By Dionne Searcey March 31,

2019 ABUJA, Nigeria — When a
Nigerian presidential candidate landed in the United States in January after years of being subject to a visa ban because of corruption allegations, he
had a team of Western consultants and lobbyists to
thank for the warm American welcome.

One of those who helped was Riva Levinson, who was mentored in the art of political consulting by Paul Manafort, the former chairman of President Trump’s presidential campaign, sentenced this month to more than seven years in prison for a host of crimes.

Ms. Levinson, who now has her own firm, KRL International, is among the many American political consultants with ties to President Trump who have become regular fixtures in
African political campaigns,
seizing on the region’s turn
toward democracy.

For decades, countries in sub-Saharan Africa changed governments through coups that left military juntas in
charge. But increasingly, in
places like Nigeria, elections are supposed to determine the will of the people, though sometimes they are not fully free and fair.

Yet as elections become more common and competitive — complete with polling and social media campaigns — African candidates are hiring Western firms to sway voters and influence the media coverage of their candidacies.

Consultants with perceived ties to Mr. Trump are especially valued by their political clients, even in countries that he disparaged with a vulgar phrase, and which are largely off his administration’s foreign policy radar.

From the sidelines at a
recent election event in
Nigeria, Ms. Levinson
reminisced about the old
days when Mr. Manafort
would dispatch her across the globe to enlist unsavory
leaders and help them clean
up their international
reputations, for a hefty fee.

“Paul was a master
strategist. He could hover
above at 30,000 feet and
see how all of the moving
parts fit together, and then
move each one with precision,” she recalled.

“I learned that from him, and
he gave me a front-row seat
to watch history. I’m grateful to him for this.” Ms. Levinson was in Nigeria to help the opposition party in the country’s recent election.

The party’s presidential candidate was Atiku Abubakar, and her client was a powerful
Nigerian senator who was
managing Mr. Abubakar’s
campaign.

Mr. Abubakar lost. But
during the campaign, Ms.
Levinson and a team of
other American lobbyists
and consultants with ties to
Mr. Trump helped their client secure meetings with legislators and with powerful American
lobbying groups. He stayed
at the Trump International
Hotel, a five-star hotel near the White House.

Those small victories, in
which Mr. Abubakar won
access to Washington power centers, were impressive for a candidate who was named as a prime example of overseas
corruption by a United States Senate subcommittee in 2010. Its report said that he had funneled tens of millions of
dollars worth of Nigerian
oil revenues into foreign
shell accounts. Mr. Abubakar has never been prosecuted, but for years he was prevented from traveling to the United States.

“These firms help candidates launder their image in Washington, London and New York, shifting outside attention away from the bare-knuckle reality of their election campaigns,” said Matthew T. Page, a former State Department official who is now an associate fellow in the Africa program of Chatham House, a British research group.


They also seek to manipulate the election narrative by planting press stories or neutralizing negative narratives on social media,” Mr. Page said. In Nigeria, the opposition party also tapped another consulting firm, Ballard Partners, to help facilitate meetings for Mr. Abubakar on Capitol Hill as part of a $90,000 a month contract.
Brian D. Ballard, the firm’s
owner, was a top fund-
raiser in the Trump campaign.

Ms. Levinson accompanied
Mr. Abubakar to many of
his meetings in Washington, and Holland & Knight, an American law firm, lobbied the State Department to secure his
visa. Scott D. Mason, a
former aid to Mr. Trump,
led the law firm’s effort,
according to filings.

Some Western firms are trying to exploit the Trump administration’s concerns
that China is surpassing
America’s influence on the
continent, and are marketing their African clients as solutions. Mr. Ballard’s firm says it is adding consultants with ties to Africa, betting that it will win more clients as the Trump administration tries to counteract China, which has offered billions of dollars in infrastructure gifts and loans to governments across the mineral-rich continent to gain a foothold. “It is undeniably in America’s interest to combat China’s growing geopolitical influence in Africa,” said James Rubin, who is in charge of international affairs at Ballard Partners and was an assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/31/world/africa/africa-trump-manafort-political-consultants.html

what's all this stories all about

Atiku Abubarka was/is a bad market, only appreciated by the equally useless and brainless ipob pigs.