TheCable

Stuart Symington, US ambassador to Nigeria, has been asked to stop denigration of Nigeria’s sovereignty.

The Coalition for Good Governance and Change Initiative said this while reacting to a recent report by the US Department of State on corruption and alleged human rights violation under President Muhammadu Buhari.

Egnunu Daniel, a member of the group, who wrote the envoy on behalf of the group, said both reports were aimed at degenerating Nigeria.

The letter warned that, “a failure to tender the apology within reasonable time shall compel us to taking measures to educate Nigerians to resist the US interference in the affairs of Nigeria.”

The letter reads in full.

The Coalition for Good Governance and Change Initiative, being a Nigerian organization with interest in Nigeria has followed up closely on recent events and has come to the resolution to bring two specific developments to your attention in your capacity as the representative of the United States of America here in Nigeria.

The first issue is the election post-mortem done for the for the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington DC by your predecessor, Mr. John Campbell, in which he cast the worst racial slur imaginable on Nigeria and the African continent at large by tacitly implying that Africans are incapable of managing their own affairs. There have been concerns in the past that the US is actively pursuing a destabilization agenda in Nigeria with the strategic objective of splintering the country into microstates based on ethnic configuration, which would be owned by various American corporations that will then exploit them as cheap sources of raw material.

Mr. Campbell’s assertion in his post-mortem that “Nigerians have begun to question whether democracy is right for their country” is apparently aimed at setting the grounds for Nigeria to descend into chaos. The statement, from our perspective, tallies with the concerns that had earlier been raised about how the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has been making overtures to military officers to stage a coup, transit to interim government and transfer power to the PDP candidate, Mr Atiku Abubakar.

We wish to bring to your attention that the so-called post-mortem contained other insinuations that were calculated to incite supporters of the opposition to stage violent protests. This it sought to achieve through the claim that Mr Abubakar will lose his challenge of the election result in court, an assertion that is guaranteed to stir anger among his supporters, who have incidentally shown a disproportionate disposition to violence.

Any argument that Mr Campbell wrote his election post-mortem for the Council on Foreign Relations and could not have been a state backed operation is defeated with the publication of the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2018 at about the same time. The report was published the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, which leaves the United States with the burden of liability.

The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2018, unsurprisingly, was dedicated to sending out the wrong signals about Nigeria. This was apparently done in the belief that these negative messaging about Nigeria would catalyze some sort of citizens’ revolt against the government of President Muhammadu Buhari leading to a forceful change of government.

The actual objective of the report became obvious in the sections that accorded Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorists greater legitimacy than the Armed Forces of Nigeria that are fighting them to keep the citizens safe. We noted how the report specifically targeted the Army, Police and the Department of State Services (DSS) for demonization. Accusations that these agencies were high handed on terrorists could only have been intended for terrorists’ recruiters to deploy as props when they are attempting to gain new members.

Since the report emanated from the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, the US Embassy in Abuja would have had the chance to make input while you would have signed off on the aspect about Nigeria, at least the embassy in Nigeria would have validated the claims made in the document and that is assuming the contents were not mostly generated under your supervision. It is therefore not necessary to repeat the offensive conclusions drawn by your country about Nigeria other than to state in clear terms that the report is unacceptable to the Coalition for Good Governance and Change Initiative. Like majority of Nigerian, who unlike the opposition are not looking to fraudulently take over government, we reject the report in its entirety.

We are part of the awakening in Nigeria. There is growing awareness about how certain interests in the United States have sworn to superintend the disintegration of Nigeria, which made us see the scandalous Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2018 as pursuit of this evil legacy. The saving grace for Nigeria against these people trying to destabilize the country is the leadership of President Buhari, who has against all odds guided the country beyond 2015, the year that detractors had predicted it would disintegrate.

Irrespective of whether your predecessor, Mr Campbell wrote his election post-mortem in a personal capacity or not, and not minding that Nigeria is just one of the nations analyzed in the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2018, the Coalition for Good Governance and Change Initiative hereby demands that the United States tender an unreserved apology to people and government of Federal Republic of Nigeria for malicious publication and promotion of falsehood about the country in a manner that is injurious to it as a nation.

The apology we are demanding must come with a commitment from the United States government and persons or organizations acting in its interest to cease and desist from further publishing reports, commentaries or analyses targeted at undermining stability of Nigeria.

A failure to tender the apology within reasonable time shall compel us to taking measures to educate Nigerians to resist the US interference in the affairs of Nigeria. We shall also do our best to criminalize the series of exchange programmes targeted at Nigerians youths such that the US will no longer have cohorts from Nigeria for such programmes.

It is our belief that Your Excellency will communicate our disaffection with the lies about Nigeria to the high-up authorities in your home country while also emphasizing our demand for apology over the wrong done to our country.