Two top Americans have described Nigeria as a failed nation calling the Unted States to acknowledge that Nigeria is actually a failed state.
The two men, a former United States Ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, and a former Director with Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Prof. Robert Rotberg, said it is time the United States to acknowledge that Nigeria is a failed state.
Campbell and Rotberg linked the failed state of Nigeria to the many security threats bedeviling the country.
They made the assertion in an article titled, “The Giant of Africa is Failing” which was published in the May/June edition of Foreign Affairs magazine.
Both men pointed out that every part of Nigeria now faces insecurity which they say, threatens the nation’s corporate existence.
“Nigeria’s worldwide companions, particularly the USA, should acknowledge that Nigeria is now a failed state. In recognition of that truth, they need to deepen their engagement with the nation and search to carry the present administration accountable for its failures, while additionally working with it to supply safety and proper financial system,” the article read in part.
Campbell and Rotberg noted that the security agents in the country have not been able to curb crime due to the sophisticated weapons the criminals in the country deploy.
They also flayed the Buhari government, stating that the country had moved from a weak one to a failed one.
“Underneath the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, a number of overlapping safety crises has remodelled Nigeria from a weak state right into a failed one. Buhari’s authorities has struggled to quell numerous Jihadi insurgencies, together with the one waged by the militant group Boko Haram,” the article read.
Both men said the Federal Government seemed to have given up in some areas and non-state actors had taken over while quasi-police organisations and militias controlled by state governments have become more common.
The asserted that due to kidnappings and other crimes, several schools had been forced to shut down.
The article read: “Regional quasi-police forces and militias—generally related to state governments however not often formally sanctioned—train de facto authority in some areas. However in lots of others, the federal authorities have successfully ceded management to militants and criminals.”
The duo said that most failed states in Africa such as the Central African Republic, Somalia, and South Sudan are small or marginal but Nigeria, in contrast, boasts rising inhabitants of over 200 million people and could be the third-largest country on earth by 2050.
Campbell and Rotberg said happenings in Nigeria also affect other areas of Africa.
The article affirms that Nigeria depends too much on oil and is regularly faced with economic disasters.