“The doctrine of odious debt can help starve autocratic, kleptocratic governments and dismantle out of existence their associated governance structures by reducing the amount of financing available to them.”

This is to the extent that military governance in search for international accommodation under international rule of law seeks subscription to the doctrine of international legal sovereignty, which stipulates juridical independent entity that then has the right to freely decide the international agreements or treaties it will enter into. But military praxis at the same time brooks no extraterritorial interference in its municipal operations and dynamics by subscribing to the Westphalian or more appropriately Vattelian doctrine of sovereignty that stipulates nonintervention in the internal affairs of other states. (Although the principle of non-interference or nonintervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign state is traditionally associated with Peace of Westphalia of 1648, the doctrine could not explicitly have been articulated until a century later by the Swiss jurist, Emmerich de Vattel in his The Law of Nations or Principles of the Law of Nature Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, originally published in French in 1758.)

These doctrinal prescriptions governing relations among states assume that there exists within states a third element, of effective domestic sovereignty. This implies that there is an independent authority structure within recognized territory capable of effectively regulating activities within its borders. And, ideally, such authority structure would ensure a decent society where human rights are protected, the rule of law observed and honoured and officials are accountable to citizens.

But the doctrine of odious debt, an economic doctrine that is concomitant to pursuit of non-failed state governance, frowns at extension by the international community of de jure status to military governance. It is not arguable that military governance by its praxis is palpably short and suspect on human rights protection, freedom of speech, observance of the rule of law, accountability and transparency. The core principle of the doctrine of odious debt [sic] establishes statistically significant functional nexus of the tripod of military governance, odious debt and failed state genuflection.

It presupposes that military regimes, [sic] mostly visited of Third World, that is, non-thinking states, [sic] among them of apron-string disposition to immense hydrocarbon revenue, preside over looting of public treasury through municipal and international lending corruption and fraud. This nexus demonstrates a correlative function of failed state praxis, to which, a fortiori, the traditional Westphalian-Vattelian de jure principle of sovereignty need not be extended, as the obnoxious governance praxis is ominous and productive of failed state genuflection. ¹

Among other states of military regime, but of limited or non-access to hydrocarbon revenue, international lending to them produces odious debt of pre-existing non-capacity for repayment. This, in turn, has collateral effect on non-odious debt customers (those who pay their bills and on schedule), as lenders, in adopting measures to protect lending asset portfolios, increase their lending interest rates and other aggravating factors that, in turn, impact on emergence and protection of good governance.

The doctrine of odious debt propounds that where:

(1) loans are made to illegitimate regimes that come to power through undemocratic and by it unconstitutional means;

(2) loans not used for the benefit of the people (but inexorably shared by consortium of fraud of lending and recipient actors) and

(3) loans to particularly undemocratic governments of non-transparency that lenders knew or could reasonably have known of existence of conditions (1) and (2), then such loans are illegitimate and unenforceable. The doctrine thus moves against looting of state treasury through financial markets. It maintains that lenders would have an incentive to conduct due diligence, write strict loan covenants and then monitor the loans to ensure that the covenants are abided. It would also be good for democracy and economic development.

Illegitimate, undemocratic governments that come to power by coup d’etat or civil war and then refuse to submit to [the] democratic process would be frozen out of the international capital markets. Side-by-side, stricter monitoring by lenders would ensure that loans are used for developmental purposes, rather than looted. And, moreover, the doctrine of odious debt can help starve autocratic, kleptocratic governments and dismantle out of existence their associated governance structures by reducing the amount of financing available to them.

Expert economic study demonstrates [sic] systemic web of providing lending funds to such governments, military or not, which helps their practitioners stay in power by enabling them pay off supporters. This is especially true of loans and foreign aid to such regimes, funds that come in the form of hard currency. Denying or commensurately reducing such funding to their practitioners can therefore undermine political support for such nasty governments with their enabling infrastructure.²

But then, the curse of odious debt and its nexus to abusive, failing and failed state infrastructure, military or not, is symbiotically tied to geostrategic interests of international lending and assistance authorities. It is not unknown in the world of strategic politics of lending and or direct assistance that donor or lending states “will not make all assistance contingent on governance reforms because they will not deny funds for humanitarian purposes or foreclose aid to promote their own strategic interests. Even where governance is grotesquely bad, international financial institutions cannot eliminate funding to poorly functioning states or they would go out of business.” (Krasner, Stephen D., supra.)

This may explain the reason why and how the United States would, at least on allegation with supportable data, extend lending or direct aid assistance to [the] African kleptocratic state of Uganda but denies or withholds lending or direct aid to democratic Kenya, among others of such aid or lending action.³ Even where [a] recipient state discovers grounds sufficient to call for repudiation of illegitimate loans by invoking operation of condition (2) of the doctrine of odious debt, culprit lenders have always, through use of instrumentality of international finance, frustrated the move.

On the other hand, even where there is detection of altruism in international lending or direct aid assistance, leverage of external actors, which is based on funding in exchange for reform, is, albeit, not that great. Leaders in recipient states do not always follow through on reforms that would undermine their domestic support, assuming that impact of outside governance assistance is, in the first place, anything more than modest.

For repose of federal democratic or military polity, a constitutional or statutory provision does not in its application apply to the government in absence of “clear and indisputable” expression of intention to include the government in its operation. Where the provision is not so limited in its application, it will deprive the government recognized or prerogative of title. (Nardone v United States, 302 US 379, 383 [1937]).

In such controversy, the government or ‘civil society’ group with standing may go to court and seek interpretation and application of a general constitutional or statutory provision as to whether or not the provision includes the government in its operation. Respective claims and defenses of the parties will be construed as arising under the constitution. But in judicial resolution of the case or controversy, one construction of the constitution will defeat its opposite construction and the court’s holding on one construction of the constitution is the successful construction, which upon finality operates as what the constitution says. (Verlinden B.V. v Central Bank of Nigeria, 461 U.S. 480 [1983]; Osborn v President, Director & Co. of Bank, 22 US 738 [1824]).

Based on this, civil society refusal or failure to extend related and adequate deference to the inverse operation of free speech, with its exercise in respective democratic and military states, is a dysfunction atomistic to repose of government, good governance, peace and harmony of the polity. And dysfunctional impact on good governance of the problematic free speech dichotomy is critically allied to Western geopolitical prognostications of nexus of atomistic state structures tailored for ethno-theocratic governance and the here-and-there flaky projection of Nigeria as [an] emerging failed state.

Unsettling a geopolitical earthquake as the [sic] Western prognostication situates, the failed state genuflection of Nigeria, inarguably established hemispheric power, is pregnant of a critical worst case scenario. This is to the effect that the failed state’s resulting ‘balkans’ of variegated enclave state structures, might not be able, even where the enclaves were willing, to be reconstituted to new but viable federation. Not only this, there is heightened probability of demonstrable and predictably irredeemable collateral upheaval of the prognosticated collapse unleashing adverse hemispheric effects, particularly on many of the traditional sovereign but small states stuck in the sub-region’s ‘bad neighborhood’ of ‘failing’ Nigeria. (See the United States National Intelligence Council (NIC) Report, 2005).

But, then, [sic] there are issues, direct and collateral the NIC Report on sub-Sahara Africa (2005) does not adumbrate on, even while cognizant of them, we are sure, as the NIC is an United States intelligence vehicle of geostrategic review of the world, for the United States. We are not concerned in this aside of America’s invoking of the doctrine of plausible deniability against bilateral political fallout that the Report does not reflect opinion of the United States Government, but “of an independent expert academic group.” It is standard presumption of the logic of world politics that states never ordinarily make strategic intelligence available to [the] enemy, but friendly and mostly select allied, states. Assume that extension by the U.S. of the NIC Report to Nigeria is [a] ‘friendly’ act. It, in fact, is not, but [is] of strategic tacit deception. Release of the Report, by the U.S. Government or its ‘interest group’ is not ‘friendly’ but [a] hostile enemy act.

It is calibrated to coincide with and adversely affect, in real politik terms, Nigeria’s campaigns for presidency of [the] African Development Bank, in which the United States harbours and effects small state (Rwanda) interest, and a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, which it may not secure without massaging [sic] U.S. hangover on Liberia’s Charles Taylor. Thus United States present ‘friendly’ saber quislings toward Nigeria constitute tacit deception. So, Nigeria ought to recalibrate its related bilateral relations in light of this and other covert enemy threats. Even if the United States were ‘Nigeria friendly,’ would it ‘fight’ to prevent its failure? Same theoretic scenario of geostrategic equation of super power interest, and of real politik, vis a vis identifiable, if not demonstrable, potential of future competing continental power, were Nigeria not to fail, would restrain the United States from deployment of strategic assets for prevention of non-allied state’s failure. While Nigeria may on [a] bilateral level act, more for [the] United States benefit, [sic] as big state strategic buffer, checkmating cross-continental covert actions of Talibanic-Al Qaida terror politics and its alleged ‘collateral institutions and communities’ in Nigeria, it is rational behavior, on game theoretic calculus that the United States will not, on geostrategic grounds, promote non-failure of large state pluralist federal Nigeria, of macroeconomic governance structures with immense hydrocarbon revenue profile. This is in addition to [sic] strategic wealth of Nigeria’s ‘colossal straddle’ over great hydrocarbon profile of the contiguous riparian states of and the Gulf of Guinea, among other resources, which include the Gulf’s potential as clinical naval asset theater for covert intelligence. On this score, apparently with or without Nigeria’s knowing, the United States is increasingly poised to observing covert military intelligence vigil over the Gulf of Guinea.

This is for its strategic value as source of alternative hydrocarbon supply against volatile and terror-gripped Middle East Gulf region, and to preposition the United States prior to any neo-Bismarckian military scramble in the strategic Gulf by super and similar but emerging powers. This deduction can rationally be inferred from the NIC Report’s fatalist accommodation of, if not resignation over, India and China’s emerging international power and influence, NIC Report 7, 14, super power-making behaviors which, pro tanto, appear beyond American preemption or prevention. The fatalism is depicted with the Report surmising that while some African countries will notably benefit from the increasingly official international allergy to corruption, excluding others that lack good governance practices and which, for this, will face ever-more temptations from [the] international economy that increasingly includes buyers not influenced by national or international codes of conduct, China, in particular, in flaunting its emerging super power nuances is showing not much concern with promoting governance as it expands its economic reach into sub-Sahara Africa. [sic] In reaction to this fatalism over ‘lost cause’ on bullish China, the United States is not likely to take ‘any more chances’ with respect to the Gulf of Guinea. Anyway, games of super and emerging powers aside, there is, conversely, zero-sum scenario of geostrategic ‘welcome’ to others of collapse of Nigeria with its balkanization into enclave states and economies.

In the West African hemisphere and its contiguous riparian neighbors, some traditional states might survive Nigeria’s NIC predicted collapse, assuming they had any governance structures and strength to survive such a great fall. Among such survivor states would be traditional suspects of covert envy and or jealousy of Nigeria’s regional preeminence, to which states the collapse would ostensibly benefit, on fallout redistribution of hemispheric power. We predict they would include Ghana and Senegal in West Africa, and Cameroun in Central Africa. On the ‘big league’ chessboard, geostrategic benefit of power equation would accrue to Africa’s ever ‘love-hate,’ ‘no love lost’ frowners to Nigeria’s ‘hegemonic’ posturing! These would, no doubt, include Egypt, Kenya, Libya and old wine-new bottle South Africa. We arrive at these conclusions upon inferential methodology of the calculus of contemporary geostrategic power play, both in the Continent and beyond. After all, these are Africa’s traditional and emerging ‘macroeconomic’ or ‘doing well’ powers. Many a one of these states, less on its independent but more on East-West allied strength finds sufficient grounds to mount significant challenges to Nigeria on, e.g., prospective leadership of the African Development Bank and sub-Sahara Africa’s share of projected permanent status in the Security Council of the United Nations. There is, we concede, nothing [sic] abysmal of these challenges. They are perfectly normal in real politik platform of international politics, diplomatic, bilateral or multilateral relations between or among nation-states notwithstanding. The fault line of this real politik, to the detriment of international interest and municipal political jeopardy of Nigeria lies, however, on the State, to the extent that its general foreign and specifically Africa policy is bedeviled of spent force of negritude sentimentalism, of no post-modernist strategic value. So, Nigeria will continue to be confronted with sub-regional and even Continental adverse challenges by those countries it devoted over the years much of its national resources to bail out of their political doldrums. This will sustain unless and until it realizes and appreciates that international political poker game demands that it must put its money where its mouth is: Nigeria must institute, first, the enabling real politik infrastructure or platform for guaranteed return on its investment, when requested.

The Africanness construct of ‘integration and cooperation’ structure of Nigeria’s foreign policy [sic] in post-modernist extraterritorial world is, by prevailing abysmal outcomes and ‘benefit’ to Nigeria defeatist and thus calls for reconfiguration. On municipal front, there is zero-sum scenario of benefit to overt and covert competitors and traducers of Nigeria, who would be graced by its collapse. What the federation loses in its collapse, its ethnic enclave powers gain respectively! Among them would be its traditional local hegemonic powers, the Hausa-Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba. Although respectively challenged of assumed but perversely faulty monolithic ethnic cohesion, by their respective factions and fractions, these enclave powers might not, after all, be ‘worse off’ of collapse of the ever-quarrelsome Lugardian Marriage. The failed state prognosis of Nigeria is indisputably a correlative function of the inertia of atomistic governance structures and practices of the polity. The inertia is as a result of obdurate drive toward Nigeria fratricide by chosifactive politics (fn 5, pp. 22-23), of control of central and thus frontal power of the Nigerian State, for ethnic purposes, by the three hegemonic ethnic enclaves. The Yoruba, by the Afenifere, more so than another, would, by the collapse, be handed on silver platter fulfillment of its contemporary if not historical nostalgia for ‘O’dua Republic’ or as preeminent power of union of the Yoruba of failed Nigeria and their contiguous Diaspora extensos, in Benin Republic, Togo and others of the sub-region. The Hausa-Fulani, by their Arewa caliphate rostrum, much so in deference to culture and tradition of emirate or caliphate ubiquity, more than any other ethnic group in Nigeria, would, in the end, enjoy, undisturbed, its Shariate tendencies. It would do so, perhaps, in caliphate union or other formation with like brethren in Niger and Chad Republics and stretching through Sahara Desert and, perhaps, to Talibanic hills and caves of somewhere, etc. And, of course, there is the rambunctious ‘Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra’ (MASSOB). This group, either or not, in cohoots with its elderly Ohanaeze Ndigbo, for which MASSOB has little regard, anyway and which is everyday warming up and venting its spleen and unspent energy on the Nigerian State will ululate to the highs in its drive toward revanchism of traditional Eastern hegemony over its Igbo ‘brethren,’ or so it thinks, of contiguous but littoral enclaves of much of the ‘South-South.’ And each of these ethnic enclave powers has its army that would with little effort be incorporated into its new state structure, post-failure of Nigeria. The OPC (O’dua People Congress) as founding army of ‘O’dua Republic;’ APC (Arewa People’s Congress) for ‘Arewa Shariacracy’ or whatever and MASSOB as revived ‘Biafra’ founding army! About the others! They are neofederalist aberrations of Nigeria’s political history; they constitute gerrymandered peripheries of hegemonies of the federation’s traditional ethnic powers. Abì, no be só! It is, by considering the following. A well-trained academic of politics ought to have no difficulty of theoretic conclusion from operationalization of behavioral analysis of group politics that extant ‘resource control’ contention and 2007 ‘presidential matters’ of interest of the ‘South-South,’ a gerrymandered territory composed mostly of four-state littoral territory of post-Independence Parliamentary Eastern and two-state Mid-West territory of Western Nigeria is extemporaneous and thus ad hoc. ‘South-South’ unnecessarily expedient, if not prostitutionist, groveling for cross-zonal political ‘alliance’ with perennial agitationist Middle Belt of North Central Zone of traditional Northern Region has neither historical basis for this beggar-proselytizing nor win-win strategic value.

The contrived expediency is merely an elixir of ad hoc therapeutic value. [sic] It is designed to ingratiate perennial egotism for political, economic and social relevance of ‘South-South’ never-quitting old guard, Umaru Diko’s area elders, Sunday PUNCH 15, July 17, 2005 (” … so, you see, when mature people choose to behave like area boys that is what I call area elders”), now championing the new agitationist politics of the ‘hydorcarbon-maginalized,’ which they hope would be mediated by the predictably non-success oriented ‘South-South-Middle Belt’ ‘rapprochement!’ On this ‘South-South’ thing, by the way, what is the guiding historical or even theoretical platform for sustainability of the Efik-Ibibio-Kalabari-Ijaw-Itshekiri-Urhobo-Bini gerrymander, which would launch it toward successful political brew tasteful enough for Tivi, Idoma, etc. palate, to dent or displace entrenched political tentacles of the traditional hegemonies, in Nigeria! Assuming case could be made of the ‘South-South’ gerrymander as contemporarily federalist, in necessary nation-building pursuit of breaking confounding historical inertia of regionalism of enclave ethnicity that bedevils the federation, the inordinately diverse pluralism of the gerrymander with its uncalled-for pursuit of putative ‘alliance’ across Confluence of the Niger is sociologically illogical and thus tenuous. The North Central had produced most of the military generals of the armed forces and military governments, including three Heads of State, in Generals Gowon, Babangida and Abubakar, of aggregated 18 years in office, more years than any other Nigerian ethnic enclave. It is said, pejoratively that Langtang province or local government area of Plateau State of North-Central Zone is natural home to so many generals and other senior military officers of Nigeria’s armed forces. Many of them had played one or more roles in the long-lasting military governance of Nigeria.

Notes

¹ Krasner, Stephen D. “Sharing Sovereignty: New Institutions for Collapsed and Failing States.” International Security, Volume 29, Issue 2 / Fall 2004.

² Palley, T. “Lifting the Natural Resource Curse.” Foreign Service Journal, December 2003.

³ Voice of America. “Africa Journal,” July 7, 2005 broadcast.

Kingsley Macebuh, Vanguard (Lagos): Opinion, September 14, 2005