SECURITY CONCERNS IN THE GULF OF GUINEA: AMERICAN, REGIONAL AND COUNTRY RESPONSE

By CANUTE C.N. TANGWA

According to Chester Crocker, former US assistant secretary of state for Africa, “there is more piracy in the Gulf of Guinea than anywhere else in the world”.¹ Thus, the Gulf of Guinea (GG) is as insecure as the Straits of Malacca² and the maritime domain that covers the territorial waters (12 nautical miles), contiguous zone (24 nautical miles) and exclusive economic zone (200 nautical miles) from the Somalian coast.

For current purposes, the GG stretches from Guinea to Angola which represents a coastline of more than 6,000 kilometres. However, this paper would focus mainly on Nigeria, Cameroon, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Sao Tome et Principe and Equatorial Guinea; countries at the epicentre of the GG. The latter sits on resources such as oil, gold, diamond, uranium, fish, zinc, bauxite, copper, manganese, cobalt, citrate and so on. It is home to one of the largest forest reserves in the world and hosts the biggest hydroelectric energy potential in Africa. However, the most coveted of theses resources is petroleum and its corollary gas.

While the sub-soil of the GG is very rich and alluring, the top-soil has virtually nothing to offer in terms of socio-economic sustainable development and good governance. Little wonder almost all states in the GG are vulnerable and threat-prone in one way or the other. According to Raymond Gilpin³, these threats and vulnerabilities include:

-    Poaching: It takes a considerable tool on aquatic resources such as fish, shrimps and lobsters. The Post newspaper of 13 August 2007 raised the nefarious activities of Chinese commercial fishermen using twin trawlers with the upshot being the eventual depletion of fish in Cameroon’s coastal waters. Indiscriminate fishing as practised by the Chinese, deprives locals of vital revenues, reduces production, and puts a strain on households and individuals in terms of high costs of fish coupled with a health cost: reduction of protein intake. As reported by The Post newspaper before the incursion of the Chinese, daily revenue of local fishermen ranged from CFAF 10, 0000 to 20,000 daily. Today, they make barely CFAF 2,000 daily!

-    Piracy: It has become recurrent in the GG. According to statistics of the International Maritime Organization, the GG is a piracy hotbed in the world. The Nigerian coastline apparently tops the chart with armed groups under the banner of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) attacking, raiding, and seizing oil facilities for ransom and stealing oil in the Niger Delta area. According to a report of the Corporate Risk International (2009), such criminal activities led to a drop in Nigerian oil exports from 2.2 million barrels per day in 2006 to about 1.6 million barrels a day. 

Cameroon also has its fair share. On 28 September 2008, pirates attacked three banks at the tourist resort and oil-rich city of Limbe and made away with over CFAF 320 million. They operated with heavy firepower for over three hours and left by sea before national security forces could react. Going by a Corporate Risk International Report, in Cameroon, there were at least six attacks on oil facilities or oil service vessels off the coast of Cameroon in 2008 particularly in the Bakassi peninsular. However, cases have been reported off the coast of Kribi where gunmen attacked a fishing trawler, looting and killing the captain in the process in January 2009. In 2008, pirates went as far as storming the palace of the president of Equatorial Guinea! Though the assault was repelled, it sent jitters and a strong message to other banana republics of the GG.

-    National and trans-national crime and drug syndicates: There is a correlation between piracy and national/trans-national crime and drug syndicates. The flashpoint, at least for now, is the Niger Delta region of Nigeria where criminal gangs engage in oil bunkering and disruption of oil exploration activities. According to Dr Peter Pham in World Defense Review (2007), “Nigeria is the transhipment point for approximately one-third of the heroin seized by authorities in the United States and more than half of the cocaine seized by South African officials”.  Time Magazine of June 27, 2007, described Guinea Bissau as cocaine country. Guinea Bissau has become the main transit route for hard drugs from Latin America to Europe.

According to certain Guinea Bissau watchers, the political turmoil leading up to the June 28, 2009 presidential elections is not unrelated to a thriving narcotic trade powered by drug cartels from Latin America that virtually run Guinea Bissau’s cash-trapped and parlous economy! The current war against drug lords and pushers  in Guinea led by the Captain Moussa Dadis Camara ruling military junta has all but worsened the security situation in that country because of the nuisance capacity of drug barons. The junta recently placed Guinean troops on alert and closed its borders because of a real or imaginary rebel attack from neighbouring countries with the blessing of disgraced erstwhile power brokers embroiled in narcotics trade. Though statistics are hard by, there are indications, hauls at airports and the corrupt nature of security forces, that the drug trade is fast taking root in Cameroon. 

-    Boundary disputes: Boundary disputes are common place. Of late Cameroon and Nigeria almost went to war over the oil rich Bakassi peninsular, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea have an axe to grind over an island at the mouth of the Ntem River whereas Gabon and Equatorial Guinea are still to come to terms over the demarcation of the Mbane Island and Corisco Bay.

-    Environmental degradation and human rights abuse: Oil and fishing companies in the GG have paid scant attention to environmental issues such as pollution, ecological imbalance and environmental degradation. These drew international attention and outcry with the hanging of the Nigerian playwright Ken Saro Wiwa in 1995 because he stood against the rape of his native Ogoni people and environment by oil multinationals such as Shell. In fact, everywhere that oil companies have pitched tent in the GG, grinding poverty, human rights abuse and environmental degradation have ensued! Though most of the oil drilled in Cameroon comes from the Ndian Division of the South West region, the inhabitants have very little to show of this windfall. The MEND in the Niger Delta of Nigeria was apparently set up to draw attention to the plight of the peoples of this oil rich region.

-    Poor maritime surveillance:  Since independence most conflicts or security concerns in the GG have been onshore. Seaborne attacks from pirates and militias that purport to fight for the rights of native peoples like the MEND are a new phenomenon. Most States of the GG have virtually been caught off-guard because they do not have the wherewithal to effectively police their maritime borders. Where coast guards and navies exist, they lack sophisticated surveillance equipment, patrol boats and training.  

-    Bad governance: Most GG countries do not meet the attributes of good governance as propounded by the United Nations Committee for Development Planning (1992) i.e. territorial and ethno-cultural representation, mechanisms for conflict resolution and for peaceful regime change and institutional renewal; checks on the executive power, effective and informed legislatures, clear lines of accountability from political leaders down through the bureaucracy; an open political system of law which encourages an active and vigilant civil society whose interests are represented within accountable government structures and which ensures that public offices are based on law and consent; an impartial system of law,

criminal justice and public order which upholds fundamental civil and political rights, protects personal security and provides a context of consistent, transparent rules for transactions that are necessary to modern economic and social development; a professionally competent, capable and honest public service which operates within an accountable, rule governed framework and in which the principles of merit and the public interest are paramount; the capacity to undertake sound fiscal planning, expenditure and economic management and system of financial accountability and evaluation of public sector activities; and attention not only to central government institutions and processes but also to the attributes and capacities of sub-national and local government authorities and to the issues of political devolution and administrative decentralisation.

While Nigeria is still reeling from a disputed and flawed presidential election that propelled Mr Musa Yar’Adua to the helm of State in May 2007, Cameroonian authorities fiddled with the constitution in 2008 in order to extend the mandate of the sitting president beyond 2011, Guinea and Guinea Bissau are tottering on the borders of failed states, and a dynastic rule is apparently taking shape and form in Equatorial Guinea. Added to this is the pungent stench of corruption that runs through an unwieldy bureaucracy in both the public and private sectors.  For example, Cameroon has topped the charts twice in a row as the most corrupt country on earth by Transparency International standards.

-    Leadership: Tonnes of literature have been written on visionless leadership in Africa and the GG in particular. As US president Barack Obama aptly said, “Africa does not need strong men but strong institutions”. There is virtually no place for a servant president (dixit Musa Yar’Adua) in the GG. Rather politics of the strong man or strong man president thrives. Symbols speak volumes in politics and everyday life. In Cameroon the symbol of leadership and as a consequence that of its head of state is the lion. He is the lion man and lion president. In other words, he is the strong man. But under him the institutions are weak and corrupt.

The leadership issue is quite a thorny one and commentators have tried to unravel this    wahala that is Africa’s number one bane. However, Father Tatah Humphrey Mbuy in A Walk into the Forest of Death looks at leadership in Africa from a socio-psychological perspective. He posits that “we have not cast the problem of leadership in such a way that the ordinary people accept the relevance of the problem. Most of us are acidic in our criticism of those in power…once a person is much criticised, he becomes insulated to every abuse and considers every other person as his enemy. At such a point the person is even more dangerous. He acts the enraged “Rambo”. We must be able to make a balanced assessment of our leadership and not only see the BAD side or only the GOOD. These two extremes have tended to neutralize each other and we seem to have no problem whereas there is a genuine problem”.

-    Elite and intellectuals: They are security concerns because a complacent and conniving elite/intellectual does a disservice to any nation. Normally, elite and intellectuals should be societal watchdogs even within political formations. When elite/intellectuals collude with political leadership there is often a disconnect between the top and the base. Information that gets to the top does not reflect what is on the ground because there is no common or national interest, only parochial interest. This is a recipe for social unrest.

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This past week, two outcasts (well, an “outlaw” and an “outcast”) in the eyes of the dominant West and a world organization, were given vexing heroic home-coming receptions. As news reports carried the anger of the US and the UK over the popular reception given the “Lockerbie Bomber” Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi in his home country, another African, Caster Semenya of South Africa was receiving the trauma of her life prior to and after she had a clean win of the female 800m race in the World Athletics Championship in Berlin. She has today been given a heroine’s welcome (mind the precision – a heroine’s welcome, not a heroe’s welcome – she’s a woman) in Johanesburg, South Africa. Like the “bomber”, the runner was also received by the head of state.

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Excerpts of what the late Daniel Muna told me in a 2001 interview

The late Daniel Muna said they (Muna kids) were not princes born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Their upbringing was devoid of the spoilings that children of well-to-do parents generally enjoy, he said. This, he said, involved trekking to school though there were vehicles at their disposal. He said that could have humbled them and given them the drive to serve humanity that leaves the impression they are over-ambitious. The first son of the late S.T. Muna who died on 12 July 2009 in Douala, had just been elected chairman of the Cameroon Medical Council in February 2001 when Franklin Sone Bayen conducted an interview with him in Yaounde, which was published in The Herald of 2 – 4 March 2001 (page 10). This excerpt was republished in Standard Tribune on Monday, 24 August 2009:

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