Tension has ebbed and flowed in the US security relationship with Nigeria, most notably portrayed in Dana Priest's excellent "The Mission", where the Nigerians were all about "give us the guns" while the US was intent on human rights training before anything else.

The Beijing Consensus certainly doesn't work like that. As the Chinese increasingly edge out the US in providing security training, weapons and cash to the Nigerian obligarchy (a process that could be sped up depending on who wins power in the upcoming Nigerian elections), the government's tactics against peaceful protests and violent rebellion alike will edge toward systematic scorched earth tactics which will only worsen the insurgency.

Given the propensity for ethnic cleansing and mass murder on behalf of the government in Nigeria's history, this will not end well and could be the big fissure that helps dismember Nigeria along religious, ethnic and even tribal lines. The chances of US intervention of some sort (whether US soldiers, special ops or private contractors like Blackwater) in Southern Nigeria (just like in Southern Sudan) will rise dramatically once it becomes a resource war shrouded in holy and ethnic terms.