Democracy on hold as Nigeria heads down shitter

Nigeria has announced the long anticipated delay of the long anticipated Feb. 14 elections. Just for six weeks or so mind you - till that pesky Boko Haram menace is swept under the rug, which won't take long now that Goodluck has invited in the armies of Nigeria's neighbours to do what the Nigerian army has been unable or unwilling to do for the past six years. Maybe they'll even bring back the Chibok girls in the process, and hopefully the oil price will also bounce back in that time, thereby giving the incumbent something to crow about.

What could possibly go wrong?

Does Goodluck come up with this foolishness on his own or is this the handiwork of his US advisers?

Goodluck Jonathan's luck running out

If recent polls are accurate, President Goodluck Jonathan's dreams of another term in the big chair are rapidly coming to naught.

As Fisayo Soyombo points out in this story, matters have gone only from bad to worse for the incumbent. The spectacle of a political debate over whether institutionalized corruption is really "corruption," which is really bad, or mere "common thievery," which is apparently not so bad, gives a sense of how out of touch the Jonathan administration has been.

The "Chibok girls" farce went from tragic to even worse last month with the much ballyhooed Boko Haram ceasefire proving to be little more than wishful thinking on the part of certain Jonathan underlings.

The news that Goodluck was paying some extra-smart white folks in Washington millions from the public purse to polish his halo leading up to the election has had rather the opposite effect, revealing him to be a shallow conniver who is concerned more with his image than with getting results for his people.

And if all of that is not enough of a gathering storm, the global petroleum markets are now conspiring against Mr. Goodluck Jonathan. Oil prices may be one thing he can justly claim no influence over, but if prices languish in the $60 range for long, Nigeria is doomed.

Or at least the Westernized elites are doomed. The impoverished masses have seen scant benefits from the oil boom, and will scarcely notice when it's over.

Malala takes on Boko Haram

Here's a story destined for major traction in Western media; Malala has showed up in Nigeria to advocate for the "bring back our girls" campaign.

Malala was always a theatrical prop used by her Western oriented parents to further their anti-Islamist agenda. When she survived a Taliban assassination attempt it was a dream come true.

Those parents were utterly shameless about using her to further their own agenda, which is what made her a Taliban target to begin with. This is a kid who was exploited by her parents to write anti-Taliban propaganda from the time she was ten years old.

Do ten year olds typically write their own thoughts?

But she eventually, thanks to her parents, caught that Taliban bullet, and the miracle that followed ensured her a place in the pantheon of anti-Taliban activists, which brought about a Nobel nomination and A-list brand recognition in the West.

She is now bringing her celebrity show to Nigeria.

She will succeed where Goodluck has failed.

Or not.

Malala obviously knows nothing about the legacy of institutional incompetence and corruption that has created Boko Haram. Yet she is trotted into Nigeria by her management team to advise the locals on what they should be doing to resolve the Chibok girls crisis.

If Goodluck can't figure out Nigeria, there's no way a 16 year old girl from Afghanistan will.

The free-floating Nigerian political elite

The Nigerian political elite are the envy of the political classes world-wide. Nigerian senators make more than US senators, and they're able to pull that off in a country wherein the majority of the population gets by on a dollar a day. Or less.

Now that's some big-time political chutzpah, baby!

But they're untethered. The head of the Nigerian body politic is no longer attached to the body, ie that majority doomed to perpetual poverty.

Luckily, we now have US, UK, Israeli, and Canadian boots on the ground, all to ostensibly help in the search for "our girls", which of course obliges them to assist in the Nigerian war on terror.

I have a hunch the Nations of Virtue will be staying awhile.

Making Nigeria safe for schoolgirls and oil companies

Quicker than you can say "bring back our girls" NATO has in effect used the supposed crisis to engineer an invisible coup in Nigeria.

While NATO boots from at least three member states are already on the ground to "help" in the search for the Chibok girls, President Hollande called an emergency meeting of regional leaders in Paris. The presidents of Nigeria, Niger, Benin, Cameroon, and Chad all agreed that Boko Haram was an al Qaeda front and would require "total war" to defeat.

That must have been music to the ears of the US and UK officials in the room. Western oil companies have been keen to have at northern Nigeria for decades. Alas, the security environment has not been conducive to the exploitation of these resources.

How convenient then, that a total war led by NATO will close off northern Nigeria to terrorists and open it for oil development!

Colonial masters take over search for kidnapped schoolgirls from inept Nigerian government

As recently as yesterday Reuters was reporting that Nigeria was willing to negotiate the freedom of the kidnapped schoolgirls with their captors.

That was apparently a bridge too far for the colonial masters. Today the top UK official in Nigeria announced that Nigeria would on no account negotiate with Boko Haram.

Thank God the Brits are there to stiffen the backbone of their inept Nigerian underlings!

Frankly, it's more than a little unsettling to see the red carpet being rolled out for Nigeria's colonial masters. British, US, and Canadian "assets" are already on the ground and in the air "helping" in the search for those schoolgirls, and by extension "helping" in the struggle against Boko Haram.

I suppose that since they've finished "helping" Afghanistan in its struggle with the Taliban, they're at loose ends for things to do...

Nigerians will soon rue the day they invited in these "helpers."