Article Link: https://apnews.com/article/nigeria-seized-assets-6db5b1b33c9eadca4322bbc5ad4f4897
The United States is said to return 52.8 Million dollars worth of seized assets that are linked to Nigeria’s former oil minister, Alison-Madueke as british officals had acused her of corruption. She was Nigeria’s oil minister from 2010-2015 and was said to have stolen 20 billion dollars worth of oil money according to the central bank. The United States had seized superyachts and mansions during her trial. The United States is now just releasing the assets back to Nigeria with 50 million going to help rural electification programs in Nigeria and 2.88 million will be given to the International Institute for Justice to support rule of law and counterterrorism operations.
The article is important as being a poor country with a massive population and having 20 billion dollars stolen is massive as it’s such a large part of their economy. Returning some of the money will help relations with Nigeria as the US will be on Nigeria’s governments side. Not only will it help relations, the returned money will help advance the country and maybe on day in the future it will become a global power or atleast a more prominent country compared to now. It will also help as millions of dollars are going to help counterterrorism, this will help control terrorism that affects everyone in the region and the world.
Both the US and Nigeria are going to continue to support eachother as they both seek cooperation between countries but also allies. The US is trying to make allies throughout africa as China is doing the same by funding projects. This will help the US government to stay in connections and keep good relations with Nigeria. The world system being uni-polar currently we will want to maintain that but keeping allies with countries and preventing China or any other country from changing it to multi-polar system. With the money going to couterterrorism is major as terrorist constanly seek to disrupt order and peace in the world system. Many seek to maintain a nation of their own and many are stateless or share it with a different state. National security if very important for nations especially a large and developed nation like the US which is most likely why we dedicated a portion for countering terorrism. Terrorist groups are major security issues to every nation in the world.