has a rather questionable history of peace-keeping. And when exactly did a US-trained military become "an integral part" of any country's "democratization"? It didn't work in Vietnam or Central America, to pick only the most obvious examples. One wonders how it can work differently in either Colombia or Nigeria.

We expect them to make an enormous difference in replacing the reign of terror with the rule of law. As they do, all of West Africa will benefit from the promise of peace and stability, and the prospect of closer military and economic cooperation. And Nigeria will take another step toward building a 21st century army that is strong and strongly committed to democracy.

This speaks for itself; the idea of a "21st century army" that acts as a police force, defending the "rule of law," which isn't any army's legitimate or ordinary goal, being "strongly committed to democray," in Nigeria, Africa, or any other place, is frightening.

Now that you've been inundated with lies and deceit, let's end this tour through the horrors of Clinton's manifold hypocrisies by pointing to some credible sources of truth about Nigeria. Human Rights Watch has published The Price of Oil: Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights Violations in Nigeria?s Oil Producing Communities. And Oronto Douglas, Saro Wiwa's attorney, wrote Where Vultures Feast: Forty Years of Shell in the Niger Delta with Ike Okonta.

If you want to learn the truth about Nigeria, both of these books are worth your time and effort. Either will give you more truth in its opening pages than anything Bill Clinton's ever said about about Nigeria.

19 September 2000 Update. Originally filed in 1996, a lawsuit of the "Ogoni Nine" against Shell will proceed in US courts. It's being brought by Center for Constitutional Rights in New York on behalf of, among others, Ken Saro Wiwa's brother. The lawsuit alleges that Shell "aided and abetted" the torture and execution of Ken Saro Wiwa and other activisits, and that it orchestrated raids by the Nigerian military on Ogoni villages, leading to the deaths of more than 1,000 people and as many as 20,000 homeless.

Having never uttered the words "Ken Saro Wiwa" formally, it's not expected that President Clinton will comment.