The story of the Trojan horse has long been part of folklore. Its various versions have one thing in common: After 10 years of unsuccessful siege of the fortress city of Troy, the Greeks came up with a ploy. They built a large wooden horse, pretended to give up on the siege and left the horse for the Trojans as peace offering.
Unbeknown to the Trojans, the Greeks had a few of their elite soldiers ensconced in the horse. At night, they crawled out, opened the city’s gate, and signaled to the retreated Greek soldiers to storm and ravage the city. Thence came the saying, Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.
By selling Super Tucano attack jets to Nigeria, the United States certainly has no intent to overrun Nigeria. But the conditions of the sale are so advantageous to the United States and problematic for Nigeria that it is apt to characterise it as a Trojan horse.
To begin with, there is the $500 million price tag for the 12 jets, an “inexplicably high cost,” as Nigerian historian Max Siollun described it in a blog for the US magazine Foreign Policy. According to FlightGlobal, an aviation industry online information service, the average cost of the Embraer-built jet fighter is $10 million per plane, depending on specifications.
As recently as October 2017, the US government ordered six additional Super Tucanos for the Afghan air force at the cost of $18 million each. However, the total purchase contract was in the amount of$174 million “and includes long lead parts, maintenance spares and cost of ferrying the aircraft,” according to FlightGlobal. This comes to $29 million per jet.
Even this bloated price is still dwarfed by the $41.7 million price tag for each of the 12 jets sold to Nigeria. What could account for the 43 percent price difference? Performance specifications? Not likely. It is improbable that the United States would provide less capability for the dangerous Afghan theatre. Pending a public explanation, the operative word has to remain inexplicable.
And then there is the stringent conditions of the sale. All servicing of the jets is to be done by U.S. personnel. Nigerian aviation engineers are barred from examining the plane’s structural components or to service it. And, of course, they are not to be trained for these purposes. In effect, the United States sold the jets but maintains control. So, if the mercurial President Donald Trump gets up on the wrong side of the bed on any given morning, he could tweet that the jets should be grounded.
Were the Super Tucano a top-of-the-line jet fighter, the conditions would be understandable.
But the grandiosely named aircraft is a low-level jet that is nowhere close to the sophistication of the F-15, F-16s and the F/A-18 Hornets. It is a Brazilian-developed turboprop aircraft that looks much like World War II-era fighter planes. It is used primarily for air force training, surveillance and close combat support where there’s minimal danger of anti-aircraft fire.
It was widely deployed in the anti-insurgency battles in Afghanistan, and according to reports, it turned the tide against the Taliban. In Nigeria, it would have been much more useful when Boko Haram occupied vast territories of land and engaged in conventional warfare. Now that they have reverted to their original guerilla tactic, abductions and suicide bombing, there isn’t much that the Super Tucano can do about them.
Therefore, the usefulness of the planes at this time would have been preparation for the future. That the terms of sale hamstring Nigeria in the development of technical expertise limits even this forward-looking benefit.
Moreover, the terms of the sale are another indication of where the United States ranks Nigeria in the hierarchy of esteem. One of the reasons Trump invited President Muhammadu Buhari to the White House in April was to blunt the perception that his rodent hole characterization of Africa shows disdain for Africans. Yet, the terms of the sale of the jets doesn’t help in disabusing people of the perception.
The United States sells much more sophisticated jet fighters to other countries, including India, Israel, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and South Korea. Sometimes, the sales come with understandable restrictions given the sophistication of the jets. Sometimes, it doesn’t. For example, Israel — America’s super client-state — has the free hand to modify jets to suit its needs. Yet Nigerians are barred from learning about the workings of a low-level jet.
The Super Tucano jets are due for delivery to Nigeria in 2020. By then Buhari would either be in his second term or out of office. In either case, his purchase of the jets is likely to be an albatross on his administration. Whereas he expected his visit to the White House to give him a pre-election boost in stature, he is already finding that it is an image blight.
For someone who came to office railing against squander of funds for the purchase of arms against Boko Haram, he will have to explain why he has committed Nigeria to paying $41.7 million for jets that elsewhere sell for $29 million at a premium. He will also explain why he overrode his own Minister of Defence, Brig. Gen. Mansur Dan-Ali (ret’d), and accepted the stringent terms of sale.
And then there is his circumventing of the normal procurement process through the approval of the National Assembly. For a president who professes law and order, that is another inexplicable dimension to the Super Tucano purchase. And when the exorbitant cost is added to the circumvention of the procurement process, it is understandable that people are wondering whether there was some quid pro quo. With the legislature threatening to impeach the president, he certainly has a lot of explaining to do.
In any case, in Trump timeline, 2020 is still a long way from now. Anything can happen. All it will take is one tweet by him and the whole deal will unravel. And if Buhari is not re-elected, Nigeria’s next administration could well do what Trump is wont to do: abandon the deal and/or ask that it be renegotiated.
The question for now is how much of a Trojan horse are the Super Tucanos to Nigeria and specifically to Buhari?
(Punch)
