U.S. Leadership has not been a force for peace in Nigeria

Despite president Obama’s video message to the Nigerian people posted today at Whitehouse.gov, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan himself has shown more resolve in challenging Boko Haram than the U.S. President.  That is saying a lot.  It was President Jonathan who unintentionally earned international attention by initially denying the kidnapping of 300 school girls from Chibok in northern Nigeria.  Subsequently failing to react in a timely fashion, president Jonathan has since mounted an offensive and hired advisers and mercenaries from South Africa and Russia.

Bukky Shonibare of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign made the point at an event today a the Hudson Institute that the time for resolve and leadership was 344 days ago.  Accompanying Mrs. Shonibare on the panel was Nigerian international human rights lawyer, Emmanuel Ogebe.  Ogebe’s assessment had the effect of illustrating how the American liberal approach has hurt human rights more than it has helped in terms of shear body count.

Specifically, Boko Haram is deadlier than IS and Al Qaeda by the numbers.  They are second only to the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Yet the U.S. administration refused to identify them as a terrorist organization for Hilary Clinton’s entire tenure  as Secretary of State.  Ogebe pointed out that Boko Haram has had foreign fighters from Chad, Niger, Northern Mali, Egypt, Pakistan and has had training internationally.  He went on to say that French citizens have now been counted among Boko Haram’s fighters. Their ties to AQIM and al Shabaab by way of Ansaru have been known for several years.

This, however, was all before the recent unification of Boko Haram and Islamic State for whom the President is seeking an authorization of the use of military force.  After so much effort by the administration to distance associations between the two Islamist groups, they will likely down play the meaning of the oath of loyalty if the administration can procure a robust AUMF against IS.

With Yemen as the current model for success held up by the administration, the president certainly applied the ‘Obama counter terrorism doctrine’ in Nigeria which consists of avoiding commitment and partnering.  Nigerian diplomats were vexed when social policy trumped Boko Haram almost a year ago when decisive cooperation could have saved the thousands of lives lost since.  Without the partnering or the commitment, Nigeria is a failed counter terrorism case by the U.S. President’s own doctrinal standard.

If nothing else, the power of words were employed to promote peaceful elections in the online video.  In a dispassionate tone-def lecture, the president explained to the Nigerian people that they must eschew violence no matter the outcome of the election.  Though only candidate Buhari has a record for inciting post election violence, the U.S. message was one of moral equivalence.

The President has a history of trite lectures that are meaningless to the existential horrors of his target audience.  In 2012, he sent a video message to the people of Sudan and South Sudan charging each to lay down their weapons equally.  Absent in the message was the acknowledgment that the South Sudanese were defending themselves from genocide and that Sudan was carrying out yet another genocide which has gone unchallenged to this day by the U.S.

With enemies like Boko Haram and genocidal Islamist war mongers in Khartoum, Africans do not need the moral lectures from the U.S.  What they need are weapons and reliable partners who are resolved to recognize evil and help them defend themselves.