Nigeria's troubles, and ours
Following the attempted Christmas attack on a jetliner en route to Detroit, many have wondered how a 23-year-old Nigerian man was able to pass through security in Lagos and board a plane with explosives.
I know how. Passing through Nigeria's airport two weeks ago, I witnessed its notorious screening process firsthand.
Before I got my boarding pass, I hoisted my suitcase onto a table for baggage check. A young police officer cast his eyes down on it, then looked up at me and asked, "What do you have for me?" "A smile," I tried to say cheerily. "That's not good enough," he replied. He was looking for a bribe.
As I shifted uncomfortably, a senior officer intervened, saying "It's a beautiful smile" and nodding me along.
I had known that Nigeria's underpaid, untrained police were susceptible to corruption, but it was nevertheless shocking to watch an officer show more concern for landing bribes than finding weapons.
The story, of course, is bigger than the airport. My experience in Lagos and the attempted Christmas bombing point to grave problems in Nigeria - the kind of problems that can all too easily cross the Atlantic and have negative repercussions elsewhere.
Nigeria is of critical importance to United States interests. It is our fifth-largest oil supplier, Africa's second-biggest economy, and, with the world's fourth-largest peacekeeping force, has garnered significant international prestige.
Unfortunately, though, Nigeria's troubles today are as great as its accomplishments. Conflict over oil continues to plague its internal stability. Militias attack oil infrastructure and kidnap foreign nationals. Piracy in the petroleum-rich regions of the Gulf of Guinea rivals that off the coast of Somalia, which has received more international attention.
Religious divides fuel political divides, sparking clashes between the northern part of the country, which is dominated by Muslims, and the southern part, which is mostly Christian.
Compounding this schism is a constitutional crisis. Nigeria's ailing president, a Muslim, has been ill and absent from office for more than a month, yet he refuses to transfer power to the Christian vice president. A transfer from a Muslim to a Christian could inflame tensions across the country, especially given that a Christian president ruled from 1999 to 2007.
Violence, corruption, religious tensions, political instability - these are the building blocks of extremism. If the Christmas attack had succeeded, it could have damaged an already shaky government and led to wide unrest. Besides harming citizens of the United States or other countries, a successful attack with roots in Nigeria could exacerbate the country's internal volatility. In fact, the mere attempt has already increased the chances of a north-south conflict.
It's widely accepted that, to prevent future attacks, we must isolate the systemic technological and procedural failures that allowed the attack to materialize in the first place. What has received less attention - yet is equally vital - is the issue of human failure. No security system can overcome bad judgment.
A little more than a month ago, Umaru Abdulmutallab warned officials at the U.S. embassy in Lagos that his son may have become radicalized. This concerned father was a former foreign minister, the head of the President's Business Support Group, and the chairman of one of the nation's largest banks. In a country where 90 percent of the people live on less than $2 per day, this was no ordinary man.
And in a culture where people take great pride in their identity and how they are viewed by the rest of the world, Abdulmutallab's confession was no ordinary act. In failing to recognize the significance of his statement, our government fell short.
We need a better system for collecting information. In the case of Nigeria, establishing consulates in the areas where the danger of radicalism is greatest - such as the Muslim north and the oil-rich Niger Delta - would help us gather that sort of data.
Equally important, however, is the need to better understand what that data mean. That will require our diplomats to take greater risks by spending more time outside embassy compounds and interacting with local people and power brokers. Such practices would foster the cultural awareness that would allow U.S. officials to identify red flags more easily.
This might not amount to a foolproof method for spotting all threats, but, as the Nigerian case demonstrates, it could make the difference between a terrorist attack and another peaceful Christmas.
Melissa Skorka is the director of the Security Fellowship at the Truman National Security Project in Washington. She can be reached at melissaskorka@gmail.com.
