Nigeria, Iran and China

David McCormack has a terrific analysis on Nigeria over at the Warfooting blog. He brings up something I've mentioned here, namely the Islamic elements that exist in Nigeria.

It was hoped by many that President Bush's meeting today with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo augurs a stronger relationship between the United States and Africa's most populous country. The reality, however, is that a situation exists in Nigeria in which threats to U.S. interests are creating tremendous impediments to a viable partnership. If the U.S. does not act quickly, these challenges will become insurmountable.

Most significantly, Nigeria -- home to 60 million Muslims, roughly half the country's population -- has become the central battleground of Islamofascism's war on Africa. Over the course of the last 30 years, foreign sponsors -- namely Saudi Arabia, but including Iran and Libya -- backed by treasuries overflowing with petrodollars have systematically exported extremist interpretations of Islam to the African subcontinent, significantly corroding the region's temperate and progressive Islamic traditions.

Nowhere has the impact of this campaign been felt more greatly than in Nigeria. In the shake-up that followed liberation from military rule in 1999, twelve predominantly Muslim states in northern Nigeria took advantage of the central government's weakened position and adopted legal codes based on full Shari'a. Characteristics of these Shari'a states include the severe marginalization of women and the institutionalization of punishments such as flogging and death by stoning. The new laws, moreover, are often applied regardless of a citizen's faith and enforced by vigilante organizations modeled on those of Saudi Arabia and Iran.

I've also mentioned in passing that China is certainly interested in Nigeria, too, given Nigeria's oil industry. But McCormack adds some interesting details.

Absent communal friction, Nigeria's energy sector would still prove highly problematic for American interests. Communist China's global drive to dominate strategic energy resources has naturally attracted it to sub-Saharan Africa, from which it currently imports nearly 30 percent of its oil and natural gas. The PRC's presence, unfortunately, has greatly abetted the scourge of Africa -- corruption. As Mustafa Bello, head of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission, recently admitted, "The U.S. will talk to you about governance, about efficiency, about security, about the environment....The Chinese just ask, 'How do we procure this license?'"

Not surprisingly, then, Nigeria has been increasingly receptive to PRC energy forays. For instance, in its first major investment since its failed bid to take over Unocal last year, the Chinese state-controlled oil company CNOOC announced last month it will pay $2.3 billion for a 45 percent stake in a Nigerian oil field. As Iheanyi Ohiaeri, head of business development for Nigeria's National Petroleum Corporation, explains, "We haven't been totally invaded by China yet, but it will come."

In a comment to his post, I asked him if he had any information on Iranian involvement in Nigeria, as I talked about in this post.

He replied by email and added some additional interesting details. Here's his reply:

I'm afraid I just don't know enough to definitively say whether or not Iran is involved in the Niger Delta. They have, however, been involved in the advance of Islamism in the northern region - for example, they sponsor an Islamist publication called Sakon Islam, and the leader of the Nigerian Ikhwan was trained in and is suspected to have received money from Iran.

I've spent a great deal of time chronicling Saudi activity in Africa in general and in Nigeria more specifically (http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/Af_Vortex.pdf).
If the opportunity ever arises, I'd love to do the same with Iran. A casual glance seems to suggest they're a lot more involved in eastern and southern Africa, but I'm sure some research would turn up a lot more in western Africa as well.