The Nigerian Ambassador to the United States, Prof. Adebowale Adefuye, in an interview with EZRA IJIOMA, explains why the Nigerian government does not want the US government to designate Boko Haram a terrorist organisation. He also speaks on the contentious bank accounts of the nation’s mission in the US and the improved relations between the two countries, among others.
How has it been as Nigeria’s Ambassador in the United States?
Well, the challenges are enormous but so also is the determination. We have a government here that is giving you all the support you need,? trying to reposition the country and making all efforts to transform the country; that is making a determined effort to stop corruption, establish democracy, and making effort to make Nigeria take her rightful place in the world. They encourage you and that’s why one has to be strengthened in one’s determination to project Nigeria positively. There are over 1.5 million registered Nigerians in the US and there are over one million Nigerian-Americans in the US; those are Nigerians who have taken American citizenship and have American passports.
But double that number are Nigerians who live in the US for various reasons and a large number of them are doing very well. Nigerians are regarded as the most literate immigrant community in the US. Name any profession in US, you will find Nigerians there: academia, engineering, medicine, architecture, economic; in fact, the first non-American to be on the board of NASA (National Aeronautics Space Agency) is a Nigerian. You have them distributed in all walks of life, so it’s easy to work with them. But there are some very recalcitrant elements who got there at the time of Biafra and who are so determined to oppose anything Nigeria. So you have to adopt different strategies to deal with them. But, by and large, 95 per cent of Nigerians in US are very good people, law abiding, who love their country, who criticise occasionally but they criticise in order to see things get better, and so we do all we can to encourage and assist them.
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Can you identify some of the challenges you are facing in projecting a positive image for Nigeria given the biased Western media reporting of activities about Nigeria?
It’s not only the Western media; you newsmen all over the world are the same and, as people say, it’s only bad news that make good copies. So what the Western media are doing is nothing different from what news media all over the world do. But what we try to do is to ensure that those positive aspects of Nigeria are projected, and when good things happen, we let them know. Like the time when a Nigerian, Chimamanda (Adichie), who did very well in literary works, we projected her.? The point is that all the various efforts that the government is making to implement the Transformation Agenda do not attract the media because it is something every government should be doing and it’s not spectacular.
Things like restructuring the economy by diversifying it and taking it away from over dependence on oil, to improve agriculture and to improve the standard of living of the people are regarded as the normal things any government would do,? so they do not attract major news. But just when there’s a strike, like? during the oil subsidy crisis, that attracts attention. Boko Haram attracts attention, but they will not tell you that the government is awarding so many contracts for road construction, that it has done the PIB (Petroleum Industry Bill), and done so many things – things that are constructive. Those ones don’t attract the attention of the international media. We do the best we can to explain to them what is happening and let them know that the government we have is doing its best to transform the country.
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What is the thrust of Nigeria/US relationship?
There’s a framework within which we operate. We signed a Bi-National Commission (BNC) agreement with the United States. The BNC agreement is the highest form of strategic cooperation that can exist between two countries. There used to be four but now five components of the BNC. It was signed in 2010, the month after I got there. According to the BNC, we resolved to cooperate in the following key areas: on transparency and good governance, Niger Delta and regional security, on agriculture and food security, and on energy and investment. The two foreign ministers, Hillary Clinton for the US and Ambassador Olugbenga Ashiru for Nigeria, are the co-chairs of that commission.
Under that commission, we focus on strategic cooperation on those issues between the two countries and I can tell you the advantages we have made from there. On transparency and good governance, we got tremendous support from the Americans in the conduct of the last general elections. We got tremendous support from them on our fight against corruption. We got tremendous support from them on the judicial reforms we are carrying out. On energy and investment, so many American companies are here to assist us in our drive to increase our (electric) power supply. Many American companies are bidding to take over the privatised power plants we have and the US government gave Nigeria through its US EXIM (Export and Import) bank a guarantee of $1.5 billion to encourage US businessmen who want to invest in Nigerian power supply. GE (General Electric), an American company, has signed an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding)with the Ministry of Power to supply Nigeria with thousands of watts of electricity and so many American companies are here working to improve our power supply.
Then on agriculture and food security, we just conducted an agricultural investment forum whereby we invited American investors, who want to invest in Nigerian agriculture, to come here;that was in April. And the following month, two companies came here. One is establishing agricultural tractors in Rivers State and the other one is in Kaduna State. Also, Procter and Gamble (P&G) came to establish another factory in Agbara Estate (in Ogun State). Also, the USAID (US Agency for International Development) is giving Nigeria a substantial amount of money to improve agriculture in the country, and these are all under the BNC. In the area of Niger Delta, towards the implementation of our amnesty programme, they are helping us to train Nigerians who were former militants to acquire saleable skills and be integrated into the system. On regional security, which has now been given a stand-alone, US gave us a big warship, NNS Thunder, to help us patrol West African waters and check the activities of oil smugglers and reposition and strengthen our navy. These are the things we got from the US under the BNC and all these happened within the last two years. The BNC is so successful that it is seen as a template for America’s missions to other country and we were very happy about that. When the Canadians saw that it was successful, they now signed a similar BNC agreement with Nigeria along the pattern of the BNC we have with the US.
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You said some Nigerian ex-militants are being trained in the US; how many of them?
I can’t put a figure on the number but all the state governments in the Niger Delta? have agreements with American institutions, universities and colleges and technical schools to train those militants who are within the amnesty programme and they are being trained to come back and serve in Nigeria.
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Tell us more about reports of negative financial dealings involving the embassy, its accounts and some properties in the US?
It is very unfortunate. You see, every country has its own share of miscreants, crooks and fraudulent people. We have a very large Nigerian community in the US -?? over four million people – and we don’t expect all of them to be law abiding. What happened is this: houses were sold and bought by the Nigerian Embassy between 2004 and 2006, four years before I got there. They said they left some money in the account. Now, if they sold and bought houses in 2004 to 2006 and you left money there, during that time, there was an ambassador there; he was succeeded by another ambassador, after that ambassador left, there was a period of one year before I got there. Five good years after these things were concluded, now they are asking the current ambassador to explain where that money is.
In any case, when this thing came up, what we did was just to print all the accounts we had, all the accounts of the embassy from the time I got there up until today for the members of House of Reps (in Nigeria) to see. How much more transparent can you be? The truth is that there are two architects of this issue. One is a lawyer called Ugwuonye (Emeka) who helped to sell the houses and buy new ones. The houses were sold and the embassy mistakenly paid taxes which in fact we should not have paid. When they then discovered that it was a mistake, Nigeria asked for the refund of the money. He as the lawyer was the one who wrote the letter to ask for the money. The money was paid to him but he refused to return the money to Nigerian embassy, saying he had defended the country in a case involving Abdulsalami (Abubakar, a former military Head of State) and that the country was owing him. All these happened before I got there. He was paid in 2008, two years before I got there. He had acknowledged getting the money.
He first said he will pay back but he did not pay back. Then he came out with this story that the government was owing him. We then checked with the Ministry of Justice whether they’re owing him or not and they said they were not owing him and then they gave us leave to prosecute him. And that’s what we’re doing – prosecuting him. For this, he has become a terrible enemy of the country. So he’s the nerve centre of all activities against Nigeria now. There’s another woman, one Olubufunmi. She wanted to defraud the wife of the vice president (Namadi Sambo) by arranging a phony conference where she listed names of people who will be at that meeting. She did that without reference to the embassy. When we got to the place of the meeting, we found out that only her, her friend and her daughter were there. All those people she listed who will be talking were not around. So we quickly arranged an event for the wife of the vice president where we invited wives of African ambassadors so that she will not be embarrassed. We did that and then we left the following day. In fact, there were three women ministers and many other women who came with her (Olubufunmi) on the phony conference. She was using a non-registered organisation to invite those people. So, it was after they had left, she now wrote to us. I did not know that she had told them that they would pay $4,000 each as registration fee. Because the conference did not take place, the people did not pay and she became very angry.
What she first did was to take her case to Sahara Reporters but when we stated our case, they dropped the story. She now wrote to a lawyer here to sue the wife of the vice president and her friends. When we presented our case to the lawyer, the lawyer dropped it. Now she took her case to that same lawyer (Emeka Ugwuonye) now and the two of them joined together to say that they are going to demonstrate against the embassy. On the day of the demonstration, only two people came. It’s this same fellow, Ugwuonye, a Nigerian lawyer but a crooked one, who spread lies around that the embassy accounts were frozen by two banks. What happened was that there is a Patriot Act through which the American government imposed strict regulations on the operations of embassies’ accounts, telling the banks that if they are taking accounts from an embassy, the banks should monitor its activities, give them (US officials) weekly reports, give them everything and show them what they are doing. It involves so much paper work and staff time that the American banks then said ‘no, we don’t want your account because it’s too much stress’.
Then many African embassies, about 37 of them, were involved. We had to close our accounts in some banks and move to other banks but the banks we moved to were those American banks who have branches in our countries. So we are now banking with Citibank in Nigeria. So our accounts are sent here (in Nigeria) and then we operate them from there (in the US). That’s what all African countries are doing. This guy said Nigerian embassy’s accounts were frozen because of corruption and money laundering and then he mentioned two banks, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. In those two banks, we don’t have any account there. How can your accounts be frozen in banks that you don’t have any account? So he concocted lies just because we refused to cooperate with them in corrupt activities, just because you want to expose their corrupt activities, they use everything to blackmail you.
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When he withheld the embassy’s funds, what did the embassy do in the US?
We’ve taken him to court.
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Did you report him to the Bar Association?
His licence has been suspended temporarily. He cannot practise any more. Right now there’s a case in Maryland. We reported him to the Maryland Bar asking them to cancel his registration and we have sued him to pay that money back to the embassy.
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What about here in Nigeria?
We reported him to EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission) and he was arrested. They kept him in custody for quite a number of months. He’s only out on bail. He has a case, not only our own case. Once we reported him to the EFCC, another woman called Adeoye went to court to say that he is owing her some $98,000. She was a former client of his and the money was awarded in court but this man held it. So that’s the kind of person we are dealing with. And he aligned with this crook, who wanted to defraud the wife of the vice president, and these are people who gather themselves together to try to tell lies against the embassy, against the mission; those are our enemies! We are trying to fight corruption, corruption is fighting us back and we are not just going to give up. We will continue to fight them. We will not allow them to spoil Nigeria’s image.
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President Goodluck Jonathan in a recent media chat instructed EFCC to investigate the embassy’s accounts; have you received any EFCC operatives at the embassy?
Oh yes, we’ve stated our case. They investigated and we gave them all the documents.
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Where do you see Nigeria/US relations in the future?
It’s doing very well. We have the best of relations with the US and our BNC agreement has been very, very successful. United States sees Nigeria as its strategic ally. To the US, Nigeria is the most strategically important country in Africa and they see us as a source for democracy, human rights, good governance and the rule of law. So that is why they are interested in helping us to combat all these problems we have, the problem of Boko Haram and others. They are cooperating with us on these areas through the regional security component of Nigeria/US BNC.
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Did the embassy make any representations to the US Congress when it debated on designating Boko Haram a foreign terrorist organisation?
We have told them that we don’t want that.
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Why?
For so many reasons. Number one, to declare Boko Haram an FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organisation) would mean that Nigeria is not able to deal with Boko Haram, and that is not right. After all, we have dealt with a more focused, more dangerous, better organised protest movement like the Niger Delta movement. Those ones really had a cause for fighting but Boko Haram has no cause for fighting. We knew the leaders of Niger Delta movement, we could talk to them but we don’t know who is Boko Haram. Niger Delta was more focused and you can understand their reason though you may not even share it or even agree, but you can understand their reason. And to designate Boko Haram an FTO would give such psychological boost to Boko Haram among other terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, which can be tempted to embrace it and support it. Three, to designate Boko Haram an FTO will discourage investors from coming to Nigeria because nobody wants to go to an area where a terrorist organisation resides and is so well recognized.
It will make nonsense of our investment programme. Even from the point of view of the US, they say it constitutes a threat to their interests, but it’s not. That argument cannot be sustained because if they did not declare Niger Delta movement a foreign terrorist organisation, Niger Delta movement was a bigger threat to the US interest than Boko Haram, because at the height of Niger Delta movement, it was affecting our oil production which we supply to the US. But for Boko Haram, it is only a suspicion that it is linked with al Qaeda, but that is yet to be proved up until now. So if you did not declare Niger Delta an FTO, why are you going to declare Boko Haram an FTO? It doesn’t stand to logic or reason.
And the final reason is that I got to the US just after the Abdul Mutallab (underwear Christmas Day attempted plane bomber in US) episode and I know what they subjected Nigerians to when we they wanted to enter. Now, if we declare Boko Haram an FTO, it means that every Nigerian entering the US port will be seen as a potential, a possible Boko Haram member, and will be subjected to horrendous search at US entry points, and we don’t want that. So those are the issues and we told them. I know some politicians in US are trying to do that but we are not supporting that. We are opposed to it.
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