Analysis: Barrack Obama didn’t leave without helping Nigeria, or did he?

by Mark Amaza

On Friday January 20th, there was a change in the baton of leadership in the United States of America, the world’s largest economy and undoubtedly, its most powerful country as well. While so much has been written about what a Trump administration might mean for global politics and Africa in particular, it is also important that a post-mortem analysis of what the Obama administration achieved for Nigeria.

Expectedly, the 2008 campaign of then Senator Barack Obama captured the attention of Nigerians and excited them by virtue of his race, all the way to his election as the first black president of the United States. In fact, so enamoured were many Nigerians with him that the then Director-General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, Dr. Ndi Okereke-Onyuike raised close to N200 million in campaign funds for him, seemingly ignorant of US laws that prohibit foreign campaign funding.

However, there is little evidence to show that Nigeria benefited positively during his administration by way of policy or actions.

First, he shunned Nigeria and kicked off his first African visit to neighbouring Ghana, hurting Nigeria’s nationalistic pride, where he also made veiled statements criticising the then political impasse in Nigeria brought about the illness of late President Umaru Yara’dua. This cold shoulder was to continue throughout his presidency as he never visited Nigeria over the course of 8 visits to the continent. It also took six years for the highest-ranking official in his administration to visit, with the coming of Secretary of State John Kerry just before the 2015 General Elections.

But if this can be seen as a small matter, Nigeria-US relations also underwent its lowest moments since our return to democracy in 1999 under President Obama. The cause of this was the refusal of the administration to sell military weapons to Nigeria which was sorely needed in the war against Boko Haram, quoting the Leahy Law which prohibits the American government selling weapons to militaries that have been accused of human rights abuses.

This refusal strained relations between the two countries under former President Goodluck Jonathan to the point that Nigeria’s former ambassador to the US, late Ambassador Ade Adefuye publicly rebuked his host country for that decision, claiming it robbed Nigeria of the ability to defeat the terrorists.

As a result of this, it is now common to hear conspiracy theorists in Nigeria opine that Obama was more driven by the desire to see Jonathan lose the 2015 elections and wanted the Boko Haram insurgency to fester in order to achieve his goal. The fact that Obama’s former chief political strategist, David Axelrod consulted for the then opposition party, the All Progressives’ Congress (APC) adds fire to those theories.

The election of President Muhammadu Buhari has brought about an improvement in foreign relations and has resulted in American promises of support and aid for the reconstruction of the war-ravaged North-East region and technical assistance in fighting Boko Haram terrorists.

In general, the Obama administration achieved little for Africa by way of foreign policy: there were no initiatives launched for the continent until 2013 with the launch of Power Africa Initiative to improve electricity supply and 2014 with the launch of the Young Africa Leaders Initiative for young emerging leaders on the continent and its flagship program, the Mandela Washington Fellowship.

While some Nigerians have benefited from the latter initiative, there is no evidence that it has from the former.

However, to the credit of the Obama administration, it sustained the levels of funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), of which Nigeria is the biggest beneficiary.

As Obama rides into the sunset and starts to live his post-Presidency life, Nigerians can only hope that his predecessor will do much better in using his office to find mutually beneficial relationships between Nigeria and the United States.

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