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The similarities between Nigeria and other developing countries provide us with examples of what ...Read the full article.

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Good start. However the amalgamation took place in 1914 and not 1924.

I wish you the best as you present information that will help a lot of people in understanding Nigeria and Nigerians so that they can be better guided in their evaluation of problems facing the country.

Definitely our problems and challenges today are quite different from those of the western democracies.

taslim

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I don't seem to get the gist of the lessons the author feels America can learn from Nigeria as the title suggests. Apart from the scanty summary of Nigeria's history that he recounts, there isn't much else to this essay. Except he plans on eventually getting round to establishing a correlation between the title and his write-up in subsequent essays, for now, I think the title is a misfit as no correlation is established between it and the essay.

Secondly, Nigeria was amalgamated in 1914 and not 1924 as stated by the author.

Perhaps, the commendable aspect of this article is the fact that the author took the time to educate himself about another culture- a worthy feat that lots of people, in my experience, are not interested in.

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This article was a brief History-101 about the Nigerian nation and some of it's antecedents and current challenges. However, the title of the article 'America Can Learn From Nigeria' is confusing. What EXACTLY can America learn from Nigeria IN THE CONTEXT of the article?

Would the article have been better titled: America SHOULD Learn ABOUT Nigeria (and thus dispel many misinformed views)?

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AMERICA CAN LEARN FROM NIGERIA! I like that title......for several reasons.....

The writer of this article has CLEARLY indicated in these excerpts below:


The end of the war led to a deliberate effort to adopt an American-style, presidential, republican federal system.

Religious and ethnic differences have continued to shape political identities and behaviors. Unlike Americans who hold their constitution sacrosanct, ethnic and religious identities hold great sway over constitutional considerations and democratic principles in Nigeria.

Ethnic diversity and its impact on Nigerian identity have complicated every major effort at nation building.
Social and ethnic connections determine access to all jobs in government and, therefore, economic power.
Many political conflicts since independence have revolved around the fear that certain ethnic groups possess too much power or seek to dominate the others.
The fear of domination or the appearance of domination has made every effort to have a census futile. No census figure has been accepted since independence.

THE COMPLEXITIES ..... the obstacles and impediments to building a democractic society... in multi ethnic, multi religious... multi cultural.... plural society as Nigeria..... and Iraq as well..... USING the Nigerian experience.... as lessons....for America.

The writer in essence is saying.... if America want to export democracy to Iraq, to Afghanistan etc.... America must take the history of the local peoples.... (yes! peoples) into consideration... if America wants to be successful (assuming that invasion and occupation is motivated by the desire to spread democracy in the first place)!

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He is saying that.... MUTUAL suspicions..... competing and sometimes conflicting interests... regional, religious and ethnic or parochial loyalties..... thwart, truncate... or at minimum....slows....stunts EVERY meaningful efforts

For example.... we all accept/acknowledge the value of knowing the census.... but....

State A wants to show it posses more persons on her territory than on state B's territory... hence conflict that detracts from census efforts.... and then the predictable disputations of census result

Lagos Vs Kano or Kano Vs Lagos

Hence the write said this below:
"Developing democratic institutions and processes in Nigeria requires careful handling of these unique challenges. Some aspects of these problems exist in many developing countries and are not easily understood by Westerners who seek to plant democratic development.:"


In the case of Iraq...
Sunni Vs ****e.....

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The writer in essence is saying.... if America want to export democracy to Iraq, to Afghanistan etc.... America must take the history of the local peoples.... (yes! peoples) into consideration... if America wants to be successful (assuming that invasion and occupation is motivated by the desire to spread democracy in the first place)!- ILN

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Hi,

It should be taken for granted that there are multi-dimensional historical, socio-political and cultural challenges that ALL nations, without exception, must grapple with in the process of institutionalizing democracy and I doubt that the Americans were oblivious of that elementary fact going into Iraq, given that the United States has similarly passed through complex socio-cultural and political struggles in the path to institutionalizing democracy in the US.

There is simply nothing to demystify on that score that will warrant that Americans learn FROM Nigeria’s peculiar history in order to enrich their understanding of the fact that democracy does not happen overnight but takes time to evolve in every nation where it exists in the world today. Someone will have to show us one democratic nation on the face of the earth today that didn’t necessarily contend with unique political, socio- cultural and economic problems along the way for the argument that America needs to learn FROM Nigeria’s peculiar experience to make sense.

Understanding the intricate details of the evolution of democratic processes in Nigeria will not teach the Americans anything new that they do not already know about the well researched stages of political consciousness or the established dynamics that culminate into the formation of socio-political systems, neither will the details of our history necessarily enrich their knowledge of the unique perspectives and problems pertinent to Iraq or Afghanistan simply because our experiences and those of the two nations in perspective are very different.

In the context of what you allege the author is attempting to establish in his essay, Nigeria’s case still does not come close to mirroring the unique circumstances the Iraqis have had to grappled with in their political path and so there is fundamentally nothing America needs to learn FROM Nigeria that will improve its strategies as it executes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, strategically speaking, anyone attempting to enrich the worldview of Americans will do well to provide Americans with perspectives recognizably similar to the Iraqi situation for the argument that they have anything to learn FROM that given nation to make sense. If the author had compared the Nigerian experience with that of Iraq or Afghanistan in an effort to draw parallels, then one can begin to see the emerging trends that perhaps the Americans can LEARN FROM. In the absence of that, the article is at best, an elementary account of Nigeria’s political history and has little else to teach America about the evolution of political processes that they are not aware of already given their rich political discourse.

Except there is a hidden agenda by the US government to invade Nigeria, in which case a thorough appraisal of the history of socio-political processes in Nigeria will be apt, the title of the article, in my opinion, remains a misfit.

Ideally, if the writer’s argument is that careful assessment of the complex social systems in Iraq were not put into consideration at the start of the misadventure in Iraq, then he should be delineating those overarching dynamics that were neglected with respect to the Iraq and Afghanistan circumstances and not Nigeria’s to his US audience.

Clearly, Nigeria’s experience aptly fits into well documented general transitional patterns and is reflective of stages of political consciousness leading up to the establishment of democratic systems. Such general trends are exhaustively dealt with in political science or history classes in the US, by the way. Simply put, ALL nations necessarily experience dialectical tensions at every stage of their political development and Nigeria’s experience only reaffirms the obvious. Our political history clearly does not teach anything new in terms of transitional patterns or complex political processes that the Americans need learn FROM with respect to planting democracy in developing nations around the world.

If you ask me, US knew about Iraqi and Afghanistan’s complex socio-political systems but decided to invade the two nations regardless because it was in their national interest (whatever that means) to do so and shun the consequences- period! It will be naïve for anyone to assume that the US was ignorant of the complex political history and social systems in those countries when the CIA has been operating in both countries since the 70s and beyond. If they didn't know, they could have found out as elaborate details of Iraqi and Afghanistan political history can be easily obtained by ordinary people, let alone the whole US intelligence. It wasn't the lack of information on the complexities of socio-political systems in those two nations that led to the crises in the two nations, in my opinion. US knew what they were getting into but chose to take the risk for the greater good of US economy & their homeland security.

Later o.

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The Phillippines, Cuba, Panama, Haiti, Grenada are countries with American foot prints.... or at least attempts to reproduce its form of government (democracy)? Have been failures.

In all of these places.... despite all the credits that you have generously offered American Intelligence Community.... none of these special knowledge, and special experience by the CIA and other intelligence gathering agencies the US may possess.... have resulted in resounding "transfer" of democratic processes....

It is the case... it has been the case.... that despite your AMERICA knows EVERYTHING and has nothing to learn from ANYONE.... America cannot be said to have succeeded in its "democratization" efforts...

America has behaved in all these countries as if to say.... my way or the highway.... do it the American way! Perhaps that explains it? Not a lack of Intelligence?

Richard Pearle, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld expected American soldiers to have flowers and petals thrown at their feet upon invading Iraq?


There has since .... a different learning... of the intricate differencies between the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shiites...

Many American public commentators and public policy wonks have been known to publicly agonize over the misconceptions about the very combustible differences among Iraqis that was gingerly held together through Saddam Hussein PhD.

Unless of course someone tells me that failure by the Americans to successfully implant democracy into the soils of so many countries, from The Phillippines, Cuba, Panama, Haiti, Grenada to Vietnam..... despite the wealth of knowledge and OVERWHELMING information possessed by the American Intelligence Community..... the Americans have always just chosen to disregard all it knows... and act arrogantly? or insanely?

leading to the death of 53,000 American military personnel in Vietnam? And almost 3,500 military personnel so far in Iraq?

What is public knowledge are the mistakes, the bunglings and quagmires that have resulted in "efforts" to "export" democracy by the Americans...incontrovertibly so.

Are we being told here, that these a merely a result of too much knowledge or ineffectiveness of such knowledge or are all these a result of information overload by the omniscience and supercilious American Intelligence Community?

Do you shower these folks with too much credit? Have you heard of massive Intelligence failure? On Osama Bin Ladin, on the collapse of the Soviet Union etc

There was no WMD in Iraq and CIA did know?

I am sure there are non-Americans who put so much faith and trust in America's Intelligence Community.... such persons may also believe that there are logical and perfect EXPLANATIONS why Osama Bin Ladin has not been found and arrested..... Dead or Alive?

http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/paul-adujie/america-invades-nigeria-to-liberate-nigeriaa-s.html

America Invades Nigeria; To Liberate Nigeria's Oil!

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Obviously, you have completely digressed from the topic of discussion, which is simply put- the disparity between the title of this article and what the author was able to establish in his essay!

If you prefer a discussion on the factors leading to the colossal missteps by the United States in several of the wars it has initiated in recent history, an avalanche of reasons have been proffered by various sources, so it will be extremely simplistic to hinge their failures on the availability of crucial information on the political history of the invaded countries or the lack thereof. I am quite certain I did not remotely imply that in my last response.

If anything at all, my position supports the fact that there are a multitude of mitigating factors involved in the so called 'transfer' of democracy, therefore, the mere knowledge of the complexities associated with the socio-political systems of a given nation will not necessarily result in the desired outcome- namely the institution of democratic processes in the said nation.

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It is the case... it has been the case.... that despite your AMERICA knows EVERYTHING and has nothing to learn from ANYONE.... America cannot be said to have succeeded in its "democratization" efforts...

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Now that is entirely your creation as it will be impossible to draw such an outlandish conclusion on the strength of my previous submission. I already proffered in my initial post on this thread that it is commendable to learn ABOUT the history of other nations, so I am yet to figure where you are coming from with that sort of absurd generalization.

For the sake of discussion though, even if the US knew everything they needed to know about the skirmishes between the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shiites, that would not have necessarily translated into US succeeding in effecting a smooth resolution of the underlining issues between the parties simply because the parties involved do not want a FOREIGN nation to be the ultimate mediator/decider in their internal affairs.

Furthermore, the absurd concept of “transferring” democracy to other nations is, in and itself, a flawed notion as it rarely takes into cognition the human agency in the process of social change. It is rarely the case that a foreign entity succeeds in superimposing its peculiar notion of democracy on another nation for the simple reason that the citizens of the invaded nation will jeopardize every such effort in order to assert their national pride and independence.

What I think the US needed to do if they were genuinely interested in the emergence of democratic processes in Iraq and nothing more, was to covertly and unobtrusively encourage the dissenting voices that were already brewing within Iraq. Unfortunately, the world sole superpower, the US, is not yet willing to accept the verdict of history on the fact that for democratic processes to succeed, the people involved must be the primary actors in the movement. The most an outsider can offer is enlightenment and logistic support, but to assume democracy can be mounted via occupation is fallacious.

Essentially, if the US had altruistic intentions towards Iraq, the more effective route to democracy should have been fomented from within and not through an invasion that has caused untold misery and ignited a near civil war situation in Iraq. For crying out loud, the warning signs that trouble was looming in Iraq were all there. Lots of experts, members of congress and diplomats pointedly indicated that the outcome of invading Iraq was going to be catastrophic but their warnings were all ignored. There was the case of former ambassador Joseph Wilson who, following a trip to Niger, disputed the US government’s claim that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Niger republic. Rather than heed his warning, it is alleged that certain parties in the Bush administration decided to out his wife, a spy, perhaps to get back at him for not towing their line.

You asked whether they ignored the facts out of arrogance or insanity. Who can say? Only that the likely pitfalls of the current war were pretty much well defined prior to the invasion of Iraq. I, for one, believe that the US undermined the glaring warning signs simply because they had more compelling interests that were well worth the cost of war.

Well, I guess the thread has completely taken on a different thrust.

Later o.

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What could it be? One of two?

(1) A lack of knowledge of these complexities.... in the target nation

(2) A complete disregard of such knowledge of the said complexities... in the target nation

You wrote: "my position supports the fact that there are a multitude of mitigating factors involved in the so called 'transfer' of democracy, therefore, the mere knowledge of the complexities associated with the socio-political systems of a given nation will not necessarily result in the desired outcome- namely the institution of democratic processes in the said nation.'

My response to that is: America has military/material resources.... AND, my postion is, if you know the component parts of car, and you are a decent mechanic, you can fix a car when it breaks down.... whether the damage is cause by you or by strangers.... Or, perhaps you indeed have something to learn from other broken cars and the reasons for their break?

President Bush is on record as saying that he went into Iraq without knowing what he now knows.... (I am not suggesting that we take Bush's statements at face value)!

I plead disagreement with you.... for saying the thread is derailed... as I continue to believe that the title of this article is apt, it says the Americans have lessons to learn from Nigeria's political experiences..... peculiarities and all!

America has a lot to learn from Nigeria.... because in the "export or tranfer" of democracy.... ONE-SIZE-DOES-NOT-FIT-ALL !

Was America altruistic in the invasion and occupation of Iraq or any place else? NO!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=no+tears+for+saddam+how+about+the+principle+Adujie&btnG=Search

No Tears For Saddam? How About The Principle?
By Paul I. Adujie April 10, 2003