Cash money makes things happen. That’s an expression taken from the Urban Dictionary, but it might also be the hope of Atiku Abubakar, candidate for president of Nigeria with the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, which just hired Donald Trump’s lobbying firm at an astronomical price.
The Florida-based firm is led by Brian Ballard of Ballard Partners, a veteran Florida lobbyist who raised money for Trump’s campaign and inauguration. His firm will earn $90,000 monthly for its services, “plus the reasonable costs associated with the representation, including but not limited to, necessary registration fees and travel expenses.”
Abubakar was Nigeria’s vice president from 1999 to 2007 and a former ally of current president Muhammadu Buhari. Elections are scheduled for 2019.
Although politicians can raise huge sums to boost their chances at the ballot box, Nigeria has just overtaken India in extreme poverty, based on a projection by the World Poverty Clock and compiled by the Brookings Institute.
An estimated 87 million Nigerians, or approximately half of the country’s population, are thought to be living on less than $1.90 a day. The average yearly salary in Nigeria is $3,596, with a maximum of $27,320 and a minimum of $202.
The largest oil producer in Africa, Nigeria still fails to translate its resource wealth into rising living standards, according to CNN in a recent feature story.
According to a published copy of the contract, Ballard Partners will advocate for the client before the U.S. government, including, but not limited to, enhancement of US-Nigerian relations; strengthening and advancing democratic values and the rule of law in Nigeria, with a special focus in the coming months on maintaining political and security conditions free of intimidation and interference to ensure the success and fairness of Nigeria’s national election for president in 2019.
Ballard is closer to the U.S. president than perhaps any other lobbyist in town, writes the online news site Politico.
“I’m proud of our association with the administration,” Ballard told USA Today. “But we strive diligently to prove our worth based on merits, not on who did what during the campaign. That’s in the past.”
It’s not the first time that pricy U.S. lobbyists have been hired in Nigeria. In 2014 Nigeria’s ruling party, All Progressives Congress, hired Chicago-based AKPD Media, a firm founded by David Axelrod that also worked for former president Barrack Obama, to help in the 2015 election.
MAURITANIA ORDERED TO END FORCED LABOR OR LOSE TRADE BENEFITS
(GIN)—Forced labor tolerated by the Mauritanian government was called a decisive factor in the U.S. decision this week to end favored nation trade status for the country as of Jan. 1.
“Forced or compulsory labor practices like hereditary slavery have no place in the 21st century,” said Deputy U.S. Trade Representative C.J. Mahoney. “This action underscores this administration’s commitment to ending modern slavery and enforcing labor provisions in our trade laws and trade agreements.
“We hope Mauritania will work with us to eradicate forced labor and hereditary slavery so that its eligibility in the African Growth and Opportunity Act may be restored in the future.”
President Donald Trump, according to a press release from the executive office, had determined that Mauritania was not making sufficient progress toward establishing the protection of internationally recognized worker rights.
It went without saying that such criticisms from the U.S. were least expected from a nation built on slavery, challenged over voting rights and currently dismantling the rights of workers to unionize for safe working conditions and for freedom from discrimination, among others.
At a public hearing last August, a representative of the AFL-CIO federation of unions in the U.S. affirmed that Mauritania was in violation of established worker rights to association and to bargain collectively. A ruling by the African Union earlier this year found that anti-slavery laws were not enforced and slave owners received lenient sentences for violating human rights.
Mauritanian government spokesman Mohamed Ould Maham called the decision by President Trump “a betrayal of the friendly relations between our countries and a denial of our efforts” to roll back slavery practices.
The West African nation insists the country is no longer home to slavery, but to “the vestiges of slavery,” including poverty, social and economic exclusion and unequal access to education for members of the country’s former slave class, known as Haratin.
An estimated 90,000 people in the country of approximately 4.3 million still live in modern slavery conditions.
Haratins are the largest minority group in Mauritania and among the most economically and politically marginalized, according to the Underrepresented Nations & Peoples Organization.
Public comments and hearing testimony related to the eligibility review are available online at www.regulations.gov under docket number USTR-2018-022.