Understanding Obama’s African visit

Odilim Basil Enwegbara

Not visiting Nigeria by the United States President, Barack Obama, during his visit to Africa would not have become a matter of serious debate had it not been that the country was earlier on the list, but later suddenly dropped without any plausible reasons. The reason why it shouldn’t have is because in international diplomacy, decisions about places or countries national leaders visit or do not visit are simply the prerogative those nations, and they do not owe anyone or any nation explanations for their decisions.

Underlining the very important fact that even though Obama is the US president, given that his official oversea trips are never a jamboree but as the chief corporate officer of the US, such are always conducted to maximise national interest, it is hard for the president to simply go to any country without either the immediate and expectant strategic US national interests being the reason. For example, his first and only African visit in his first term in office was his 2009 less-than-24-hour rush to Ghana to negotiate big oil deals for American oil majors.

Obama is pursuing a hegemonic foreign policy in Africa, the same way it is done everywhere in the world, on the basis of projecting the American Century as constructed in 1941 by the War and Peace Studies of the Council on Foreign Relations. This policy, as, the US State Department’s senior planning official in 1948, George Kennan, made clear, notes, ‘’…we (Americans) will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our intention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objective. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.’’

Agreeing this Machiavellian-Darwinian devil-may-care foreign policy, pursued at all cost, the CIA Director of Plans, Richard Bissell, had to add, “The CIA’s interface with the rest of the world needs to be better promoted through our friends in foreign governments…We need repression if we hope to divide these societies into owners and slaves. We need to put the people under continual duress and in a perpetual state of imbalance, so that confused and demoralised, apathy on a massive scale will result.”

That is why it’s erroneous to believe, based on some carefully constructed facades of exporting freedom and democracy around the world, that America is a softer, kinder, and gentler empire. It’s important to fully appreciate what the US foreign policy truly stands for, or else we wrongly view Obama as an African benefactor simply because he is an African-American and Kenya, his patriarchal country.

It’s this flawed understanding of the US foreign policy toward Africa that makes us not to appreciate that were Obama the US president during the apartheid years, he too would, without ‘’sentimentality’’ support the policy, as all American presidents did until South Africa became independent with Nelson Mandela as its first black president.

If anyone is in doubt, then how come instead of dismantling George W. Bush’s militarisation of Africa, in fact, he increased the US unwelcome military presence in the continent?; how come Obama drastically cut America’s HIV/AIDS funding in Africa?; how come in a speech during a town hall meeting in South Africa rather than call for Africans to build better equipped universities across the continent, he cleverly was “bribing” Africa’s best and brightest to come to study in the US, where they would eventually be persuaded to remain, which has become the newest brain drain strategy of the US?

Should these actions appear scandalous, then, what should we call the actions of President Harry Truman, who notwithstanding his patriarchal English blood, not only abruptly cancelled America’s Lend-Lease aid to Britain on September 2, 1945 but went as far as refusing the pleas by the British Prime Minister, Clement Atlee, to grant Britain what was considered a live-and-death loan of $6bn to stop the country’s bleeding war-torn economy? Didn’t Truman take those actions simply because depriving Britain access to post-war funding from the US was the easiest way to quicken Britain’s bankruptcy and the dissolution of the Sterling Preference, which was the last pillar holding whatever remained of the British Empire?

Isn’t it obvious that Obama stayed away from Africa, including from his patriarchal land, during his first term in office simply because visiting or associating with Africa was seen as a big political risk he had better avoided since visiting the continent for most Americans would be going to dispense American taxpayers’ dollars to Africans who they still associate with poverty, disease, war, and corruption, otherwise he should be endangering his reelection? Therefore, whether we all know it or not, Obama’s recent visit to Africa only took place because without having to face the American electorate in any future election, now visiting Africa constituted no more reelection burden.

Not only that he now visited because he is free to visit Africa, but discovering the blunders it has been making for ignoring Africa for so long, it’s understandable why Obama tried to jump the very line China is leading by exploiting his African patriarchal blood. Stephen Hayes, who as the CEO of Corporate Council on Africa, oversees the US investment and trade in Africa was right crying out loud how America has been missing out in Africa when he said that continuing to ‘’view Africa as a case for (aid) than as…an opportunity for partnership’’ is costing America dearly in this new scramble for Africa’s 900 million consumer market and its yet-to-be touched natural resources.

But unknown to Obama, no amount of his China-bashing in Africa would make Africans not recognise the Chinese as the true friends of Africans who came when others, including the US, still saw Africa as a hopeless continent that should be ignored.

In the usual American arrogance, the same Obama on a visit to win the heart and soul of his patriarchal brethren insultingly told his hosts that, something like, “You know what, we, Americans, don’t need your African energy”, even when saying so simply contradicted his 2009 rush to Ghana to negotiate big oil deals for American oil majors such as ExxonMobil and Chevron. It’s really unbelievable that a well-informed president said so forgetting that the US Environmental Protection Agency vehicle emission and fuel standards are not based on Texas oil but on Nigeria’s Bonny Light because it is easy to refine, produces more gallons per barrel, more mileage per litre, and above all with its high octane number guarantees maximum performance with low knocking and pining engine effects, but mostly because of its low sulfur and low carbon emission. Rather than being uninformed about these, Obama’s statement was a carefully orchestrated de-marketing of African energy.

And when he told Africans how beneficial the African Growth Opportunity Act  has been to Africa, make no mistake, he is not unaware that rather than the framers having the benefit of participating African countries in mind, given that they framed in such a way that ensured that critical inputs should be sourced from the US, they systematically shifted most of the benefits to the US, including making sure that with little or no local content, the expected economic and social trickle-down effects would be minimal in participating African countries.

Certainly, Nigeria would have been included on the list had he truly not based his visit on more than seeking trade and investment from Africa; had he not come to sow a new seed of rivalry between South Africa and Nigeria, the two big powers in Africa, who recently met to seek ways to work together for a better Africa. That could be seen from his endless emphasis on Africa’s largest economy status, and should as the continent’s natural centre of gravity, only look up to America for partnership and less to big African economies such as Nigeria and Kenya. Now, it is understandable that it is an effort to achieve this divide and dominate agenda that Nigeria was first put on the list and later removed rather than on the flimsy excuse that Boko Haram and insecurity in the country were the reason, as if the sect and insecurity were not already there when the earlier decision to add Nigeria was made.

Also, could the so-called ‘’unfavourable security reports’’ be coming from Olusegun Obasanjo given his present face-off with President Jonathan or from the yet-to-be formed APC opposition party, since if they were based on true security reports by the CIA and State Department, then such reports would have stated that the country’s security situation rather than worsening is improving tremendously since the late 2012? The inclusion of corruption is bizarre because corruption under Jonathan is far less from what it was during Obasanjo years and still Clinton visited.

Since Obama has told Nigerians that they don’t matter to America even in Africa, isn’t it time we began to look up to China since boosting the country’s trade and investment requires us to head to where everyone else, including the US, is today headed? In other words, isn’t it obvious that with China’s whopping $3.7tn foreign reserves scanning the world for investment, Abuja should expect better deals embracing Beijing? Certainly, the forthcoming visit to China by Jonathan is an opportunity to build new win-win strategic partnerships with the world’s most solvent economy. It’s time to bargain hard in Nigeria’s interest.