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Nigeria pays N2b yearly to lobby U.S. – Report
•Zimbabwe, Angola, Gabon also named
‘Regard U.S. security report as a challenge’ – A4
By Habib Aruna
Asst Politics Editor, Lagos
Nigeria alone spends more than N2 billion yearly to woo senior United States officials, one of the top spenders among African nations which pay millions of dollars to lobbyists in hopes of influencing Washington’s policy.
This emerged in U.S. Government files, collated in a report by Inter Press Service.
It said oil-producing nations especially, Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea, pay the biggest fees by far.
Others, especially those with which Washington has difficult relations, are not holding back the cash. Prominent among them are Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, and Cote d'Ivoire.
Some act through private individuals or companies who have contracts with U.S. lobbyists, according to disclosure statements which lobbyists are required to file under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
The FARA requires individuals who engage in lobbying on behalf of foreign entities to register with the U.S. Government and file semi-annual reports on their activities.
These filings are public information and are kept with the Justice Department. The record showed that oil-producers are the current big spenders.
Nigeria, known for spending a lot of cash around numerous high-priced lobbyists during military rule, apparently has since decided on one major representative, GoodWorks International.
The firm's chairman, Andrew Young, served as President Jimmy Carter's United Nations Ambassador and later as Mayor of Atlanta. Besides his position at GoodWorks, Young acts as President of the National Council of Churches.
''GoodWorks can work to reverse Nigeria's negative image through effective representation of Nigeria's interests in the U.S.”, said the firm's contract filed last August.
It stated that GoodWorks, based in Atlanta and with no Washington office, is to receive $500,000 as an initial retainer and $60,000 as ''monthly retainers'' thereafter, ''not to exceed a total of $1,500,000 for the first year of service only”.
Gabon, another oil producer, has gone through more than a half a dozen lobbying firms in recent years.
Most of them, like Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson & Hand, and Powell Tate, have been politically very well connected to both major U.S. parties. Costs have been well over a million dollars a year, or an average of about $250,000 per agency.
Gabon has also maintained a three-year-old relationship with Jacqueline Wilson, the ex-spouse of a senior U.S. diplomat.
Wilson, according to her filings, receives tens of thousands of dollars for special projects and reports to President Omar Bongo's daughter, Pascaline Mferri Bongo.
In addition to providing President Robert Mugabe's government with the sort of strategic and other advice it normally offers clients, the contract says Cohen & Woods will ''counter anti-Zimbabwe content in the international media'' and assist the government with its own channel ''in disseminating appropriate news and information about political and economic developments in Zimbabwe”.
Other African countries that spend huge sums of money named in the report include Angola, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Uganda | 
