Reviving ‘half-forgotten friendship’ with Nigeria is in UK’S interest, says Johnson

I saw first-hand the country’s boundless potential, which could be released with our aid

THE UK must revive “half-forgotten friendships” with countries like Nigeria after Brexit, Boris Johnson says today, as he calls on Britons to be “proud” of the work the Government is doing to rid the nation of terrorism.

Writing in The Telegraph, the Foreign Secretary defends aid spending in the country and calls on people not to be cynical about the way British taxpayers’ money is spent, citing the vast opportunity to export and trade with Nigeria.

He also claims helping to eradicate terror groups is in the “national British self-interest”, highlighting concerns about the number of migrants from the region moving to the UK and other European nations to live and work.

Mr Johnson says: “You may ask yourself why are we so keen to partner with Nigeria, and to help and invest in Nigeria, and to build up our trading links, when there are so many other immediate calls on the public purse.

“Even if you do not accept the moral imperative to help – as I do – there is the simple argument from national British self-interest.

“There is already stupendous wealth among the ‘ogas’ or business moguls of Lagos,” he writes, “and it was not long ago, before the fall in commodity prices, that the city was the world’s biggest urban consumer of vintage champagne.

“It will not be long before the Nigerian middle class is bigger than the UK population. This is the powerhouse of the African economy.

“Now is the time to strengthen those links with Nigeria, with new trade deals and new projects. That process, of reinventing half-forgotten friendships, for mutual benefit, will be one of the joys of the Global Britain project.”

As I raised my glass of Nigerian Guinness and glugged the dusky nectar, I could almost feel the indignation of the British taxpayer. There I was in Lagos – that great jump-jiving megacity – and I was having about as much fun as a man can decently have.

First they took me to the historic Diageo-owned Guinness brewery, built in 1962 and the only such brewery outside the British Isles. I don’t know if you have tried Nigerian Guinness – brewed with the crystal water of a Lagos borehole – but it is 7.3 per cent ABV. Drink deep of this black potion, they say, and you are hooked for life.

Then I met some of the leading female stars of Nollywood – the colossal Nigerian film industry – and posed with them for photos. “You can be loverboy,” said one Junoesque actress in tones that no man could refuse.

To complete the James Bond feel of the day, I was allowed to skipper a fast patrol boat on the brown waters of the lagoon, slap-slap-slapping over the waves on the hunt for pirates. You may have seen the photo that appeared in yesterday’s paper; and you may have asked yourself, in the words of Talking Heads, what is he doing there; and you may ask yourself – why are the British military tackling pirates off west Africa?

And you may ask yourself why are we so keen to partner with Nigeria, and to help and invest in Nigeria, and to build up our trading links with Nigeria, when there are so many other immediate calls on the public purse?

Do you have such spasms of cynicism, when you see public servants enjoying themselves overseas?

If so, let me take you to a hospital ward in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Maiduguri. On Wednesday, the Development Secretary Priti Patel and I became the first Western politicians to go there since it was almost lost to the nihilistic terrorists of Boko Haram in 2014.

Though the town itself is now thought to be safe enough, the maniacs infest the scrub and forest of the surrounding countryside; still shooting, still bombing – often coaxing girls as young as 10 or 11 to put on a suicide vest, cruelly deceiving them about what will happen when they activate the charge.

The popular fear-levels are still so high that two million people are displaced in an area considerably larger than Wales. The burnt-out villages are still deserted; the refugee camps are still vast and unsanitary and every week the mutilated victims are taken to the hospital wards.

We talked to an old boy – a “baba” – shot by an AK47 bullet that somehow entered his jaw and exited his shoulder. “Who did it?” we asked. “Boko Haram,” he gasped.

We talked to a young mother, her leg in a cast from a bomb blast, her naked baby clinging to her back.

Most moving of all was a young man called Anwal, 26, whose left arm had been blown off at the shoulder. He spoke with a courage and wisdom that was almost unbearable. He wanted only two things, he said: to be able to go back into full-time university education, and for the government of Nigeria to begin a dialogue with Boko Haram.

That objective, alas, is proving agonisingly hard. This is a 3,000-strong group with an ideology that is almost dementedly negative. They seem to reject all Western culture and civilisation (“boko” is a corruption of “book” and “haram” means forbidden); but it is not easy to say what they are for.

They seem to have no political agenda – except the sick thrill of shooting and killing. It would simply not be true to say – as the Nigerian military have sometimes claimed – that they have been defeated. But they have been certainly pushed back. Their territory or “caliphate” has been very substantially reduced.

I believe you would be very proud to see the help Britain is giving, every day, not just in funding medical treatment but in helping those brave Nigerians in their struggle.

We met British military personnel who have helped to train 28,000 Nigerian troops. We saw how British aid is being used to bring hundreds of infants back from the brink of death. It is very shocking to hold an 18-monthold baby and see that his arms are as wizened and bony as an 80-year-old’s.

Even if you do not accept the moral imperative to help – as I do – there is the simple argument from national British self-interest. For all sorts of good reasons, we need a Nigeria that is strong, and stable, and economically successful.

Look at these tracts of ungoverned space created by Boko Haram, and you see the same pustulent phenomenon that has erupted on the face of Iraq, Syria and Libya: an ecosystem of terror – part of a mutually contaminating network that exports arms and money and jihadis, and which is all in the grip of the same hate-filled ideology. The horrors of Boko Haram are connected with the chaos in Mali and Niger, and the anarchy in large parts of Libya

– and all of it helping to drive the migration crisis that has affected western Europe.

Nigeria is currently stuck in a vicious circle: the peril of Boko Haram has compounded the fall in the oil price to damage the country’s economic prosperity; and without strong economic growth – spread between the south and the traditionally less-favoured north – there is less chance of tackling the poverty and alienation that are the root causes of Boko Haram.

But if this extraordinary country can get out of this trap, with British help, then the potential of Nigeria is boundless.

There is already stupendous wealth among the “ogas” or business moguls of Lagos. It will not be long before the Nigerian middle class is bigger than the UK population. This is the powerhouse of the African economy, vying with South Africa for the number one spot.

We met entrepreneurs of all kinds: in tech, banking, fashion, and a woman who had invented a revolutionary fishcake that lasts six months on the shelf. All of them were yearning for British partners and investment. And it was easy to see how Nigeria – set to be 400 million people by 2050 – could be a truly vast market for British goods and services.

Lagos is a megacity of 22 million; but the roads are paralysed without a tube network – a gaping opportunity for British construction firms and consultants in a country where many of the elite have already used a Transport for London Oystercard. The opportunity is there because the links are there.

That Guinness brewery already exports its version of the black stuff to Britain, where it is lapped up by the 180,000 Nigerians in this country; and Diageo sells vast quantities of scotch and gin in return.

Now is the time to strengthen those links with Nigeria, with new trade deals and new projects.

That process, of reinventing half-forgotten friendships, for mutual benefit, will be one of the joys of the Global Britain project.

Boris Johnson is the Foreign Secretary read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion