John Campbell: A Failed Envoy on a Sinister Mission, By Philip Agbese

By Philip Agbese 

Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the Council for Foreign Relations and former Ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, prides himself as the expert on Nigeria to the extent that he now leads the posse of the discontented. He is on a mission to finish what he could not achieve during his duty tours of Nigeria, assignments on which he woefully failed whether assessed from the perspective of his overt employer - the United States, covert employer – the discredited Council for Foreign Relations, and even his Nigerian opposition paymasters. Campbell will be adjudged an even worse failure should he be assessed without making allowance for the compromises caused by the aforementioned affiliations.

Wikipedia has it that “The main functions of diplomats are: representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending State; initiation and facilitation of strategic agreements; treaties and conventions; promotion of information; trade and commerce; technology; and friendly relations.”  But who dares apply this to Campbell ambassadorial tenure in Nigeria from 2004 to 2007? In those few numbers of years he did the exact opposite of the expectations one should have of diplomats. 

With the benefit of hindsight, one can now appreciate that while seemingly facilitating relations between Nigeria and the United States, Campbell was apparently running a sideshow for his then covert employer, the Council for Foreign Relations, which many may not know to be a death machine one that is committed to world domination, not by the United States of America as many will think but by a cabal of sociopaths who immorally treat war as a business as opposed to recognizing the human misery that comes with any instance of strife.

The sideshow that Campbell possibly ran for the Council for Foreign Relations has blossomed, fruited, shed fruits and the windfall from this tree of strife are now germinating, growing saplings that threaten to form a forest of chaos in northern Nigeria unless citizens wake up enlightened to the point of rooting out the saplings being watered by human blood and taking an axe to the tree of strife and getting rid of it for good while ensuring that Campbell and his bloodlust is kept out of Nigeria and Nigeria’s affairs and his overlords with him.

Boko Haram’s first major attacks may be the 2011 spate of bombings in Abuja, the killer group’s initial justification for its violence may be the 2009 death in detention of its leader Yusuf Mohammed, but the actual ground work for its ascendancy was done by Campbell, who spent his stay in the country between 2004-2007 to have close contact, enough to build the network that unfurled to become the world’s most murderous group. It appears that while he was busy prepping Boko Haram to kill Nigerians on an industrial scale, he also connected with other Council for Foreign Relations assets to precipitate similar destabilization in the Middle East and North Africa. 

The same period was used to scout for and identify characters who are irredeemably peeved with the country of their birth that they somehow found the shortcut of being the opposition irrespective of who or what political party is in office. This Campbell’s alliance of the disgruntled became the pool from which he is able to constantly recruit detractors that are always ready to criticize government’s efforts at resolving the mess he helped midwifed on behalf of the Council for Foreign Relations. To compound the woes of the country, these disgruntled posse has recruited a new generation, keyboard warriors that hide behind the unanimity of social media, which detaches them from the reality of war and its attendant human suffering, to heap praises on imps like Campbell while bad mouthing the efforts of patriots that lay their lives on the line to clean up the mess created by Godless people like him.

It was on this bases that Campbell pushed around the lie that Nigeria will disintegrate in 2015. He might have made the right moves on his imaginary chessboard – a virulent terror group, an angry opposition, a cohort of national saboteurs operating as activists and leadership that has been compromised to order. But he did not reckon that a President Muhammadu Buhari will emerge neither did he figure that he will appoint military chiefs that will alter the equation he thought he had diligently pored over. With this unexpected turn of events, the 2015 disintegration prediction fades into oblivion with each passing year such that a person that is truly mentally competent would own up to his employers – Council for Foreign Relations – that this is a bad call and that it is time to allow Nigeria enjoy its peace.

Sadly, Campbell has difficulty accepting that he has hit the end of the road in Nigeria and that his mission to the country has ended, in disgrace. He continues to abuse the ubiquity afforded by technology and the internet in a bid to expand the problems he created for Nigeria. The practicality of virtual gatherings promoted as part of the world’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has become for this bloodsucker the new tool to congregate his misguided followers and associate towards stoking fear and blowing the crisis he created out of proportion. For him, the things that have been developed to make human life better must be perverted to manipulate the unwary into becoming recruits for his fledging desperation to create “a new world order” in which targeted countries are turned into wastelands.

A so called town hall meeting to be held virtually, with the sickening tag ‘Insecurity: “State of the State”’ is the latest abuse of online meeting that a desperate Campbell wants to use to exhort his Nigerian assets while seeking out new recruits in the failed mission of making Nigeria a failed state. He is of course being cheered on by an equally discredited news portal, Sahara Reporters, which discerning minds have rechristened “Sahara Disaster”. Other rabble rousers, like the commercial activist, Aisha Yesufu and the country representative of the disruptive Amnesty International are expected on the panel. This further exposed it as nothing but a circuit that is intended to make peace loving Nigerians feel bad about their country. 

It may appear on the surface, as depicted in the e-fliers for the sick show, that John Campbell is a mere guest invited to appear on the show. The reality however is that the organizers are his recruits, selected for their misplaced commitment to sabotage their own country for whatever indoctrination that Campbell has filled their heads with. He has had the benefit of grooming them over the years – paid terrorists that are usually compensated with travel honoraria to attend brainwashing sessions tagged as international conferences, scholarships to take part in radicalization programmes and grants that are in reality financing to undertake activities aimed at undermining Nigeria. So, having been so programmed and mobilized over the years who else will these hapless organizers chose if not Campbell, who has from day one set up things to play out according to his script.

Like the Buhari presidency popped up as a variable that that Campbell never anticipated, another variable that will do him in is time. Even when the present crop of leaders is done safeguarding the interest of the country from carrion eaters like Campbell, the successor generations will build on the legacy of today such that the former US Ambassador to Nigeria will never have his wish of seeing Nigeria destroyed. Whether it is senility that takes him or the inevitable death,  the last memories John Campbell will have of Nigeria is that of the country where he failed, failed and wasted his entire lifetime.

Agbese is a human rights activist and publisher based in the UK.