Category: Saturday

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.