The Importance of Africa to The World System After 9/11 Attacks: War on Terrorism or Integration for Sustainable Development

4.4 How has the security reality of the Gulf of Guinea influence politics that is what are the political implications locally and internationally since 9/11 attacks?

This question seek to know what the social consequences of security in the gulf of guinea means to the US, EU, China and India, and Africa as a whole, what has change and how does the changes affects politics, economics, security and socio-cultural domain within societies, such as a shift in the US security doctrine, the conditionality in EU aid and trade agreement with the ACP countries, Chinese interests.

4.4.1. Internally it has led to the mobilization of governments with increasing pressures of civil disobedience and strikes within countries with an unprecedented increase in the prizes of basic necessity doubled. This implies that governments such as of Nigeria will now be forced to act rapidly if it is to contain its own security concerns and also retain its dominance of the Gulf of Guinea, for example the Nigerian National Security Advisor during the Obasanjo Administration Lt. Gen. Aliyu M. Gusau, presently back in that role, drafted the framework for a Gulf of Guinea Commission to begin developing offshore security modalities from the immediate Gulf of Guinea region down to South Africa(ibid: Oilprice.com 2010). In Cameroon, what was sold for a hundred francs CFAF for example in Cameroon is now sold for two hundred francs CFAF, as was commonly felt by all the countries of the sub region and that almost crippled the economy. The sharp increase in the value added taxes that had to be shifted on to the consumers of bread in the form of increase prizes was the oil wealth that has brought endemic conflict in all the countries gulf of guinea. The real ‘’curse oil’’ is not political or military instability but economic degradation. According to (Ghazvinian 2007:95-6), when an oil bonanza is discovered in a struggling African country like the bulk of the countries of the gulf of guinea, the instinctive assumption is that, it can only be a good thing, that it will result in the rapid improvement in the lives of the people; that suddenly there will be money for hospitals and vaccines and schools and roads, that everyone will be rich.

To the contrary, however, studies suggest that real GDP and the population standard of living always decline where oil is discovered. Between 19970-1993 for example, countries without oil saw their economies grow four times faster than those of countries with oil. This paradox he explain using the period following WW II, when the explosion in the global demand for oil began delivering petrodollars to the economy of otherwise obscure and underdeveloped countries that just happened to be blessed with large hydrocarbon deposits. From Mexico city to Bagdad to Carracas, great cities were built or rebuilt from scratch, some with towers. But as time went on, it became increasingly clear that the much celebrated oil wealth brought economic stagnation to which Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso described as the ‘’devil’s excrement’’ (ibid). According to (The Editorial Department of oilprice.com 2010) statistics derived from the World Bank GIS/Defence and Foreign Affairs Archives, on security concern of the Gulf of Guinea, shows that countries devote relatively little of their GDP to defence.