Category: Dayo Sobowale

It may seem incongruous, but I see a challenge similar to the one the civilised world is facing over Russia’s President Vladmir Putin’s annexation of Crimea by force, in the threat by no less a person than the revered Lamido of Adamawa, a traditional ruler in Nigeria to pull his people out of Nigeria, if representatives of the Nigerian president at the ongoing National Conference in Abuja do not behave with decorum. The Lamido angrily told the NC that there is a state called Adamawa in Cameroun and he can conveniently take his people there. Obviously the Lamido was indignant over something but his proposed solution reduced the entire matter to a laughable absurdity. Both actions and utterances of the Russian president and the Adamawa monarch involve potential and real threat on sovereignty and borders, the stark difference being that even the Adamawa monarch knows he cannot take himself seriously, as he has no locus or capability to implement his threat. Whereas, the Russian president not only first flew a kite over the invasion of Crimea but the kite is still very much in the air despite US and EU punitive sanctions of key Russian officials close to the Russian president. Which in my view is really getting very personal with diplomacy in the new Cold War politics of the modern era that the Ukraine Crisis has unleashed. Three pictures that I saw recently and the saga of missing funds that our legislators are discovering at either House or Senate Sub Committee sittings in Abuja, attract my attention this week. The pictures are first that of the Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan with the Pope at the Vatican. The second is that of the Nigerian president again in the midst of delegates to the 2014 summit on global Nuclear Security. The third was the CNN showing the arrival of the American president Barak Obama at the Vatican on a visit to the Catholic Pontiff. Today I want to speculate on these visits and pictures as well as the personalities involved; what they discussed and conclude how seriously they can be taken on such issues, in the context of how one can take Putin or the Adamawa king seriously over their recent actions and utterances on annexation and secession. Equally I will adapt the Lamido/Putin appraisal on relevance and capability on territorial borders to the case of the missing funds going on at the Legislature in Abuja. First, let us imagine what the Pope and President Goodluck Jonathan could have discussed. This is because they have a common ground on gay marriages and the global fight against terrorism. Both gentlemen and the nations they represent are against gay marriages and gay rights implacably. On terrorism they are in tandem as the Nigerian government recently released figures showing that over 3.5m Nigerians have been displaced by Boko Haram in the North East of the country where churches and mosques have been burned with impunity in recent times. Indeed during the last Xmas Prayer at the Basilica in Rome, Nigeria was one of the few nations mentioned for special delivery by the Catholic Pope. But the Pope also is from the slums of Buenos Aires and would ask the Nigerian president what he has done on poverty alleviation in his nation. This is because Nigeria is one of the most corrupt nations on earth and the Nigerian president knows this and would not lie on this. Surely our president must have asked for special redemption prayers on his inadequacy on this front, while asking for special delivery and victory on his yet undeclared 2015 presidential ambitions. How the Pope, who this week sacked a bishop from Germany, the nation of his predecessor over a lavish lifestyle and private pastoral renovations expenses over 40m dollars, will be disposed to pray for this ambition is better imagined than stated here. So on culture and gay marriages the Nigerian leader was like Putin while he sounded more like the Lamido on terrorism and poverty alleviation. In the global nuclear security picture, the Nigerian president looked like fish out of water as he was the only black man in his usual attire. Really, since the summit was on nuclear security, I wonder what Nigeria was doing there as we are not a nuclear power and are not likely to be one in the foreseeable future. Indeed we used to be the regional military global power in West Africa or ECOWAS when we looked after Liberia and Sierra Leone. In recent times however it is France, a former colonial power playing that role in Africa. They did it in Ivory Coast to install President Ouattara and they have done it in Mali to save the Mali nation and people from Islamist invaders fleeing from Libya. In Mali French President Francois Hollande acted decisively while Nigeria and ECOWAS were still busy pussy footing on logistics to save that nation. This explains why he was a special guest of honor at our Centenary Celebrations pledging French support for Nigeria in its fight against the terrorism of Boko Haram. Obviously the Nigerian president needs to go to France on a summit to learn on how to subdue Sahel Islamist terrorists like Boko Haram and not a global nuclear security summit which has no relevance or immediate benefit for Nigeria. Definitely the Nigerian president was like the Lamido on this nuclear summit trip. The Obama /Pope picture too could start tongues wagging on several fronts. First both are first class fighters when it comes to poverty alleviation. Obama has helped many or millions of hitherto illegal immigrants to have hope of realising their dreams of being bona fide citizens of the US. Both are staunch anti terrorists with the Pope giving support to the victims of global terrorism in the Middle East especially the on going conflict in Syria. But both know that they are meeting with their skeletons in their cupboards very much in public view. President Obama flew to the Vatican from Belgium after the EU -US Summit at which he told his audience that the challenge facing the Western world was to enforce the issue of gay rights globally. He however faced a clever Catholic pontiff who is on record as saying that gay people deserve prayers and not hostility. This is not the view of the Catholic Church which is anti gay rights, marriage and abortion. But to me the Pope is using a deliberate facade of flexibility to buy time. He is behaving like the reed that bowed in the direction of a storm and survived while the oak that stood rigid was uprooted. It is definitely not difficult to see why the Pope is like this with the US. For now the Catholic Church is in total disgrace in the US over paedophilia charges and suits and in most cases it has had to pay under plea bargaining to avert messy public trials and exposures to save the sinking image of the church. For the gay rights apologists then, what better time than now to ram the acceptability of its goal down the throat of a church suffering from compunction and loss of moral leadership given pervasive lusts of its clergy, especially during the tenure of the predecessor of the present Pope. On this issue neither Obama or the Pope have flown a kite successfully or behaved like Putin, yet they have not done a Lamido either. Lastly one cannot but commend the legislators in Abuja over the issues of missing funds they are digging up. Aside from the 20bn dollars exposed by the former CBN governor there have been several others brought to light. Of interest to me is the CBN intervention fund of 19 .7bn naira Police Equipment Fund for the Police to buy helicopters which the Police representative said they have no knowledge of. Could the CBN be wrong when it put this on the list of its acquitted interventions in society? I share the incredulity and amazement of our law makers as they fight to identifymaccountability and respect for due process in our public service. It is a tedious step but a step in the right direction. If they get this right they will get the thanks of a grateful nation. On this I think the legislators have done a Putin rather than a Lamido without any mix up in personalities, I hope.

BOTH on the world and the Nigerian stage, a balance of terror is reshaping the destiny of nations of the world and their peoples. If the invasion of Crimea in Ukraine by Russia reminds one of the Cold War when the US and the former Soviet Union squared up to each other, in a mutual deterrence through a balance of terror in the acquisition of weapons of nuclear annihilation, the daily murder of innocent Nigerians in the North East of the country reminds one of the Nigerian Civil War fought over the secession of one part of the nation from the rest. In either case social equanimity and political stability had been unduly disturbed and disrupted, such that there is no visible defining line, to say whether the dogs of war had broken loose unexpectedly or not. But definitely, a form of terror and fear has gripped the land, as well as both the rulers and the ruled. Consequently one can say of both Nigeria and Ukraine, that the that the doves of peace may be leaving these shores in droves and the spectre of war was inching closer by the day. But then that is a view from, as on the ground in both nations, unbelievably as it may seem, we still have legitimate governments in power while terror and mayhem stalk the land creating violence and vast insecurity. Today I am saying that the unfolding events in the Ukraine and Nigeria are like two sides of the same coin. Also the reaction of world leaders to events in the two nations is examined today in an historical context, as to why by acts of commission or omission, these world leaders are reacting to events the way they have done this past one week. Most especially, we shall weigh the reaction of the US on Ukraine as the invasion of Crimea by Russian leader Vladmir Putin was in my view a calculated and measured diplomatic strategy to expose the Achiles heel of the global US Foreign policy of Engagement under the Obama Administration. On the Crimean invasion the US in its reaction has added another lexicon to global democracy by asking Russia to de-escalate the Ukraine Crisis by withdrawing its troops from Crimea, which to me is another round of fruitless diplomacy on the part of the Americans. In both the Ukraine and Nigeria, there are legitimate governments on the ground. But they are not in power in terms of authority and security of life and property. While there is a dissemblance of power in Ukraine leading to deaths of demonstrators for whom visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry laid wreaths when he visited Kiev last week, the Nigerian president is busy battling a legitimacy problem as he is campaigning to contest for re election but is bidding his time in doing that or even saying it. Yet, the Boko Haram terror sucks in innocent Nigerians in an orgy of daily killings of hapless Nigerians while the Commander in Chief’s attention is diverted in a game of political survival and the quest to refresh power and legitimacy. In Ukraine, the elected President Yanukovich has bolted into oblivion after giving orders to kill demonstrators and an Interim government is in place in Kiev. That Interim government could however not guarantee the territorial integrity of Ukraine as the Russian invasion of Crimea, a huge part of Ukraine has shown . Which makes the Kiev government in Kiev a toothless bull dog in terms of the sovereignty of Ukraine. Similarly in Nigeria, the Nigerian government is in place in Abuja but Boko Haram strikes in the heartland of Nigeria with impunity as the Governor of Adamawa had to abandon a sympathy visit to victims of Boko Haram when his convoy came under attack by Boko Haram. So who is in charge of security in the North East and what Has become of the huge security votes given to our governors to assure security of life and property in the six states of the former North East state of Nigeria? Again, in Crimea a part of Ukraine, the Russians put in place a minority government which has met in parliament and has concurred that Crimea should be ceded to Russia just as Docemo ceded Lagos to the British. The cession is to be consolidated in a referendum on March 16. So in effect the Russians after using force to acquire Crimea on account of the demonstrations in Kiev are trying to use democracy, turned upside down, to acquire legitimacy for its violation of international law in seizing Crimea from Ukraine. Similarly the governors of the three states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa are powerless against the ravaging Boko Haram because they have no army and they have diverted their security vote for some thing else. They cant even complain because when the Governor of Borno said Boko Haram is better motivated than the army, the President ominously wanted to know if the governor could sleep in government house, if he, the president, withdrew soldiers from the state capital. So In effect then, we have governors with no authority but a speedily disappearing legitimacy and political control, as they cannot guarantee their own security not to talk of those of the lives and property in the states they govern. Yet, they still parade themselves as governors in the round about game of delusion of power from which the wicked and heartless Boko Haram has profited in their states, as nature abhors a vacuum in the bloody battle of terror that Boko Haram seems to be winning in these states. Let us now look at the role and motive of Russia for the invasion of Ukraine and Crimea as well as the reactive diplomacy of the US and EU with regard to the proposed punitive sanctions against the Russian invader. It is my candid opinion that Russia’s President Vladmir Putin is running a Russian foreign policy of provoking the US and its allies in other to prove to them and the rest of the world that the nations of NATO and the US especially no longer run the affairs of the world as they did after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. This may sound petty or mischievous but the passion and devotion with which the modern, democratic Russian Czar is pursuing this objective is there for all of us to see, admire or condemn .In addition to this, Russians have an unhidden nostalgia for the glory and respect which the existence and activities of the former Soviet Union conferred on its citizens all of which vamoosed into thin air with the collapse of the Soviet Union during the regime of Gorbachev. Nobody harbours that nostalgia and lost glory more than the present Russian head of state and no where is this more palpable than on his sullen ,seemingly frozen expression when talking of the US. Please take time to watch this expression anytime there is a Putin interview especially during the on going Crimean /Ukraine Crisis. This provocative Russian diplomacy was introduced during the Georgian crisis a few years back which led to the partition as it were of that former Soviet nation. That was resolved by diplomacy but after Putin has had his way. It was relaxed during the no fly zone era in Libya during the uprising against the Gaddafi regime when the NATO nations used the occasion to pummel the regime of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi to death from the skies. Russia as well as China never forgave the west for that and the blockage of similar sanction against Syria at the UN Security Council has been Russia’s way of getting even with the west over the overthrow of Libya’s Gaddafi. But again still waters run deep and the west had better be careful in the carefree and arrogant way it is fast earning the hostility and contempt of this Russian strongman. A major potential agent provocateur of Putin’s contempt for the US and the west is the issue of gay rights which the west is using to blackmail African nations on foreign aid and economic support. Russia’s stand and policy on this, is in tandem with that of these African nations and I am sure that very soon the Russian leader will throw his hat into the ring to challenge the nations of the west on categorising gay rights as human rights. On the massive criticism of his record on human rights he is on record as saying that the west interprets human rights the way it suits it. After successfully seeing the Sochi Olympics through in spite of the huge pre – event, pro – gay media campaign to smear Russia’s hosting of the event, I am sure that the Russian president is in a pay back mood. For now the invasion of Crimea is an eminent precursor of the fight on gay rights between Russia and its American and European friends or enemies and this is a fight that Russia is raring for if only to prove that it has a fair idea of gay rights very similar to that of the African nations the west is treating with contempt on the matter. Given this Putin mood towards the US and the EU it is like barking at the moon then for the US to ask a wilfully belligerent nation like Russia to ‘de escalate‘ a crisis it premeditated and executed in its backyard. For that is what the Russians for centuries, have always regarded the Crimea which is the base of its Black Sea Fleet. Putin surely knows the US has no stomach for a war anywhere including Ukraine just as it developed cold feet in Georgia earlier. The US has announced sanctions against key Russian and Ukrainian leaders ostensibly from a list given it by the Interim government in Kiev. But Russia has threatened to seize American assets and that is no idle threat. One wonders therefore what US Secretary of State John Kerry meant when he said he and his Russia counterpart are professionals chummily doing their jobs when a US navy destroyer is reportedly on the way to the Black sea for a pre planned naval military exercise in the area where the Russians have blocked the two approaches to the Black Sea. Obviously this has set a collision course. Which means US diplomacy these days thrive on rhetorics and new vocabularies while that of Russia swims in the strong waters of pragmatic self interest in the comity of nations. It is the resolution of the on going crisis in terms of the observance of international law that will show who is more professional between the US and Russia, not the US Secretary of State’s say so, in the pursuit of his onerous duty.

PREDICTABLY in the last several weeks the civilised world has looked on in stark unbelief and horror at the emerging daily spectacles and gory tales of murder and mayhem being inflicted on Nigerians by Boko Haram in the North East of Nigeria. The latest as I write was in Bama where 60 people were reportedly killed at dawn as Boko Haram arrived for the murderous adventure at 4 30am. According to the State Police Commissioner who briefed pressmen, the DPO told him that Boko Haram burnt all the major government buildings in the unfortunate town including that of the Emir and the town was littered with corpses. At the same time the state governor returned to Aso Rock to tell the president that the situation had gotten worse than that of the last weekend during which the president gave assurance that the situation would improve. In the midst of all these however, a distinctly Nigerian phenomenon or trait has emerged which is the way officials in charge of security have been reeling out casualties figures in a clear and concise manner as if those figures were for inanimate human beings and not killed, full blooded Nigerians. I do not need to recall anyone in particular. Just listen or read anyone of the past or coming briefings or grab any newspaper reporting the Boko Haram horror and you will discover a rather casual and almost inhuman rendition of casualties in the towns and villages of the North East of Nigeria. Which is rather cold blooded to me and seems to confirm the alarm of the State governor of Borno that we are at war. The cruel thing here is that the casualty figures are about our own fellow Nigerians and not the opponent or invader which is Boko Haram. Such cold blooded recitals of Nigerian casualties frightens me and is just not acceptable as it is inhuman and devalues human life especially of Nigerians. While I am not advocating that Nigeria should close shop because of Boko Haram in the NE, I am saying that Nigerians in all parts of Nigeria should be concerned with the killing of other Nigerians as the country is a federation of 36 states. I know the priority of Nigerian leaders now is the coming National Conference and the 2015 elections but I want all Nigerians to know that with regard to this on going Boko Haram horror, the global sovereign reputation or image of Nigerians as a people and Nigeria as a nation is that of a brutal and callous lot, who are definitely not their brothers ‘keeper. Which sadly and pathetically is quite true and reminds one of what Mark Anthony in Williams Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, said of Romans, even as the body of the slain Julius Caesar was on the ground – ‘You blocks, you stones you worse than senseless things, O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome.’ I think Nigerians now resemble ancient Romans in the selfish way they have reacted to the plight of fellow Nigerians being mowed down daily by the terrible scourge of Boko Haram in the NE of Nigeria. Today I weep for Nigeria and Nigerians, in that our perception and respect for human life has degenerated to such an extent that we do not value human life lost anywhere except that of a relative or close one. I see that as the dehumanisation of the Nigerian gene and psyche brought on by our mass indifference and callousness on the Boko Haram murder that is both on our doorsteps and in our midst. Already it has been reported that their leader has threatened to kill the Emir of Kano and bomb oil installations in the Niger Delta which is like carrying the battle against Nigeria and those he branded as infidels, close to Nigeria’s heart land. That to me could have been dismissed as a huge joke until the Borno State governor insisted that the Boko Haram terrorists were better motivated and better armed than our military. Also some survivors in Bama said soldiers fled on seeing the modern and lethal weapons of the terrorists that descended on Bama. Whereas on each occasion military spokesmen have always affirmed that the terrorists have been routed after they had fled leaving corpses of innocent victims in their wake. To show my unhappiness and discomfort on the way Boko Haram has been killing Nigerians with impunity I will today cite some events in the past, and on going, globally, in a bid to deter the Nigerian leadership and psyche from its present posture of business as usual in the face of a creeping evil wind blowing down wards from the North Eastern part of Nigeria. I will remind Nigerians of the story of former President Laurent Kabila of Democratic Republic of Congo whose rebellion against the late Mobutu Sese Seko too started in N.E Congo. I will recall what is going on in Ukraine and how the demonstrations stopped when the protesters and government forces realised that 27 human lives had been lost in just one day in a protest that has been on for months. I will also show that tackling Boko Haram horror does not tie the hand of the president in calling the shots in all sectors of the economy and shooting down financial horrors that threaten the stability of the economy in the same way that Boko Haram terror is holding the Nigerian military by the balls in the NE of Nigeria for now. The lesson from the Laurent Kabila story in the Congo is quitesimple. There was a rebellion in the Tutsi refugee camp in NE Congo and Mobutu Sese Seko, the president then, sent troops to quell the insurgency. But the insurgents led by Kabila sent the Mobutu army packing and started pursuing them until they reached Kinshasa and overthrew Mobutu who fled to exile and Kabila became president of Congo. He was later assassinated but his son Joseph succeeded him and has won successive presidential elections to consolidate the Kabila dynasty in the Congo. This is in spite of the fact that most Congolese claim that Kabila is from Rwanda which I doubt as I have information that Kabila was with the late Patrice Lumumba before he was killed in the Katanga secession of Moise Tshombe. And that he was recommended by the great revolutionary Che Guevarra who came to fight in the Congo to create a sort of Cuban revolution but said that Kabila was not very committed then. Kabila then disappeared and was thought to be dead only to resurface in the Tutsi uprising in Congo’s NE from where he drove Mobutu out of power in Kinshasa. Now in Nigeria Maiduguri, Bama, Gwoza are under siege and National Assembly members have asked that the army should move base to the North East. To me the lesson from the Kabila story does not need a sooth sayer to see the inevitable if we do not eliminate Boko Haram in the shortest possible time now, in our own urgent, collective interest. In Ukraine where protests have been going on because the president wants a deal to rescue the economy with Russia while protesters want a deal with the EU instead, some respect was shown for human life, at least when people on both sides died and there was some respite in protests although they had since resumed. Ukraine has a robust culture of dissent which is an anomally in Nigeria and I will not want to bore anyone on this. The president of the country has promised early election but the protesters are not impressed. All they are saying is that they wont allow business as usual while the man they elected as president mortgages their political future to Russia as that would entail going back to the hegemony of Moscow as in the former USSR which broke up under Gorbachev’s reforms of glasnost and perestroika. This is what Russia’s President Vladmir Putin wants to happen and is leading the Ukranian president in that direction while his people say that is one horror that would happen over their dead bodies. So you have defiance on the cities and streets of Ukraine and a president who can not sleep because like Macbeth he murdered sleep when he sold his nation to Russia’s Putin and expected his people to play ball, but they have refused to do so. Let me round up by stating my horror at the way some Nigerians have been reacting to the suspension of the CBN Governor Lamido Sanusi. It is as if because the president cannot handle Boko Haram, he cannot handle anything else. I disagree on this view point because whether you like him or not a Nigerian president is a very powerful man as the CBN governor has finally found out and he has used pure banking routine to oust the CBN boss by just suspending him. In banking once the Inspectors find irregularities against you, you are queried and given time to reply. If fraud is involved, you are suspended, pending investigations. If you are cleared you are reinstated with full emoluments or fired if found guilty and that may even involve prosecution. All these have been in – built into the CBN Act and form the spirit of its execution and implementation and the CBN governor’s suspension cannot be an exception as it is legal and in order. The CBN governor should have started packing his bag out of his office the moment he refused the reported presidential phone call asking him to resign. In addition the charges against him are grievous as they involved the use of the term ‘financial recklessness ‘ by the body that investigated his tenure. As an accomplished regulator who has won global awards, it is in his own interest to defend the charges and he knows he cannot do this while in office. He should know that calling his suspension political will not jell as those who live in glass houses should just not throw stones. For now we hold our breath as we marvel at the equanimity of the experience and credentials of his successor and the huge potentials of professionalism and stability those bring to the regulatory climate of an overheated banking system that has danced too long much to the whims and caprices of a vocal and volatile regulator who finally did not know that an actor must quit when the ovation is loudest.

ON a visit to Russia this week as Defence Minister, Egypt’s de facto ruler Field Marshal Abdul Fatah Sissy was pleasantly surprised when Russian President Vladmir Putin wished him luck on his undeclared intention to contest for the presidency of Egypt in the next presidential elections in his nation. This happened in the same week that Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan sacked some Ministers in his cabinet ostensibly to make them face squarely their undeclared intention to further their political ambitions outside the orbit of his cabinet. This same week the romantic and very First Lady – less President Francois Hollande of France made a state visit to the US just as the media made a meal of the host president’s affair with a singer who performed at the last Inaugural of US President Barak Obama. These three news items form the basis of our analysis today. These are news about strong men and leaders in the course of their democratic and diplomatic duties. Of course you have to read between the lines to know what they are about in these actions. But then in some cases they are so transparent that what they are doing or saying is just lost in plain sight to the unwary observer or onlooker. That really is the challenge I want to decipher today, this time around Starting with Russia you do not need a star gazer to tell you that when Egypt’s Military boss Abdul Fatah Sissy turned up in Moscow to seal an arms deal with Russian President Vladmir Putin, a new Pharaoh was paying homage to a modern Czar. As the Egyptian doubling as the Defence Minister on this trip is the anointed President of Egypt in the next presidential elections in that nation. Putin on the other hand calls the shots in Russia. To make a comparison of how the two modern electorally sanctioned and democratically appointed monarchs got to power one has to refer to the relations of the two nations with the US, and especially the administration of present US President Barak Obama, to enjoy the situation. First, Field Marshal Sissy was in Moscow to buy arms from Russia because the US cut some scheduled arms sale of high tech planes to Egypt. The US cut was because the Military led by the new arms purchaser Sissy ousted the elected regime of President Mohammed Morsi who is now facing treason trial in Egypt. The US actually knew that a coup happened in Egypt but it did not have the balls to acknowledge it as such. As that would involve cancelling relations with Egypt – a situation that would jeorpadise Egypt’s peace deal with Israel, which for now is the cornerstone of US foreign policy in the Middle East. Since the US arms sale cut which the Egyptians described as’ lacking foresight’ the Interim government in Egypt has asked its army chief and Minister of Defence to contest for the presidency of Egypt due to the popular wishes of the Egyptian people. Field Marshal Sissy has not announced his intention yet and even denied a newspaper interview in the Gulf that he said words to that effect. But he did not deny when the Czar in Moscow wished him luck on the best known secret in the land of the Pharaohs. Which again brings in the question of what the US could make of the new rappochment between Egypt and Russia. First, there is not much the US can do about the arms purchase, as Egypt is a sovereign state and indeed an ancient civilisation before the US whose world dominance is tapering out given the emergence of the bubbling Chinese economy in recent times. There is no denying that even if the Russians were unwilling to sell arms to Egypt, China would have willingly obliged without bothering about the democratic credentials of the Egyptian Marshal and president in waiting. Secondly the US was waiting to use the Sochi Olympics and Russia’s anti gay laws to embarrass Russia. Again Russia has stolen US thunder on this as Russia is having a successful Sochi Olympics in spite of its gay stand and in spite of the US Attorney General’s assertion that gay rights is like the Civil Rights issue in the US, a view that most Africans will find reprehensible. Again, the US has given a new opportunity to Russia to assert that the US defines human rights in a way that suits its way of life without respect for the culture of other nations of the world especially Russia and Africans in general. May be the Americans have forgotten that there would have been no Martin Luther King or the historic civil rights marches on Washington, if black slaves had not been taken to America from Africa. In Nigeria President Goodluck Jonathan sacked some Ministers to allow them pursue their political ambition. But then since both the president and sacked ministers were from the same party why should their ambitions be mutually exclusive of that of their boss? Of course the Obasanjo factor and changed loyalties meant that some Ministers had to go. Even then, I think the news that Boko Haram struck in Konduga some 30 miles from Maiduguri in the N East killing over 39 people and razing a thousand houses is bigger than the sack of a handful of Ministers. Worse still, the statement credited to the Governor of Borno State that Boko Haram is better armed and better motivated than the Nigerian army is quite disturbing. It means that the governor is not happy with the way the military or government is handling Boko Haram as the governor even asked for more troops reinforcement. I think government should respond to allay the fears of the governor as such fears can divide the nation more than any fanfare over the sack of ministers over presumed divided loyalties or contrived indolent performance. Lastly, the US President played host to his French counterpart this week and while I do not intend to overplay the news that Obama was having an affair with the singer Beyonce I will like to discuss the visit in the light of a text I received from a keen reader of this column and former Registrar of Unilag, Mrs. Olumide. The text asked me to see a Washington Post Editorial published in The Nation which ended with a sentence that our President Goodluck Jonathan will not be welcome in Washington and London because of the anti gay law passed in Nigeria. My view is that the editorial was misinformed in particular on the nature of politics and administration in Nigeria and generally missed the point on the way Nigerians see the gay issue. I know that both the French and US presidents endorse the views in the Washington Post editorial but I doubt if both or either have the guts to say a Nigerian president is not welcome in Paris or Washington as a result of Nigerian anti gay laws. The editorial also noted that the Nigerian anti gay laws were so detailed. But that is the nature of law making in Nigeria as we go to great extent to put things in black and white. This was what the Britishn taught us even though their own constitution is largely unwritten. The details in the anti gay laws are so because that is the way we make our laws and it is not intended to set a special trap for the gays who are not that important or visible here as the west and those supporting them are making out. This is a topic that is a taboo in most house holds in Nigeria regardless of religion and the way the US, Britain and France are going about it is quite embarrassing for the future of relations with many African nations. Surely some measure of restraint is needed on the part of pro gay nations in the way and manner they sell their ideas and laws to other nations and peoples. As their freedom should end in indeed, and in realty, where other peoples’ noses begin.

I saw a picture of soldiers of the Central African Republic beating a man to death with bare knuckles, knives and kicks from their boots and I thanked God that the scene was not from Nigeria. Then, I recalled that surviving relatives of Boko Haram bombings of churches and mosques in the North East where I did my national service, would have seen worse and more agonising scenes of pulverised bodies and charred remains of loved ones that make the CAR scene equally tragic but quite a lesser evil. While I concede that both situations dehumanise and brutalise the human psyche, I want to look at the environment in which such monstrous tragedies occur and the unfortunate political systems sustaining such human horrors. I look at this in the context of the application of the ideology of democracy, which is the fashionable global system of government of our time, and which is the ruling maxim in the US from where under the administration of President Barak Obama. From there, courage and direction have been given to political systems of motley ideological hues in places like Turkey, Ukraine, Pakistan, Nigeria and even Iran, to march where even angels have feared to trod in terms of leadership styles of political and economic governance. Democracy of course is the catchword in this analysis. Its effectiveness and application of its core values of accountability, transparency, and pursuit of justice, law and order are roped in, in classifying these nations as either vibrant or sterile democracies, while the base line is the level of political stability and internal security in each political system. Of course the US provides the green light in terms of vibrancy of ideology, political stability and security albeit in a sneering manner. This is because of the poor legacy of the Obama Administration with regard to its set goals and objectives and its achievements in this regard both locally and globally in terms of its foreign policy. It is necessary to highlight the challenges the Obama Administration has faced in its two terms now tapering towards a lame duck presidency that cannot beat its chest on all its main electoral mandates or pledges. The Obamacare health programme has grave IT problems on access for real and potential beneficiaries. The immigration program has teething problems and from all indications, the Republicans are ready to hijack the programme and steal the huge Hispanic votes that the Democratic Party immigration strategy is targeting. On foreign policy, Syria has not kept to its promise or schedule to destroy its chemical weapons. This was a stalling, dubious policy that the Russians sold to a gullible US to prevent an imminent air strike on Syria. This was aborted even though US Secretary of State, John Kerry in his famous ‘We know ‘speech on the eve of the aborted air strike said the US must stand up to the violation of its core values because it has evidence that the Bashir Assad regime has used chemical weapons on its people. Even the breakthrough in diplomacy with the advent of Iran’s new PR guru of a President Hassan Rouhani and the subsequent freezing of sanctions against Iran, has led to the US president threatening to veto any further sanctions on Iran by the US legislature. This is a threat borne out of the fact that the Obama administration has not carried US lawmakers along on the renewed talks with Iran. Which shows in effect then, that while the US democracy could be a good example of a vibrant democracy it does not necessarily follow that the government in such democracies must have things their way. The US presidential system under Obama clearly shows a vibrant democracy with no love lost between the executive and legislature especially over the debt ceiling issue. Yet there is no doubt that stability and security are taken as a fait accompli in the US by both parties contending for power and running the nation. At the same time it is possible to have a democracy that is both vibrant and sterile like Nigeria and one that is vibrant but not sterile like Pakistan. In the same vein it is possible to have one that is quite vibrant but dubiously stable like Turkey. Similarly it is possible to have an overcharged democracy where anarchy has taken over as in the CAR, which for now is a failed state. Ukraine is not a failed state but an over vibrant democracy where conflicting rights and expectations have suffocated the political system such that government is in a state of inertia and obvious sterility from incessant demonstrations. It is my contention here that a sterile democracy can never be stable in terms of security while a vibrant democracy must fuel its vibrancy from its attention at all times to its vibrancy. Now let us look at the issues that led to the categorisation that the nations mentioned here have attracted like magnets to themselves. In the CAR where there is a religious war the rebels who are Muslims and the minority, have lost the power they seized by force, and now the Christians are said to be retaliating, hence the sickening scene of murder mentioned before and seen globally. Indeed the culprits can be apprehended as they posed for pictures near the corpse of the victim. I agree with members of the international community who insisted that these CAR soldiers should be apprehended and brought to book as a deterrent to others involved in such crimes against humanity. In Ukraine the demonstrators wanted a deal with the EU while their president wanted to lean closer to Russia which has offered a soft loan to help the nation out of its economic doldrums. Of course the Russian President Vladmir Putin is calling the shots even though he pretends he is busy with the Sochi Winter Olympics which opened yesterday. Ukraine’s government is paralysed but the government is not shooting its people yet as it knows that people are camping in the snow with great discomfort and really mean business that they want their government to do business with the EU rather than Russia. One can only wait and see who will blink first between a president committed to Russia and a people ready to die in the snow to go with the EU. Which takes us to Nigeria and Pakistan both of which face terrorist insurgencies. In Pakistan the news is that for once the Taliban has agreed to send representatives for talks with the government of PM Nawaz Sharif and both sides have promised not to do anything that will derail the peace talks. This sounds unbelievable but if the Taliban can stop killing those opposed to its policies in Pakistan, that nation must be on the road to peace and the attendant prosperity which has eluded it given the resources it has used to fight the Taliban over the years. Nigeria faces a grim prospect in its war against Boko Haram because the insurgency seem insurmountable in the North East of the nation. Indeed unlike Pakistan political infighting within the ruling PDP has overshadowed the curtailment of the insurgency of Boko Haram in Nigeria. The massive defections of PDP members into the APC is of more concern to the ruling party as well as the inability of the president to announce whether he will contest in 2015 presidential elections or not. This has affected the passing of the nation’s budget as the APC gave directives to its legislators not to pass the budget in the legislature. The Minister of Information has criticised the Opposition directive as tantamount to asking Nigerians to commit suicide. But then while Nigerians may not contemplate suicide as they love life there is no doubt that living under the economic policies of the present administration has been sheer hell in terms of quality of life and security. Indeed it is the politicians who are more interested in 2015. Than the electorate who are totally disillusioned and may not be interested in whether the budget has been passed or not as they gain nothing materially or otherwise from such passage or delay. However I saw a picture of the Nigerian president and the newly decorated service chiefs in the dailies and the charming, beefy profile of the eminent military leaders on display cannot but inspire confidence in any Nigerian that the nation’s security is in capable hands. However what remains to be seen is the translation of the satisfaction on the faces of the president and his security bosses into genuine fear for Boko Haram such that the insurgency is quashed by April as promised by the new Chief of Defence staff. That surely is the fastest route to remove Nigeria from the odious list of the world’s sterile and insecure though vibrant democracies. That again would be a great impetus for the president in his dilemma on whether to run or not, come 2015.

From the tone of the letter sent by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in England to the Presidents of Nigeria and Uganda, where gay marriages are illegal, it is apparent that the two senior Anglican clerics think that they were talking to inferior democracies that need to be fine tuned to respect sexuality as perceived and recognised in Britain. It is my intention here to show that both men are wrong in indulging in such perception. They need to be referred to events in Tunisia where a new constitution has been adopted in an Islamic nation that scrapped all references to Islamic laws, and guarantees equality for men and women, in an environment typical of the Middle East which is predominantly Muslim and where women hitherto are second class citizens, only to be seen and not heard. The two Anglican leaders also need to find out why the anti gay movement in nearby France which has also recognised gay marriage has become such that the Socialist French government is embarrassed by the large size and spontaneity of the antigay demonstrations with their slogan that says women and children should be considered first, and that there should be no room for artificial parentage in Modern France .Similarly these two highly placed Anglicans should be told to take a look at the democracy being practised in Ukraine where the President tried to stop demonstrators asking him to resign by sacking the PM and cabinet and offering the powerful posts to the opposition which however turned down the offer to have power. It is my contention here that these references need to be considered for the education of the two leading Archbishops in Britain , who seem to be misled by a colonial mentality that equates modern civilisation with contemporary British values and culture. This is a sickening attitude that is inconsistent with even the values of the British Commonwealth of nations that recognises unity in diversity, as well as the sovereignty of member nations like Uganda and Nigeria to which they have directed their ill timed, highly disrespectful and extravagant letter, stating that gays are loved and valued by God and should not be discriminated against or diminished. In sending such letters to at least the Nigerian leader they have vindicated the opposition of former Nigerian Anglican Primate Peter Akinola who turned 70 recently and who, while he was in office led the African Anglican opposition to the enthronement of gay priests as bishops in the global Anglican Communion. In writing the Nigerian president now on this matter are the two leading Archbishops saying that that they never took their Nigerian counterpart seriously when he was telling them that consecration of gay priests was un biblical and un African?. It is therefore sheer hypocrisy on the part of these two Archbishops to be writing the Nigerian president now on a matter that the former Nigerian Primate had articulated so forcefully to the world at large, so brilliantly to the Lambeth Conference and to the predecessor of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, who connived at the consecration of gay Bishops in the US, as he looked the other way while the abomination was going on at his doorsteps and during his tenure. It is also pathetic that while these men of God were soliciting for love for gays in Africa a new form of recognition for women rights and tolerance on political and religious beliefs was taking place in a Muslim nation like Tunisia in Africa. Please recall that Tunisia was the fountain of the street revolutions of 2011that swept N Africa dismantling the despotism of Ben Ali in Tunisia, Housni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. It was Mohammed the fruit vendor who set the revolution rolling in Tunisia when he doused himself with petrol after corrupt municipal officers seized his weight measure illegally because he refused to give them further bribe to sell his wares. The Tunisian revolution started at his funeral. Of course the revolution has derailed in Egypt with the Army poised to make its boss, newly promoted Field Marshal Sissy the anointed presidential candidate in the April presidential elections. But Tunisia has learnt from the mistakes of the hapless and misled Egyptians and I will illustrate this carefully again for the education of the misguided archbishops from Britain. The Islamist Coalition won the post Ben Ali elections in Tunisia and went the path of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt seeking to establish Sharia Law. Secular Tunisians protested against the new theocracy which responded by assassinating two prominent secular opposition leaders. At the end, both secular and Islamist Tunisians buried the hatchet as the army remained truly neutral unlike in Egypt. The result was that the Islamist government stepped down for a Caretaker government of Technocrats which supervised the creation of the new constitution which is secular and acknowledges the rights of Tunisian women as equal with men in this Arab, Muslim nation. I have no doubt in my mind that God has infinitely more love for the Tunisian arrangement which has recognised and raised the status of women rather than the dubious love the British Archbishops would impose on both the sovereign states of Nigeria and Uganda over the enactment of gay laws. In France too where shirtless bachelors took to the streets in French cities last Sunday to protest gay marriages passed into law by the Socialist government of President Francois Hollande, the protesters hammered on the fate and traditional roles of motherhood in such marriages and wondered how gay couples can raise children. This is an issue that should have concerned the British Archbishops rather than their embarrassing their former colonial subjects with their exposition on God’s love for sexual deviants in an African environment which is different from theirs. Indeed, the French Anti gay protests showed the religious side of France in spite of the randy life style of its president who has like an Emperor terminated the partnership with France’s first lady just by texting a simple sentence to AFP to announce the break up. If French bachelors are so concerned with the legalisation of gay marriages in France that they come out in protest in the near nude how come these Anglican Archbishops cannot see the predicament of women and the danger to human procreation in their plea of love by God for gays in Africa where it is a taboo to have same sex marriages? Anyway I expect a robust reply from both the Nigerian and Ugandan presidents to the patronising and irritable letter from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York on the passing of gay laws in both nations. It is a pity that the Archbishop of York is an Ugandan but I live that to his conscience to sort out, as he has shown that the quest for power in the Anglican Communion is far greater than his cultural heritage as an African. I wonder if either Archbishop has heard of Boko Haram, the mindless Islamist movement that is slaughtering Nigerians, burning churches and mosques and whose name means ‘No to Western education’. The equally mindless letter from these men of God in Britain provides needless and murderous ammunition to Boko Haram in its suspicion and hatred of western education not to talk of its civilisation which these highly placed Angican leaders symbolise. Really men of God, especially powerful and influential ones like these two Anglican High Priests should respect global cultural diversity and ethnic peculiarities and should not invoke God’s love to hide, like the proverbial ostrich, a brazen motive of ecclesiastical ethnocentricity, under the pretence of invoking the authority and love of God. That certainly is one mischief too many from the ‘Holy of Holies‘ and one that God, I pray fervently, will never endorse. Amen.