GoodWorks draws criticism over Nigerian connections
President of that country is accused of plundering billions

By MAE GENTRY, SHELIA M. POOLE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/18/07

On a recent evening, at a gala dinner at the Georgia Aquarium, more than 600 people toasted the 10th anniversary of GoodWorks International, an Atlanta-based lobbying and consulting firm co-founded by civil-rights icon Andrew Young.

Guests heard about GoodWorks' success in developing new markets in Africa and the Caribbean "while working toward a greater good," as the group's Web site proclaims. Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin praised the firm for its "public-purpose capitalism."

Young

What guests may not have known is that GoodWorks is entangled in a controversy concerning the firm's dealings with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Obasanjo's critics portray him as a corrupt leader who has plundered the nation's oil billions. His supporters point to his role in bringing democracy to Nigeria, ending 19 years of military rule in Africa's most populous country.

Like Obasanjo and any large organization, GoodWorks has its share of critics — and supporters.

The firm, its supporters say, has strengthened relations between the United States and Africa, helped spur business development, created jobs and done what all lobbyists do — open doors for their clients.

Others, though, say GoodWorks' relationship with Obasanjo may undermine the organization's altruistic motto — "Do Well By Doing Good."

Omoyele Sowore, a Nigeria-born journalist and frequent critic of Obasanjo's regime, questions GoodWorks' role in representing corporations doing business in Africa.

"That's where the contradiction between his [Young's] civil rights credentials falls flat on its face," Sowore said, "because he represents all these oil companies that have been involved in massive human rights abuses and pollution of the environment in Nigeria."

But Young and one of GoodWorks' co-founders, Jamaica-born businessman Carlton Masters, dismiss those allegations and say their organization is being dragged into the west African nation's contentious presidential race — even though Obasanjo is not on the ballot.

By criticizing GoodWorks, Young said, Obasanjo's opponents are "trying to undercut the influence of the president."

Over the years, GoodWorks, which also represents companies such as Chevron, Motorola and the gold mining concern Barrick Gold, has been paid millions of dollars to lobby for Nigeria.

The nation has been one of the organization's major clients, once providing as much as 40 percent of GoodWorks' revenues, Masters said.

Nigeria has paid GoodWorks $1.75 million since 2000 to lobby for the Nigerian government, according to records GoodWorks is required to file with the U.S. Justice Department. Those records do not reflect the firm's retainer, which is $60,000 a month, Masters said.

The company spent $166,405 to place ads in The New York Times and the Washington Times that "portray Nigeria's progress in improving governance and economic development," according to the documents.

The firm also set up meetings between U.S. and Nigerian officials to prevent sanctions against the west African nation for providing asylum to former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who's now on trial for war crimes.

It's not uncommon for foreign governments and other international clients to hire lobbyists to look out for their interests in the United States, said Alex Knott, project manager for LobbyWatch, a project of the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity.

"We have found more than 2,200 former congressional and government officials have registered as lobbyists since 1998," he said. "It's not illegal, but a lot of people believe it's questionable."

Last month, for instance, in an article published in Harper's magazine, Washington editor Ken Silverstein declared that "Andrew Young's days of do-gooding have long since passed."

In a phone interview, Silverstein condemned Young's role as a door-opener for corporations doing business in Africa.

"Who benefits from Andy Young's relationship with the government of Nigeria? It's not the Nigerian people," said Silverstein, a former writer with the Los Angeles Times. "As I see it, the primary beneficiaries of his work in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa are these corrupt, authoritarian regimes he works with and his private corporate clients."

Young dismisses the criticism and said Silverstein "doesn't understand the world in which we live ... He's still trying to redistribute wealth that isn't there."

Obasanjo's opponents in Nigeria are angry, Young said, because Obasanjo initiated what Young calls an honest-government campaign.

"[Former leaders] were able to get a cut of almost every contract, and Obasanjo wiped that out," Young said. "And of course, they think we're getting the cut."

'Morally and legally right'

Young, who is now 75, began his career as an ordained minister.

He was a close confidant of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s and later went on to build a political career.

He served as Atlanta's mayor and as a U.S. congressman. President Jimmy Carter appointed him U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, where he reached out to Africa as no ambassador before him had. It was his friendships with various African leaders that helped Atlanta land the 1996 Summer Olympics.

"Andy's a very special person who has a great deal of respect on the continent of Africa," said Julius Coles, president of Washington-based Africare, a nonprofit organization that provides development assistance to Africa. "He can go there and get things done that other people cannot."

In 1996, Young formed GoodWorks with Masters, a former international banker, and Hamilton Jordan, former White House chief of staff under Carter.

Jordan is no longer associated with the firm, which, in addition to its Atlanta headquarters, has offices in New York, Washington and seven African nations.

GoodWorks, Masters said, believes in its motto and its name: It urges its clients in oil, mining, tourism and other industries to "create some corporate social responsibility" in their dealings with African nations, such as building hospitals or helping to provide fresh water.

"We want to be morally and legally right," Masters said. "We want to make sure at the end of the day, based on that man, Andrew Young, that his reputation and the advances that he has made on behalf of many of us are not tainted because of our actions."

Obasanjo, a former Nigerian general, first came to power in 1976 as the nation's military ruler after his predecessor was assassinated.

Three years later, he became Africa's first modern military leader to hand over power to civilian rule. He became a civilian head of state in 1999, winning the first of two elections as president.

Coles, the president of Africare, said Obasanjo has played a significant role in calming the instability in Côte d'Ivoire, formerly known as the Ivory Coast.

"[He] has contributed significantly to peace on the African continent and to conflict resolution," Coles said, "and he's been a steady, good friend of the United States."

At a recent tribute to Obasanjo in New York, President Bush sent a message praising the outgoing Nigerian president's "commitment to peace and freedom," according to an article on NigeriaVillageSquare.com, an online publication. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed admiration for Obasanjo's "dedication to duty ... even at the expense of your own freedom."

But Obasanjo has been widely criticized, too.

A Feb. 14 opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune, which is owned by The New York Times and distributed around the world, charged that Obasanjo "kept the oil portfolio for himself so that he could use Nigeria's vast oil wealth for political ends."

The article, written by former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman J. Cohen, who served under President George H.W. Bush, said Obasanjo's "energy policies have done little to alleviate Nigeria's crushing poverty and social unrest."

"Moreover, as Obasanjo enters the final months of his second four-year term, he is subverting his country's fragile democracy in order to prolong his personal power."

Others say Obasanjo has failed to improve the lives of ordinary citizens in oil-rich Nigeria, which accounted for 8 percent of total oil imports to the United States in 2006, according to the Energy Information Administration.

"Despite soaring oil prices and a burgeoning treasury ... Nigeria remains mired in corruption, crime, poverty and violence," according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch. "Corruption has become a way of life and has bred a political system founded on patronage, influence-peddling, theft and brutality."

And therein lies the reason for the recent controversy surrounding GoodWorks.

Sowore, the Nigerian journalist who has been a vocal critic of Obasanjo and GoodWorks, questions GoodWorks' role as a facilitator in Nigerian oil sales to Jamaica.

"I don't know how a lobby firm on one side also becomes an international oil broker," said Sowore, who was tortured and jailed for his pro-democracy activities in Nigeria under a previous regime.

Today, he speaks for Amnesty International and other groups and also runs the Web site saharareporters.com, which investigates corruption and human-rights abuses in Nigeria.

Their history

Young and Obasanjo met three decades ago, when Young, then the newly minted ambassador to the United Nations, swept through Africa at President Carter's behest. The relationship between the two men continued after Young resigned as ambassador in 1979.

Young helped Obasanjo's sons enroll in Morehouse College and Georgia Tech, Young said, and when Obasanjo was jailed by an earlier regime, Young sent him books, tapes and a Bible.

Masters, too, has grown close to the Nigerian president.

Obasanjo served as host and "father of the day" two years ago, when Masters married Hope Sullivan, daughter of the late Rev. Leon H. Sullivan, a civil rights leader who developed a code of conduct for corporations doing business in South Africa.

Masters also conceived the idea for an Obasanjo Presidential Library, the first of its kind in Africa, and helped raise millions of dollars for the project, estimated to cost $30 million to $50 million.

Wole Soyinka, a Nigeria-born author and winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in literature, has joined critics who charge that donors were strong-armed to contribute to the Obasanjo library.

Fund-raising for the project, Soyinka said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C., was "executive extortion."

Masters calls such complaints "disingenuous," and said his work on behalf of the Obasanjo library was done as a private individual — not as president and CEO of GoodWorks — and that neither his firm nor its U.S. clients contributed to the project.

"This is a private initiative. There is not one single dollar of government money involved in it," he said. "Anybody who gave any commitments gave it in the bright day, in the sunlight."

This isn't the first time Young has been criticized for his relationships with controversial figures.

He resigned as ambassador after an unauthorized meeting with a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He is friends with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who has been condemned by the international community for his crackdown on political opponents.

Last year, while serving as a spokesman for a group supporting Wal-Mart, Young apologized after a Los Angeles newspaper quoted him making offensive remarks about Jewish, Korean and Arab shop owners.

GoodWorks has also come under fire before.

In 1997, after Nike hired GoodWorks to investigate alleged worker abuse at factories in Southeast Asia, human rights activists called the firm's findings a whitewash and blasted a report by Young that essentially absolved the sporting-goods manufacturer.

But Charles R. Stith, director of the African Presidential Archives and Research Center at Boston University, said Young's contributions mustn't be forgotten.

"While he lives comfortably, he clearly has not cashed in or attemped to cash in on his contributions of making the world a better place to the extent that a lot of people in public service have," Stith said. "I know he goes to bed at night with a clear conscience."

Researcher Alice Wertheim and staff writer Maria Saporta contributed to this article.

Robot  Villager

# 1 "Who benefits from Andy Young's relationship with the government of Nigeria? It's not the Nig...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 23.03.2007 01:24