In the last few weeks Washington
DC through its head raised the volume on Nigeria. While this latest outburst fluctuate between a demarche and a carrot-and-stick missive,
its hegemonic character is undeniably patterned with foreign geopolitical footprints
known for more than a century. Therefore our focus is to interpret these
presidential swipes based on long durée historical evidence and geopolitical
precedents in Africa. Implicit signals are beyond our scope.
Death Incorporated
After 2011 Libya’s public execution, Africa’s independence reversed totally for another phase of critical imagination. It is unclear whether the pregnant message of that ominous violation still resonate across African capitals including Abuja. Foreign-induced instability in Africa is a big business which only the richest countries have the resources to invest in. Relevant investment continued apace since the fall of USSR in 1991. Deeply weakened in quality and substance, colonial powers transform in relevance with emergent fiefdoms to assume roles of remora on the skin of their preferred shark to destabilise Africa.
Apparently this is Scramble for Africa 2.0 pivoted on the evidence that flag-independence stagnated as expected devoid of aspirations for genuine independence and real sovereignty. Nkrumah saw it in the beginning! As the central continent with the biggest reserves of most minerals, internal divisions from machinations of its dictatorship of compromised elite consolidate seamlessly for advancing foreign geostrategic designs on the blood of Africans in millions.
The last decade brutally showcase
this pattern in many countries. Ethiopia, Central Africa, DR Congo, Mali,
Mozambique and currently Sudan. Merchants of death move to cut African veins in one country at a time with industrial panache couched in superiority of weapons with minimum friction
in the Sahel, deserts and forests. In the mentioned countries and more only one
power and its proxies calibrate and implement regressive geopolitical policies
aided by each country’s neocolonial dictatorship of compromised elite. Nothing
for the people, all for the hegemon in the celebration of disunited Africa! This is the story of at least a century of
Africa’s lived experience. Independence never came.
Intergenerational Deafness
Sudanese current conflagration is
very poignant given huge blood invested by resistance ancestors against the
British. Tens of thousands dead in the 1898 battle of Omdurman seem to have
faded into soundless irrelevance. 1956 flag-independence eviscerated the
elite's faculty of reason and dissolved their foresight licensing them to energise infighting
through counter-productive battles across the decades. For one, Jaafar El Nimeiry
pilfered precious capabilities on ill-fated policies that entrenched internal divisions.
Strategic blindness and long-term deafness offered compromised elite keys to
deepen destabilisation resulting to its current miserable partitioned state.
More partition maybe on the horizon. Imagine a line from Khartoum to Abuja,
then another from Khartoum to Dakar.
For Nigeria it is more than intergenerational deafness rather an integration of blunder and knowledge crisis in its dictatorship of compromised elite glued to religious commitment to 1914. For confusion and against the laws of history they hung their strategic epistemological posture on Britain turbocharged to the US 1967 - 1970. An average person in Nigeria with a few years in formal learning carry this infection. Nigeria can hardly be rated as a genuine power in the comity of nations but its security in the basket of potentials is guaranteed.
Peruse these events and draw
relevant conclusions. Jaja of Opobo was abducted and exiled in 1887. In 1897
Benin kingdom was invaded with the population massacred and Oba Ovonramwen
exiled. Sultan Attahiru of Sokoto and his 500+ followers were executed in
1903. In 1929 women in Aba were executed in cold blood. Do these histories ring
meaning to ordinary persons and the elite in Nigeria? Is unity in victimhood difficult to grasp? Is history and geography
recognised as the dual engines that validate politics? Who are the offenders in
these cases? One party, the British. Is there statute of limitation on memory?
This trenchant view of history
and geography congealed powerfully on Nigeria’s compromised elite whose
legitimacy rest solely on their uncritical collaboration with the same merchant
of death. They were never responsible leaders irrespective of appearances,
nationality, religion and attainment. The perfect examples were Nnamdi Azikiwe,
Obafemi Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello. These men were closest to each other in
principle and kinetics as reactionaries, operational-minded, motivated by
self-interest and found people dispensable. With this triumvirate Nigeria was
doomed in advance as Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu asserted in Because I
am Involved.
The geopolitical and geostrategic
implications of their blunders placed the country’s future under Washington DC
with London sub-contracted as the fulltime superintendent. Even post Nigeria-Biafra war
opportunities for learning from history were squandered. The past 5 decades only
confirmed the obvious. It is now a ‘law’ that presidential candidates in
national elections must campaign in London’s Chatham House, the heart of
British foreign and geopolitical policies. A perfect handover from colonial policy
iterations and Frederick Lugard's strategy!
Possibilities can be discerned in view of neighbouring AES countries currently undergoing birth pains of true independence. This falls within the broad strategy for humbling Africa's geopolitical agency following the French sudden retirement from the West African chessboard. Abuja and Abidjan are the low hanging fruits to compromise the growing regional momentum. On another hand, Mr Tinubu's US legal wranglings may have opened a spot for the US State Department to move a timely foreign policy opportunity.
In the end
Historical amnesia is a deadly
poison while the avoidance of geography on strategic issues opens an entity to
a thousand cuts. This is the lens for appreciating Nigeria’s position. US
doesn’t see Nigeria as a credible power rather as a relevant entity for profit
extraction. A common policy for Africa with peculiar adjustment afforded by time! Despite Washington DC great power uncertainty, Abuja is too distracted and weakened (by elite destruction) to offer its population assurance where it is most needed. One way or another,
Abuja will concede and oblige in secret. Platitudes by government personnel lack
currency given that the small prints of Nigeria’s actual capability were
clearly interpreted in advance.
Most importantly, the peoples in Nigeria have long been caught between hegemonic designs and the consequences from the dictatorship of compromised elite. In the turbulence of global geopolitical reconfigurations, these long-suffering peoples have the sole authority to clarify if they have a country. Is partition looming? The signs and faultlines are getting fatter. However, this will not be the last demarche to Abuja from the hegemon of the west.
