In other words, bribing officials with massive amounts of cash may have been the only way to due business in Nigeria at that point. Again I'm not condoning it, it's just doesn't surprise me. And I know the Swiss banks recently came to some sort of agreement on some of the Abacha money kept there, a portion of which directly or indirectly came from the LNG money referenced in this story/diary.
What's far more interesting to me is that the current leader of Nigeria, Olesegun Obasanjo, is a "born again" Christian who is on remarkably good terms with the White House... and I know that Nigeria is busy working on a pipeline for W. Africa as well as integrating itself in the expanded version of the Pan Sahel Initiative, the Bushies' W. African "anti-terror" program.
There's a lot of geopolitically significant stuff going on in W. Africa today because of all that oil that's being found or at least assumed to exist, and while the papers written for westerners (read: white people) largely ignore it, it's quite extensive. I see even poor old Chad, the country screwing up the Darfur talks, has gotten a nice chunk of money from the U.S. and they can't get their oil to market without going through Nigeria...
And if the UN ever gets around to adding an African member on the Security Council, you can be sure Nigeria will be on it.
Bush and Olesanjo yukking it up
Pax Night and day you can find me Flogging the Simian
But yes, there is a lot of geopolitical activity in that region. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Not to mention that the offshore waters in the Gulf of Guinea have major deposits...
So Jerome, that LNG pipeline they're talking about will go to Benin, Mali and Burkina Faso or am I misremembering that one too?
