The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Osuntokun

  • COP30: The way forward

    COP30: The way forward

    I was at the first Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN Convention on Climate Change in Berlin in 1995. I was then ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. It just happened that I was privy to the policy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1995 after I had served as one of the two special advisers to the honourable minister of foreign affairs. Our delegation was led by the permanent secretary of the Federal Ministry of Works. It included myself as Nigeria’s ambassador to Germany, our representative in the Organization of Petroleum Producing Countries (OPEC,) one or two civil servants from the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA). This conference in Berlin was sequel to the first Earth Conference held in Rio de Janeiro Brazil in 1992. It was the first Earth conference which attracted the attention of the whole world to the dire situation of the world to the problem of environmental abuse and climate change and the need to reverse the degradation of the environment if humankind was to survive at all.

    After  Rio de Janeiro were to follow series of COP now numbering 30 again holding in Brazil  because of the importance of the Amazon forest mainly in Brazil as the global lungs, destruction of which may pose existential problems to humanity. The Earth conference was a natural progression from the Gro Harlo Brundtland’s commission. The commission was set up and known as the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED)  set up in 1983 and reported in 1987 raising the issue of sustainable development, that is to say, balancing the issue of development and environment. Gro Harlem Brundtland was a prominent Norwegian politician and physician who headed a UN commission which first raised in a systemic way that resources were not infinite and that for the world to remain viable and liveable, mankind must try to grow and develop without harming the environment unlike the slash and burn agricultural production and natural resources consumption the world was guilty of since the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. The Brundtland report became a sing song in international environmental consciousness preceding the Earth Conference of 1992.

    Later, the emphasis shifted to climate change by 1995 which embraced larger subject than the issue of sustainability alone. I again was part of the Nigerian delegation to COP 15 which was held in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009. Over the years, the COP conferences had become more or less an annual jamboree holding in many places all over the continents of the world. The recurring issues were the sharp divisions between the global industrial North and the underdeveloped South, between the large countries and the threatened island countries; between those who were responsible for global pollution while developing and the undeveloped south which logically argued that those responsible for damaging the environment should pay for its cleaning on the principle of “polluter pays“ and on the unmet pledges of capital to be transferred to those who  are underdeveloped so that they  do not go along the polluting trajectory as the developed. 

    There is also the question of the amount to be transferred from the developed to the under developed. There is also the division between carbon resources-rich countries and those who do not have gas, carbon and petroleum and are still undeveloped and, finally, between technological innovators and others not able to manufacture products in which energy was needed in their production.

    Now let me go back to the beginning of COP 1. It was at the Berlin conference that the permanent headquarters of the commission was determined. The German government had gotten in touch with me soliciting our vote if nominated. By that time, German companies were involved in the building of our Aluminium complex in Ikosi Abasi, among other projects which included our electricity, telecommunications and railways and motor vehicles assembly in Enugu and Lagos. I made their request known to my minister, General Ike Nwachukwu who authorized our voting for Germany. I did not only nominate Bonn which would be most attractive for housing when the federal capital would have moved to Berlin, I also campaigned for Germany. When we voted, even the Americans who wanted Geneva could not carry the day. I have followed the movement for environmental abatement since 1995. I even formed an NGO named “Nigerian Environmental Protection Society” to make environmental awareness common knowledge in Nigeria. We had annual conferences focusing on the intelligentsia and we published our proceedings which were widely distributed to the media and the universities. Unfortunately the passion seemed to have waned after leaving the university.

    One of the greatest blows to the global campaign for environmental rehabilitation to ensure that we reverse the global warming to just 1.5% above the pre industrial level was the lukewarm attitude of the conservative elements in the USA and Western Europe and now the USA under Donald Trump has dismissed the whole campaign as a hoax and fraud and this presumably is the policy of the ruling Republican Party. This is in spite of international agreement signed in 1997 at the end of COP3 in Kyoto when an understanding by the international community led to agreed limits by industrialised countries of the amount each country was committed to while the developing countries were to make lesser commitments about their greenhouse gases emissions.to reverse global warming to pre-industrial level even though not legally enforceable. The non-actionable Kyoto agreement was made enforceable in COP21 in Paris in 2015. These two international agreements have been torn into pieces by President Trump because he has said the agreements were against the interest of the United States. He has gone further by denouncing the agreements as a fraud and hoax and said global warming was natural occurrence which will remedy itself. His lapdogs have even disputed the scientific basis of global warming.

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    This does not mean that the struggle is in vain. It is just delayed. This is because in the normal cycle of American politics, Trump and his Republican Party will be defeated electorally. Secondly, the sub national entities, the states and big cities in the USA are committed to policy of environmental enhancement and many of the polluting industrial giants like the automobile manufacturers are committed to it and are producing electric cars and trucks that are emitting less carbon dioxide. Thirdly, China the biggest polluters are producing more green renewable products like vehicles and solar roofs that get their heat from the sun. There are researches into other sources of power like tidal waves, burning methane which apart from carbon gases contributes to global warming. There are great strides in harnessing hydrogen and hydro power from natural falls and dams.

    In spite what some national governments may say and do, some countries are even cutting down on their cattle since it has been proved that cows emit methane, a greenhouse gas which is responsible for 9% of gas responsible for global warming. The campaign against global warming has become personal in civilized countries that are moving away from conspicuous consumption to responsible sustainable development. Despite all the positive progress in the campaign there are still great obstacles.

    From a personal experience, Nigeria like most members of OPEC will not support policies that will suddenly make their economies that are energy export dependent go down the drain by an international agreement that dismisses their concern. This was my personal experience in two COPs I have attended. There is a powerful OPEC lobby at every Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Climate Change. The way to bring all nations into responsible climate policy is to share experiences and knowledge and innovation with all countries so that they are on the same plane.

    The current COP30 is deadlocked on who to contribute the one trillion dollars that is to be put in a special facility to fight global warming and if possible reverse environmental pollution with the application of abatement measures that all nations, small or big, islands that are sinking through no fault of theirs, developed and under developed countries can jointly embrace in the common cause.

    I sympathize with our Third World nations who argue on the grounds that those who were responsible ab initio for the problem should carry the can. However, we should make progress through shared and incremental gradation in payment so that no country should be put off though finger pointing. Nobody will be safe in a situation of global homicide if we don’t change our ways and collectively face and solve the problem of present and past pollution resulting into current climate change. The signs are clear because we now have overwhelming heat and cold, unseasonably excessive rainfall causing flooding, unusual heat and dryness causing bushfires, challenging changes causing a threat to biodiversity and rising heat in our oceans and melting icecaps in the North and South poles leading among other things, to unmanageable rise in our oceans and loss of habitats for small islands populations.

    I hope that COP 30 will focus on the climate change problem and not take on board issues that deviate from the main issues. The moment ideological issues of eradication of poverty, status of women just to mention a few non-climate issues that divert attention from the primary concerns; we should know diversions from core issues will undermine seriously the non-ideological question of the climate.

  • The Trump threat to liberate Christians

    The Trump threat to liberate Christians

    President Donald Trump of the United States has threatened to intervene in Nigeria’s 15-year old incendiary attacks on Christian communities in northern parts of our country. He puts this to our country’s unwillingness or inability to stop this dangerous incendiary movement allegedly of Fulani ethnic group, or broadly speaking, allegedly of Muslim groups to ethnically cleansed large portions of land of indigenous Nigerians and to occupy the lands and change their names so that the remnants of their victims would have difficulty of recognizing or claiming their ancestral land.

    In the language of international order, this amounts to genocide which is punishable under international law and should be punishable under national law. Theoretically, we may be able to argue that those cleansing indigenous groups of the area are extraneous to the area and are therefore criminal but there is evidence that the Fulani herders also have claims of access to the area but the way they are asserting their claim is absolutely wrong.

    There is also the allegation of the foreign origin of those Fulani who are causing these troubles as distinct from the Fulani who, for more than a century, maintained pacific relations with their compatriots in the Benue valley. Historically, there is evidence that the attempt by some Fulani ethnic group to extend some form of control over the non-Muslim indigenous peoples of the  entire Northern Nigeria  and in particular the Benue valley failed  during the Fulani-led jihads of the 19th century and that this was what the British conquistadors met when they put down the Union Jack in the area and established rule Britannia in the entire Northern Nigeria.

    Looking at the whole are from the prism of history, it seems to me as if the Fulani are living in the past of regular migration of African peoples as epitomised by the movement of the Fulani from the area of the Futa Djallon across West Africa up to the Cameroons over centuries or the  Bantu expansion from east of the southern part of the Cameroons and the Uganda area down to Southern Africa over centuries and the Nguni migrations in the opposite direction from Zulu land up to the Ndebele area in present day Zimbabwe. This illustrates that migration has always been a feature of African history. The case against the Fulani in the plateau, Benue and in Adamawa hills are compelling about a people bent on dominating the indigenous peoples under the guise of spreading Islam. Here, the religion of the prophet has been appropriated to support local imperialism.

    The problem is therefore very complex and would be difficult to solve by foreign intervention. It would require land management and education and strong federal government military presence. It must be added the herder/farmer conflict may not always be seen in terms of ethnic conflict or religious conflict but economic opportunity that the recent kidnapping in Nigeria seems to have been hijacked by opportunistic criminals to whom ethnic or religious background of victims is totally irrelevant.

    I say this because the killings, though predominantly in the Benue valley, has metastasized to all parts of Nigeria and not just the North.

    The question to ask is whether Trump’s decision to force a solution on us is based on genuine concern for the suffering Christian  people of Nigeria. There is no doubt about the religious motive behind Boko Haram, ISWAP, or their variants and off-shoots. What has not been firmly established is their local and foreign sponsorship and financing. What is clear is that the insurgents could not have remained in their struggle for almost 15 years without some local and foreign support providing sophisticated weapons and munitions and financing.

    Some sources point to North Africa particularly Libyan sources and Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the same countries that have been fingered in the case of the Sudan civil war which has lasted as long as the  disequilibrium and insurgency in northern Nigeria. This means any genuine effort to help in the pacification of Northern Nigeria must involve persuading the source of external support and vigorous efforts of the Nigeria military and mobilization of the people of the affected states to support their extirpation wherever in Nigeria they raise their ugly heads.

    The federal government must approach the Trump government with request for appropriate weapons including theatre use of drones and aerial surveillance equipment. This may not be the time for the Nigeria government to be too sensitive and sentimental about their sovereignty. No country can be totally sovereign in these days when peace maintenance demands joint efforts. It is not important whether President Trump is driven by ulterior motive of fishing in our troubled waters or not. We have always been exposed to situations for external meddling because of inherent weakness of our country arising from ethnic differences and differences in our religious beliefs despite the non-nativity of these religions to our country. The corruption of our people, not just our leaders, but everyone makes it difficult to develop our economy to the point where the issue of ethnic and religious differences would not matter. Until such a time when economic development takes precedence over the emotional pull of religion and ethnicity, we will always have divisions that are exploitable by local or external forces. Now that the prestige of America is on line for intervention in Nigeria, we must engage the United States diplomatically using all the tools of the game to blunt all arguments that can be marshalled for American intervention.

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    There is a need for the president to call  in the Sultan of Sokoto, the leaders of the Christian community, the governors of Borno, Bauchi, Plateau, Adamawa, Taraba, Benue,  Nasarawa, Kaduna, Zamfara and possibly Kano, Katsina and Kebbi and Sokoto, to a close meeting about how to solve the problem and to assign responsibility to each and every one of them.

    This should be in two meetings of the first named eight states and then with the others. In these meetings, the top hierarchy of the military should be present along with the ministers of the economy, defence and the governor of the Central Bank. This must be a frank discussion in which the collapse of the country and its consequences must be made plain for all who may have some hidden plans about inheriting power. It must be stated that Nigeria  rests on the shoulders of all the states of the federation and particularly the economic strength of a few viable states and that Nigeria remains strong on the strength of all of us and this strength must be maintained on the mutual safety of lives and property of all of us irrespective of our ethnic and religious differences and that in the Nigerian republic, there are no first class and second class citizens. The president must fast forward the setting up of local government police that must be well trained to protect their areas from rampaging criminals in whatever form they come. The president should declare a state of emergency in all the states affected by this insurgency for six months so that the military can show its teeth to all those who want to challenge it. Appropriate financial measures should be put in place to palliate the social and economic problems facing several communities in all the areas of the emergency.

  • Hurricane Melissa and the call for assistance

    Hurricane Melissa and the call for assistance

    Hurricane devastation seems to be a permanent feature of life in Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica and the other islands in the Caribbean. About 37 years ago, Hurricane Gilbert hit Jamaica, causing extensive damage to human lives and huge material damage and this was the first time that Nigeria hearkened to the cry of fellow human beings in the Caribbean. The reason for our response then was because of the engagement of the then military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida with foreign policy and the push of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under its dynamic and influential General Ike N Nwachukwu for our investing in this humanitarian venture. The Guardian newspaper, under the influence of Yemi Ogunbiyi, had visited Jamaica and had written well-informed articles about the politics of the island in the  1990s when Michaels Manley was its prime minister from 1989 to1992, being his second term in office having served earlier in the same post from 1972 to 1980.

    Professor Ade Adefuye was Nigeria’s high Commissioner in the island from 1987 to 1991 and he was very influential in ensuring the success of Chief Emeka Anyaoku in securing the several votes of the Commonwealth countries in the Caribbean in the election of a new commonwealth secretary general in Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth heads of states or governments  Summit in 1989.

    I am mentioning all these factors to indicate how a paltry donation of $3 million dollars to a sister country in distress may have altered the course of history  in which an African of great distinction, Anyaoku  with great personal credentials on his own became the head of a major international organisation like the Commonwealth.

    This long preamble is to say that the time has come again for Nigeria to demonstrate leadership to rescue the black peoples of Jamaica, Haiti and Cuba that have just been hit by the force of nature. 

    Of course, Nigeria and most states in Africa are economically distressed; there is never going to be a time when it is right to do right without pain, I suggest that Nigeria should take a memo to the African Union (AU) suggesting the African Union should collectively send donations to Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti on moral grounds of solidarity with the poor humanity of those countries, and secondly, because the Caribbean constitutes part of the AU in correct progressive thinking. Secondly, Cuba in particular deserves to be recognized for its historical role in the liberation of Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia and Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde. This is a case of service deserving its rewards.

    Nobody knows when the mother African continent may again call on its children in the new world to redress the power weakness of the old continent.

    Global politics is in a phase which regrettably is entering the struggle for global relevance and struggle for our very existence. This is becoming important in Trumpian and post Trumpian politics. We must not be caught napping!

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    If the plea by Nigeria falls on deaf ears, then Nigeria should go solo. The fewer we are will be the greater the share of honour said Shakespeare because at end, we will be judged by posterity. The question is not what Nigeria is going to get from a policy of giving when our children at home have no food to eat and no fees for our school children. When we supported the liberation of Southern Africa from the time of our independence in 1960 till 1994 when Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela, the question in the public was qui bono? The answer was always that black humanity should take its rightful place in the comity of nations. No one can really judge the rightfulness of the money spent in the advancement of a country’s foreign interest on the basis what the British call pounds and pence. But a country should always be found on the side of what is right.

    When I was in our foreign office’s minister’s office, we tried to research into how much money Nigeria had spent since Independence till 1991, we came up with an estimate of close to one hundred billion dollars in money, manpower and material and educational support for the Southern African states including South Africa itself. At the end of our efforts, I think Nigerians were justified to ask for some kind of dividends.

    To blunt the question we suggested for example that Ibru Fishing Company should go and be fishing in the fish-rich coast of Angola. But after a few trials, it lost interest showing that Nigerian companies have no staying power outside Nigeria. They were most satisfied being agents and collectors of commissions from their foreign partners. 

    Sometimes, Nigerian traders flooded the streets of Southern African countries calling for fights with their host countries and boasting about their country liberating ungrateful people. This tended to lead to hostilities and bad blood. We should not see ourselves as conquering gladiators fighting to free others from colonial bondage and settler racism because these people fought for their freedom and we only aided them with no strings attached believing that our freedom and dignity as human beings is undermined when another black man is denied freedom and dignity on the basis of his colour of being black. In other words helping the other colonised Africans was fighting for ourselves. When we give assistance, we should do this because it is right and not because we want to profit from another dominated man. If that was our belief then we are not better than the capitalist exploiters who we justifiably criticize and condemn. In conclusion, we should assist the distressed people of the Caribbean without counting the cost.

  • Democracy in retreat everywhere

    Democracy in retreat everywhere

    In 1863, the United States of America was fighting for its very existence during the civil war that lasted from 1860 to 1865. In what is known as his Gettysburg address, President Abraham Lincoln said in his closing remarks to honour the living and fallen Union troops that:  “…it is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people by the people  for the people shall  not perish from the earth.”

    Almost a century later in 1961 at his inaugural speech as president of the United States on January 20 1961, President J.F. Kennedy said America was ready to pay any price, meet any hardship for the defence of freedom and challenge his country people to not ask what America can do for them but what they can do for America in spreading the gospel of freedom enshrined in democracy. He ended his inaugural address by equating American defence of liberty which he called God’s work which every American should make their own work.

    From the time America was fully involved in global politics from the First World War through the Second World War, it had always been in the defence of freedom and democracy or presented as such.  The pivotal declaration of American presidency is to suggest that the defence of freedom is worth fighting and dying for. Of course, the revolt against the government of the United Kingdom and asserting their separate identity in 1776 was also always presented as a people justly fighting for freedom against royal tyranny. Cynics may dismiss the certainty and truthfulness and commitment of the American government which even though it fought a civil war from 1861 to 1865 partly to free the slaves and waited until 1965 before granting full franchise to blacks which even today President Donald Trump and the Republican Party would cancel if it had the chance.

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    Today, it is doubtful if the United States is fully committed to the defence of freedom, liberty and democracy as previous American presidents were determined to do. President Trump and people in his Republican corner are more favourably disposed to the authoritarian regimes in Arab North Africa and the Middle East and  their fellow travellers in South East Asia and the strong leaders in India, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea even though many of these countries parade  themselves as democracies  but they are not. Even in Europe, Trump is more at home with Vladimir Putin and the Hungarian president, Viktor Orban and the American Vice President JD Vance and their friend Elon Musk were heavily promoting right wing party Alternatif fur Deutschland (AFD) in recent German elections when Friedrich Merz was elected chancellor of Germany.  In Great Britain, Trump and Elon Musk his former buddy are clandestinely or openly supporting the anti-Europe and anti-immigrant Nigel Farage and Reform UK which does not hide its espousal of racist tendencies in Britain. This party today has highest support in the UK, if one believes the gallop polls. The Trump government has no African policy except to invite  Cyril Ramaphoza, President of South Africa to the White House and to humiliate him in front of the global media and to falsely accuse him of heading a murderous government killing white farmers in South Africa whereas it is white farmers who are killing blacks. The only other time he invited Africans is when he brought some leader of guerrilla forces in Congo DR and the country’s president to the White House and to ask them to stop fighting and then boasted to the whole world that he has magically brought peace to Africa. The following day, the effete Congo government allegedly alienated a large part of the country to American miners for rare earth mining. All these claims have been rightly denied.

    In Latin America, Trump is massing troops in Venezuela’s coast under the pretext of stopping drug smugglers into the United States. His Air Force has killed close to 20 people allegedly for smuggling drugs without any evidence. He is goading the country’s president, Nicholas Maduro to make a move before ordering the navy armada on its coast to start an invasion of the country.

    Maduro may be a bad president but that does not give America the license to invade a sovereign country. He is also poised to give the same treatment to erstwhile pro-American president of Columbia Juan Guaido the same treatment unless he bends to his will.

    At home under President Donald J. Trump, America appears to have abandoned its democratic constitutional tradition for authoritarian rule of one man supported by an oligarchy of fat cats to which the president is beholden. By executive fiat, President Trump is raising or lowering trade tariffs with all countries of the world according to his whim and caprices without reference to Congress. He is disobeying court judgements and rushing legal challenges of the lower courts to the Supreme Court whose membership he has packed with Republican judges who in most cases defer to him in their judgments. He is also weaponising the judiciary against his so-called enemies such as the previous head of the FBI and the Attorney General of New York State and some members of Congress who impeached him for offenses committed against the USA when he reluctantly ceded power to President Joe Biden but supported armed rebellion against Congress in 2020 after a concluded election. He is also using troops to force compliance to forced eviction of illegal immigrants and deportation of the same from the United States. He is against the constitution sending troops to states with Democratic governors under the pretext that the governors have lost control and threatened to arrest sitting governors and mayors if they resist federal troops and armed immigration enforcement.

    Now Congress has been shut down and federal workers are not being paid and the country is witnessing delays to civil aviation while he is junketing from one country to the other in Asia while his country is shut down. If what is happening in the USA were to be happening elsewhere, there would have been non-constitutional measures encouraged by the USA to force the issue.

    In short, America has ceased being a beacon of democracy to the rest of the world. The same President Trump is testing the waters of a possible third term knowing fully well  that it would illegal and unconstitutional but nevertheless, he is  flying the kite of a third term and he and his supporters are saying why not? It seems anything is possible in Donald Trump’s United States of America.

  • Recurring malady of tribalism or ethnic nationalism

    Recurring malady of tribalism or ethnic nationalism

    The issue of tribalism or ethnic differences have largely ruined the success of the country. It has infected our politics to the extent that people either votes along ethnic lines and where they tried to look at issues rationally and nationally, they are immediately slapped back into supposedly tribal redoubts or ostracized as traitors or saboteurs. There is widespread rigging of votes to enhance ethnic figures in the census which are usually rigged because revenue sharing is tied to census. This is a problem that affects states creation, education, financial allocation and inability to have genuine democracy and stability which has been the bane of our society. The constitution which was a negotiated federal constitution before independence has been undermined by the military dictatorship edged on by civilian politicians who have less than noble or patriotic motives.

    Most of the political problems Nigeria has had since independence are traceable to tribalism or ethnicism.  Example of this can be seen in the Action Group crisis of 1961 to 1963 which split the party into two rival groups which indirectly led to the incarceration in 1963 of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the then leader of opposition in the federal parliament with the combined forces of the tribally rooted Northern politicians and their collaborators from the Eastern region. Awolowo may have been ambitious, but it is doubtful and unlikely to  have tried to violently overthrow the federal government of Nigeria with a few party toughies trained in Kwame Nkrumah’s Wineba Ideological School where the likes of Samuel Grace Ikoku, a former Secretary General of the Action Group was a lecturer. The evidences presented at the famous trial for reasonable felony were not overwhelming enough to condemn a major political leader without upsetting the equilibrium of the country and its stability. The reaction of the people of the West got to a crescendo in 1965 when the Chief S.L. Akintola’s government which was obviously unpopular decided to manipulate the voting process when the Deputy Premier, Chief Remi Fani-Kayode boasted that whether the people voted for their party or not “… angels would vote for them” took laws into their hands, burning and looting while the cabinet prepared for the worst. When some elements in the army struck at dawn of January 15, 1966, some of the ministers felt that their opponents were behind the “attempted coup d’état while the BBC radio network was telling the whole world that there had been an attempted coup and the prime minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa seemed  to have been kidnapped and two regional premiers namely, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Chief S. L. Akintola, the Are Ona Kakanfo of Yoruba land had been killed and many senior army officers seemed to have been killed. When the news were confirmed and regional and ethnic dimensions of the killings were analysed the original cheering for the army putsch petered out in fear of what may happen because Nigeria had never seen anything like this before. Then came the counter coup of July 1966 which appeared as if the equation was balanced by the number of army officers who were killed. But unfortunately the situation got out of hands when the pogroms against the Igbo in the North began and the whole country became destabilized setting the stage for the civil war after the mediation by Ghanaian military leaders failed and General Yakubu Gowon on return from the Aburi reconciliation meeting in Ghana, appeared to have been outflanked by those who wanted to militarily sort out the issue.   Going to war was a terrible denouement for which Nigeria is yet to recover. Another example that shows up the fault line in the country is forming of the federal government in 1954, 1959, 1964 when the recurring decimal of those days of the opportunity to form a more radical governments than we have ever had but people, seemed to just have their jobs rather than what was good for the entire country. We can zero on the coalition government that took the country to independence. The election in 1959 was deadlocked with the NCNC coming first with the highest number of votes followed by the AG and the NPC coming third but having the highest number of seats and reversing the choice of the electorate. If the NCNC had shown some courage by accepting the offer of coalition with the AG, the course of Nigerian history would have changed for the better but the leader of the NCNC, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe in private could not trust Chief Obafemi Awolowo.  This mistrust was not on ideological grounds but on ethnic grounds. It was the latter because his party had nothing in common with the NPC, its senior partner in the coalition government. Azikiwe had erroneously argued that the AG had bought some of the elected supporters in the Western Regional House of Assembly election in 1951 where those he claimed were his party men claimed they were independent and because of this, his ethnic supporters said Yoruba people could never be trusted! This was unfortunate because politics in southern Nigeria since then have been conducted largely on assumed rigid political division between the East and the West despite the fact that the NCNC was almost as widely supported as the AG in Yorubaland.

    This pattern has been repeated by dominant parties in the Western Regional election and East in subsequent elections despite the time changes and names and ideology of the parties. This has affected the conduct even of census and location of strategic industries such as location of iron and steel complexes, petroleum refineries for example had been determined by political factors  rather than  by economic sense. Choosing who to run these factories had not always been based on the principle of careers open to talents but rather on nebulous grounds such as federal or ethic grounds resulting in failed projects and colossal waste of public funds. The result has been lack of economic development and availability of jobs the consequences of which are slow or no growth at all thus fuelling conflicts because of competition for jobs and sharing of jobs on emotional basis of federal character and not on merit.

    We can learn a thing or two from India where most jobs are determined by principle of merit in public and private sectors and this in place much bigger than us and a population eight times bigger than the Nigerian population.

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    Our leaders have not been genuinely patriotic enough to fight for the common man’s good. The lessons of the ruinous civil war between 1967 and 1970 have largely been forgotten because at the root of the war was tribalism and corruption and both maladies still dominate our politics and political alignment and rather than ideology. Nobody is seriously fighting for how to make the country great and we will be confronted by the same difficult situation when the oil wells run out and there is no ability to solve the problem, and it will be too late because we woefully depend on the wasting assets of hydrocarbons which is exhaustible and it will be too late.

    When the civil war ended in 1970, we had the golden opportunity to remake the country. Oil production increased phenomenally and by 1973 following the war in the Middle East and the Arab boycott, the price of Nigeria’s ‘light crude’ rose phenomenally and one of our leaders was said to have said the problem of Nigeria was not the cost of things but how to spend money. This may not be true but it shows the scandal of recklessness in those years.

    We spent money in support for blacks overseas such as funding police departments in Grenada for example, embarking on iron and steel complexes and celebrating black culture and inviting people from all over the world for cultural jamboree in Lagos and building a new capital in Abuja when we could have taken Kaduna which was established in 1914 for the same purpose if Lagos was correctly considered unsuitable. A fool would soon be separated from his riches captures our situation of the time. Then the military which has become the “fall guy” for our problem of movement without motion in 1979 handed over government to civilians-led NPN after imposing an American presidential constitution on Nigeria. Meanwhile the problem of corruption virtually overwhelmed the country under President Shehu Shagari. The Shagari government was gotten rid of by a military junta under General Muhammadu Buhari who imposed a stiff and stifling government on the country. The government was at first welcomed by the people who were appalled by the corruption of the Shagari regime bogged down by importation of rice and profiteering by the leadership of the government and the parties running it. 

    The new Buhari government could not find a solution to the serious economic problems confronting the country. Some of its leaders were involved in selling foreign exchange allocation papers for imports in extremely controlled foreign exchange management. The sudden change of the national currency and the accompanying corruption and smuggling of the Naira from abroad by a traditional ruler whose son was a military officer right in Buhari’s office gave his enemy food for thought and proof of alleged corruption. There was a coup within the army which ushered in General Babangida’s regime in 1985 till 1993 after prolong transition politics which saw Moshood Abiola, a well-known businessman and influential Muslim politician as winner. His election brought up the recurring problem of tribalism with his Yoruba supporters ready to fight any attempt to deny him access to power on the grounds that he was a Yoruba man. Those opposed to him came from the East and the North until his jailer, Sani Abacha and Moshood Abiola died rapidly after the other in 1988. This was in mysterious circumstances in which the hands of foreign governments were suspected with circumstantial but unproven evidence. This happened without resolving the perennial North-South political dichotomy.

  • Nigeria since the return to democratic governance

    Nigeria since the return to democratic governance

    General Olusegun Obasanjo came back to power in 1999 when General Abubakar Abdul Salami after a rapid transition and transfer of power to what looked like a civilian regime. Obasanjo appeared to be divinely chosen to impose some form of disciplined stability on the country having suffered and survived Abacha’s humiliation and possible plot to get rid of him permanently, but the problem however strong he might have been, seemed to defy solution. He assembled a team of experienced people some of them with global financial experience and expertise and also local experience. He succeeded to get rid of the debt overhang that made reforms difficult. He also brought into being special anti-corruption organizations like the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). There were other fighting instruments in the police and other bodies but the two new committees were established to give teeth to the president’s fight against corruption. The president also got a reduction of Nigeria’s external debt by substantial reduction while paying off what was left so that Nigeria could begin all over again. In the eight years of the regime, all seemed well even though the internal infrastructure of the country appeared to have been neglected and in the euphoria of not having been bogged down by the debt overhang, the president seemed to have been obsessed with getting the whole of Africa along with his development scheme with his South African colleague Thabo Mbeki forming institutions to pull Africa toward development. 

    Ironically the scheme was tied substantially to western financial development grants and foreign direct investment if Africa cleaned up its administrations, purged of corruption and policed by African governments calling corrupt regimes to order.  This was to be called New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) which was to ensure the flow into Africa of billions of dollars. Some $60 billion was estimated as what Africa needed in investment and grants to develop its primitive infrastructure.

    It was premised on Africa attracting this huge amount for ten years. At the end of one year, little came in since the capitalist western world must have laughed at this ambitious program running into billions of dollars yearly for say about 10 years to develop African infrastructure while African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM ) was designed to monitor each country’s performance and call to orders the guilty or laggard.

    Much time was needed for the maturation of this grandiose new scheme. Not much investment came in the first year and soon the program ceased being a serious scheme as soon as Obasanjo and Mbeki left the stage followed by a sick but well-meaning Umaru Yar’Adua in Nigeria.

    He was succeeded in office following a national movement led by Pastor Tunde Bakare that Yar’Adua’s vice president Goodluck Jonathan should be made to succeed the deceased President Umaru Yar’Adua. The Jonathan regime’s unsure hold on power made it dependent on pressure groups mostly from the East and the North without solid national support until edged out in 2015 by General Muhammadu Buhari whose eight years of its stay in power was remarkable for its corruption, effeteness and additional burden for the future by borrowing foreign loans with little to show for them. The president was not in control of his government because he was hobbled down by illness and constant traveling to London sometimes for months.

    It is too early to pass judgement on the Bola Ahmed Tinubu government except to say if it succeeds on its infrastructure drive of building trans-Nigerian roads from Lagos to Calabar and Badagry to Sokoto, it would have made serious impact on the economic development where its current record of stabilizing the national economy and the Naira marks a great departure from the free fall of the economy during the Muhammadu Buhari era. There is however the challenge of making this macro-economic success translate into micro-economic success and money in the pockets of Nigerians.

    Unfortunately the two recurring decimals of corruption and tribalism are as high as in previous years. There is also an attempt to create regional bodies to diffuse more power from the centre to the periphery but it is on top of the 36 states and the 774 local governments administration areas creating another layer of administrative organs in already over bureaucratized country all dependent on federal funding and whose staffing demonstrate all the signs of political jobbery. What this shows is that there is a need for wholesale review of the present constitution to move away from the concentration of power into the hands of a pooh-bah in a plural country. There is so much emphasis on politics in this country and little or no emphasis on the economy.

    There is ever a thriving discussion on sharing of the national cake and very little discussion on baking the cake and yet it is clear to all intelligent observers that if we expand the economy and there is work for those who want to work, it would not matter who occupies what office because people will be too tired after work that what they need is rest after a hard day’s work. What we have in today’s Nigeria is that we abdicate the demands for work and pray for breakthrough in our churches and mosques and we talk about making heaven when we have not made a much easier success on earth!

    The founder of the CITADEL Church publicly presented a plan for economic development for this country in which he emphasized the role of Biblical Joseph in saving ancient Egypt at the time of global famine. It was based on dividing the country into economic zones and each zone producing on the basis of economic advantages. It made so much impression on me that I hope the managers of our economy would factor it into their plan for economic revival of our country. There is much to be done in this country and little time left for us to do it. We should learn from countries like India, Russia and Canada whose vast territories and complex linguistic diversity did not hinder their development and countries like Germany and Japan which were destroyed by the Western allies during the Second World War and having no natural resources but depending on the grey matter of their people and their grit and determination, pulled out of economic ruin because they paid more attention to merit than any other consideration.

    Nigeria is not devoid of this and we owe it to our people and those coming after us that there is nothing wrong with our stars but only with us. We can do it only if we plan to succeed. We may be an artificial country yet most countries are like us, there are very few countries that were created naturally. Think about this.

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    Finally I have decided to leave the issue of our country’s relevance in the comity of nations till the last on the basis of the fact that a country’s foreign policy, power or influence is linked with how the country is doing at home; in other words, there is a link between the domestic power of a country and its influence abroad. When Nigeria fought the civil war, substantial portions of the international community were appalled at the suffering of children, women and the elderly. The French under General Charles de Gaulle was so touched that but for the British pressure, France would have recognized Biafra. The British were on Nigeria’s side because of the economic ties between Britain and Nigeria and the influence Nigeria‘s presence in the Commonwealth of nations. But for British influence on  our side, President Richard Nixon  of America would have swung to the side of Biafra  because of the powerful influence of Biafran propaganda in the west. The Egyptian pilots who flew the MIG29 jets sold to us by the Russians were probably driven by Islamic motive. Whatever were the motives of each nations involved in the Nigerian-Biafran civil war, the underlying work of diplomats was very important. It is true that global communication advances are eroding the traditional influence of diplomatic representations but we must not completely cut off ourselves from showing the flag where it truly matters. The current economic situation in our country may not make full diplomatic representation at the highest level wise but we can rationalize our representation to our traditional trading partners and to the capitals of the greatest powers in the world starting from the capitals of all members of the Security Council of the United Nations and to the UN itself. We can reduce the crowd of representatives in African countries and have double representation – accreditation in most of them on regional basis.

    I do not believe that we should leave all our embassies manned by charge d’affaires ad interim. It sends the wrong signals that our country is bankrupt and cannot be taken serious by economic actors where it really matters. At our level of development, we cannot afford to be taken as a basket case.

    The reasons why the Tinubu administration does not have principal representatives of the country is understandable but not overwhelming. Our African brothers are beginning to lose interest in us and we cannot afford this at the same time we are batting for influence in the world and claiming that a reformed UN must have African representation on the UN Security Council. We have put our country forward as the natural African leader. We have to work to earn the leadership of Africa and the Black world.

  • Latest China-Africa summit

    Latest China-Africa summit

    I have written many times deprecating the phenomenon of African heads of state or government rushing in and out of major metropolitan centres like London, Paris, Washington,  Beijing,  Tokyo and others to provide them comic relief and inviting African heads of government or state to come and make serious people laugh at their penury and  global jamboree. It will soon be New Delhi, Lisbon, Madrid, Moscow and any global power that needs funny African rulers wearing what to them looks funny.

    Recently 52 or so African heads of state and government assembled as they do annually in Beijing to meet With President Xi Jinping in a one-way dialogue in which the Chinese are presented with a list of requests on developmental projects spanning civil and military spheres of life. Most of the African countries are already indebted to China and they are not really in positions of serious binary negotiations. Sometimes, the African countries are just like Oliver Twist asking for more and more without understanding Chinese oriental mentality of asking for their last pint of blood from them and their children when their loans mature.

    Orientals are generally not in the habit of forgiving creditors their debts. It is not just in their character and I am afraid that Africans will in future learn to their own detriment that the Chinese like other Orientals are incredible taskmasters not because they are wicked but because it is in their blood. There is no free lunch anywhere in the world! Whatever loans the Chinese are giving out now will be collected with interest in future or assets will be seized when the debtors are not able to pay. The experience of Sri Lanka which took generous Chinese loans for the development and modernisation of their ports and when they could not pay the Chinese simply seized the ports in lieu of the money owed.

    I hope the African states will open their eyes when taking Chinese loans or any loans at all because they are not grants. Many of the projects the Chinese funded like the TANZAM railways running from  Zambia to Tanzania  built  between 1970 and 1975 as the “UHURU RAILWAY” is now not running  and is virtually out of commission and has gone into a state of almost total disrepair and is being repaired with another loan of $1 billion provided by the Chinese. In our own case in Nigeria, the Kaduna- Abuja railway has been rendered hors de combat because of terrorists attack and bureaucratic thefts and it thus cannot pay its way. The Lagos-Ibadan railway is hardly a tale of success and the Nnamdi Azikiwe airport in Abuja runs fitfully and not always and only God knows the fate of the Kano-Katsina-Zinder railway all built with Chinese money. The intercity railway in Lagos stands as a case of success if the bureaucratic shenanigans and corruption are minimized.

    The problem of these railways is that only sections are complete. For example the Lagos – Ibadan railway is the southern portion of the line going to Kano. Without its completion, it can hardly be expected to pay its way.

    We also have the problem of Nigerians not willing to pay for infrastructural modernisation because they think government owes them a living! Toll roads and bridges are objects of protest and damage in Nigeria whereas in the civilised parts of the world, people are made to pay for new roads, railways and other means of modern transportation and communication. There is a need for civic education to inculcate into our people the primary responsibility of citizens to pay tax. Bill Gates on a recent visit to Nigeria pointed out that Nigerians do not pay taxes. Of course, it is generally known that only salary earners pay taxes while business people hardly pay taxes no matter how wealthy they are. They simply bribe their ways through. The complaint is that taxes are routinely stolen.

    I am afraid we have come to a point in our country when we have to put our feet down and say no more stealing and police the state to prevent arrant looting after all, thieves are people not spirits. If we are serious we can do it. China that we run with begging hats and plates in hand to was one of the most corrupt societies in the world. China and India used to struggle with each other about which country was worse than the other until China of Mao Tsetung decided to deal brutally with any rogue pilfering from state coffers. Anyone pilfering was met by bullets. People sat up and this severe retribution continues till today.

    Until we do this, corruption will continue until it destroys this country. The China we all run to borrow money was within my lifetime abjectly poor until the Chinese revolution in 1949. The country continued to engage in life and death struggle with poverty until Deng Xiaoping took power and ruled the country between 1978 and 1989 and completely transformed the country from being in the backwoods of development in the world into what it is today as the second most powerful country in the world, second to the United States and on the cusp of overtaking it in the next decade or two, all things being equal. The phenomenal development of China within a living memory should be what our people should try to emulate. Borrowing money and opening our markets to all kind of junks was not the Chinese way to development. The way the Chinese mobilised its huge population for development should be an example which a country like Nigeria should follow rather than importing all kinds of Chinese goods into our country.

    Instead of wasting our time and the little money we have on constitutional debates and writing and rewriting our constitution, we should take our ploughs, hoes and cutlasses and go to farms with the aim of not only feeding ourselves but the rest of the world as Americans do.

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    I am opposed to all the presidents of Africa queuing up in foreign countries to beg for assistance when we are endowed with available land, sunshine, water, air, minerals underneath the earth and flowing water that can be harnessed for hydroelectricity. It is not just the humiliation in Beijing that I am opposed to; I am also opposed to all African presidents going to Paris as begging children every year for France – Africa powwow. The same goes for the similar phenomenon in London, Washington, Tokyo, in New Delhi, Berlin with Madrid and who knows when even puny Lisbon will follow.

    These African rulers will fly in their executive jets costing millions of dollars to purchase, to beg for money which is sometimes not up to the cost of their planes.  We are told that the Chinese is sharing $50 billion among the 52 African states assembled in Beijing. This means some of these presidents would go home with less than $1 billion when prorated. It just doesn’t make sense when the monarch of Britain, heads of state and government in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy rents planes from their national airlines when they want to fly and make an impression. No one can begrudge the United States, Russia and even France for using executive personalised aircraft’s for  their trips abroad, after all, they make them and can afford them without borrowing or breaking the backs of their people to buy them

    If there is need for all African countries to meet with these powerful countries for assistance, let the OAU decide that as from now onwards, African ambassadors would represent their countries in bilateral relations one on one and if they have to be met as a collective, there should be no problem and for the countries that have no ambassadors in these major capitals, they should be represented by neighbouring countries’ ambassadors  or those of regional organisations like Economic Community of West Africa – ECOWAS or SADC or such regional bodies. This annual jamborees reminds me of what the late President George Walker Bush said about such International jamborees. He said the smaller countries speak longer than the bigger and more important participants representing important countries and that their long speeches are simply ignored. I hope this is not the case with these African jamborees simply providing comic relief for the government leaders of busy and serious countries!

  • Growing old: Personal testimony

    Growing old: Personal testimony

    The oldest person alive is Ethel Caterham living in Surrey England but the oldest person who ever lived in modern times is Jeanne Calment of France who lived for 122 years. There were many people in the Bible for example Methuselah, who were reputed to have lived much older than these ones.   The figures cited here were the verified ones. There are people in Okemesi, my home town where people are said to be in their 120s. This may be true because many people there do not eat junk food or any processed food.  The average age in Nigeria is in the 50s and the global statistics is much higher than that. Winston Churchill the then hardworking war leader in England died at 90 and Charles de Gaulle died at 79. These two do not represent the global average and may be due to their genes. I however want to look at the issue from my personal perspective.

    A few years ago on retirement, Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) was reported to have said old age is like a plague which affects everyone. The meaning of this statement is clear: because whether one likes it or not, and if one is lucky to reach old age since only eight percent of the world’s population reaches that age bracket, one is bound to go through several experiences before the curtains are drawn. 

    I was in France collecting data for my PhD when General de Gaulle made this statement around 1968 when he was already 78 and had been holding leadership positions of the French people since becoming leader of “Free France” from 1944 to 1946 and had been president of France for many years from 1958 to 1969. One thing that no one can forget about him was his Gallic pride and arrogance which made him almost feel he was France. But his comment on old age is so cryptic that one cannot easily forget and these days as an old man I always recall it.

    It was not until I turned 80 that I really began to feel the years God had granted me. In my journey of life, from one half-sister of mine who was over 80 before she passed on to the great beyond, I am   the longest living person in my family. Both my great parents and my mother lived over a hundred years but my father died when he was 60 and I was nine then and it was the grace of God and that of my brother, Chief Joseph Oduola Osuntokun that saw me through primary and secondary schools.  All my highly distinguished brothers died before they reached 70 years and I did not expect to live long on the account of my siblings’ short lives.

    I went to the University of Ibadan on scholarship and to graduate school first on University of Ibadan scholarship and when I got the Canadian Walton Killam Trust Memorial Graduate Students Award, thus I relieved the University of Ibadan the burden of paying for my PhD degree. I have had a very successful academic life which took me to teaching at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada as an assistant professor from 1970 to 1971, lecturer in the University of the West Indies 1971 to 1972. I came back home in 1972 at the instigation of my teacher, Professor J.F. Ade. Ajayi my benefactor and the University of Ibadan, my Alma Mater sent me along with other young people to Jos to establish what was then known as the University of Ibadan Jos Campus.

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    Needless to say I thoroughly enjoyed the place because it gave me and others opportunity to know our country and to shape the destiny of our younger compatriots. Unfortunately on a personal note, my  young  unforgettable wife,  Abiodun Olayinka lost two pregnancies  in Jos due to inadequate health facilities which forced me to leave Jos for the University of Lagos in 1974 and where I retired from  in 2005. I however went for some public service in the National Universities Commission 1978-1982, University of Maiduguri 1982 to 1984, Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1988-1991, ambassador to Germany 1991 to 1995. After retirement, I helped my church with the establishment and running of the Redeemer’s University Ede from 2005 to 2016; I was in the Presidential Advisory Council on International Affairs (1999- 2015) pro bono. I also served my state as pro chancellor and chairman of the governing Council of Ekiti State University from 2011 to 2014 and finally retired from active service in 2016 because of old age and since then I have been in what the English would call “splendid isolation”.

    Perhaps I should say the most important thing in my life since my wife joined the Saints triumphant in 2003 is that by the grace of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God ordained me, first as a Deacon, and later as an Elder, in the church and I am committed to doing all that lies in my power to work towards the advancement of the church and the gospel of Jesus the Christ.

    My experience as an old man is varied. Some establishment like GTB gives elderly people the privilege of being first served before others when we go there for banking transactions and I must say, I find this very satisfying. Old age in Nigeria, unlike abroad generally speaking, does not confer advantage on the elderly. In the UK and at least in some parts of the USA, once you are a citizen over 65, one is exempt from paying for public transport. The public transport we have in Lagos for example is so overcrowded that if one was given free ride, I will not consider it a favour. In our culture the elderly are respected as repositories of wisdom. But it is not uncommon to see old people derided nowadays as those who caused the problems confronting Nigeria which young ones are now facing.

    Let me go to the physical degeneration aspect of being old, with my situation as an example.  When my son was nine in the 1970s, I always gave him a physical advantage by asking him to stay in front   of me for a distance of about twelve or so yards when running just to encourage him. Later, he told me if I wanted to run with him, we should start together. Of course when we started together, he always left me behind. I tried to engage Finn, one of my grandsons in long tennis match. I was surprised when the young man diplomatically asked us to go home because I simply couldn’t get the ball over the net in several of my service games!

    There was a time we went for bicycle ride in Atlanta and to my chagrin, I found riding a bicycle extremely difficult and I had to ask my son and his family not to wait for me because I wasn’t fit enough. The last experience I had with one of my daughters’ family was when they took me for a canoe expedition on a river called “Beautiful”, an estuary of Lake Ontario. We had to paddle the canoe over a distance of eight kilometres. I was in a separate boat with my son in-law while my daughter and her daughter were in another canoe and my grandson had a separate boat where he was sole sailor. It took hours for us to reach our destination. Despite the fact that my son-in-law did most of the donkey job of paddling our boat, I was so exhausted that I couldn’t get out of the canoe unassisted when we reached our destination!

    I slept for about 10 hours that night because of the exhaustion. These days the most rigorous exercise I am comfortable with is walking.

    I don’t have any social life any more. This may be because I am a widower. The church provides avenues for my social interaction and support. I miss not having anybody to share my thoughts with at night when everyone has gone their different ways. It is terrible to be alone but surprisingly, I have gotten used to it.  Loneliness can sometimes be good for our souls. This gives me time to ruminate about events in my country and to be obsessive about finding solutions even when nobody asks for my views and opinions. If the infrastructure were good, this is the time for people like me to sit down or up to write their memoirs and share their ideas for the future with men in power today and those who would come later.

    Finally apart from the cost of travelling, I am now no longer interested in travelling. It is a hazard going through the airports and immigration desks in foreign countries and queuing up for visa interviews in embassies and the tedium of hours in flight. Sleeping on strange beds in hotels and even in my children’s homes is not the best for me at this stage of my life. Reconciliation of one’s desire with one’s strength is the greatest challenge I feel as I grow older day by day and I have to sustain myself with medications, which thank God, I can afford but which the general Nigerian population can hardly afford. This should not be the case because everyone has the right to sustainably good health .This unfortunately is a luxury in Nigeria and most places in the world.

  • As Genocide in Gaza is confirmed by UN committee

    As Genocide in Gaza is confirmed by UN committee

    As I write, the Israeli army and air force is rolling into already pulverised Gaza. What is left is the full occupation of Gaza. Despite the opposition of about 70% of Israeli people and the leadership of the Israeli military and its intelligence and the vast international community, the government of Israel led by Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to wipe out the two million Palestinians through direct military action, starvation and arrested procreation by ensuring the people of Gaza would be too distressed that the question of regular union between man and woman would be the last in the minds of people of Gaza as claimed by an independent committee charged to investigate the situation in Israel by the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations.

    Already, there is a case filed by the government of South Africa before the world court over a year ago. At that time some people felt South Africa had no locus standi and that the country was jumping the gun so to say. But events in Gaza have now confirmed the charges of South Africa which is still pending. Although the UN is yet to ratify the committee report on genocide, it is certain the report will be confirmed. It is also certain that if it ever comes to UN Security Council, it will be vetoed by the United States. This is the hope of Israel that it can virtually do anything as long as President Donald Trump of the United States backs it, forgetting the ephemerality of the Trump presidency and that not the majority of Americans are in support. Netanyahu seems even to ignore the feelings of the majority of Americans which by all polling companies say they are worried by the direction of American foreign policy.

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    Now the world is constantly hearing the word genocide which describes the scientific eradication of Jews in Europe from 1941 to 1945. It is ironic that Israel is being accused of committing the same thing and its prime minister and some members of its present right wing government. The only extenuating circumstance in this sordid situation is that the vast majority of Israelis in whose name rampant murders are being committed are loudly disowning the actions of the government. The question to ask is why the Netanyahu government is committing crime in the full glare of television. When the Nazi government of Germany did this to the Jews and others it rejected, it did this hoping that these murders will not be discovered. Israel is not trying to hide this as long as the Trump administration condones its actions and indeed supports it.

    What worries me is its present United States’ Secretary of State, Marco Rubio who obviously is from the Latino minority is doing everything to please Trump and does not try to moderate the obviously wrong American direction that is alienating the global community. If this is what a former senator with considerable experience has to do to keep a job that he will be sorry in future when the Republican administration unravels.

    Trump is having a smooth ride in the Middle East because the Arabs allow or shall we say, the corrupt Arab regimes which do not reflect the Arab street allow him because they are somehow dependent on American security support politically and financially. The US has troops for example in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar and the Mediterranean fleet which monitors the security situation in the Middle East. This is why the countries of the Middle East are not really free. Any of them that manifest true sovereignty is quickly destabilised and their leaders removed. The only country in the Middle East that tries to be truly free is Iran which from the time of Ayatollah Rumeini has suffered externally-engineered invasion by Iraq and internally mobilised religious and ethnic difference that have humbled its economy. Even far-afield Pakistan in spite of being a nuclear weapon state does not enjoy full sovereignty because of American political subterfuge. The political freedom enjoyed in previous times by Abdel Nasser’s regime and  Syria’s Basher Assad’s  is now forlorn history and this is why Israel is allegedly creating a Middle East in its own image where Israel has full control of the Middle East air with American and sometimes European support.

    The problems Israel may have in the future when European security is decoupled from subservience to American command is that it will find itself facing a united Middle East detached from American control and in a world where American power is vastly diminished from its present global hegemony.

    I write as a friend of Israel because as a Christian my religion says I should pray for the peace of Israel. But as a human being, I believe God also created the Palestinians. If I am to follow popular Christian interpretation of the Bible, Arabs are the descendants of Ismael while the Jews are descendants of Isaac, both of them are descendants of father Abraham. I cannot pray for one section of Abrahamic legacy and curse the other. I say this to satisfy those who base their arguments on crude scripture which I do not believe is sufficient to deny human rights to life to any particular people.

    This reminds me of what Leopold Sedar Senghor, the first president of independent Republic of Senegal said about the “trilogy of suffering people, the African, Arabs and the Jews”. This feeling affected our foreign policy for years leading to Nigeria’s recognition of the State of Palestine and allowing its ambassador to be the doyen of all ambassadors in Nigeria based on his longevity of stay in Nigeria.

    As we move closer to the next General Assembly of the United Nations in two weeks’ time when the EU and most countries in Europe recognize the existence of Palestine followed by the stampede of recognition by the rest of the world, Israel will remain completely isolated and alienated from the rest of the world. This will be a pity and unfortunate denouement for Israel which attracted the support of the whole of the world hitherto because the genocide committed against the Jews historically in Russia and Germany and the states hostility against them in Europe and the United States. The present wicked policy of murder committed against the Palestinians is now fuelling the rise of racism and antisemitism against innocent people of Jewish descent.

    I just came back from visits to France, Spain, Great Britain, the United States, Canada and Ireland I noticed a perceptible and troubling hostility to Israel totally different from official relations of those countries with Israel. Parents were eager to protect their children from watching evening news disseminating killings by Israeli troops of defenceless women, children, elderly children labelled as terrorists. One is appalled by international global media parroting Israeli propaganda labelling these people being slaughtered as Hamas terrorists. The ongoing campaign of Israel in Gaza is totally unequal conflict between a modern army armed to the teeth with American and European weapons against a ragtag group of Arab murders which a well-trained mobile police force could have captured several months ago. To describe what is going  on right now  against poor people of Gaza  as a war to root out 3000 Hamas is a misuse of words and portraying arrant murder and genocide committed against women and under age children as a war begs the question and shows a member- state of the United Nations disobey all the international protocols of war protecting children, women, elderly people and a civilian population  and committing genocide because it has the United States backing is totally unbecoming of Israel for which Israel and the entire United Nations stand condemned and is condemned.

  • The global breakdown of pacific relations

    The global breakdown of pacific relations

    About two weeks ago, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, suddenly came out with an executive order changing the name of the Defence Department to War Department to indicate, according to him that he wants the potential adversaries of the US to note that the gun is loaded to be used against any country or alliance that may challenge the United States.

    Since the president is in possession of intelligence that may not be available to other people, it was conceded to him that he must have a reason for the aggressive change.  However, the global political environment in recent times has not been conducive to peace. The Russian war on Ukraine despite the Alaska meeting of Putin and Trump has not relented. On top of this is the unfinished war against Iran and the cruel crushing war against undefended people in Gaza that is raising the temperature of every sane person in the world. On top of this is Donald Trump’s tariff war against every trading nation with the United States without discrimination between allies and enemies.

    As if in reaction, though probably a long planned and scheduled programme, the People’s Republic of China mounted a celebration of power by staging a great display of military muscle in Beijing, celebrating the surrender of Japan in 1945 as if China was responsible for forcing Japan to surrender rather than the decisive United States dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    China invited most of the authoritarian regimes in the world like Russia, Turkey, North Korea and, surprisingly India that Trump’s policy has put in the wilderness by imposing 50% trade tariff to punish it for buying cheap crude oil and gas from Russia which is helping Russia to fund its campaign against Ukraine.

    India, the most populous country in the world seems to be shifting its implicit alliance from the democratic world to the changing leadership of China in a new world order led by China. To indicate that the peace of the world is under some kind of threat, the recent changes in the democratic western alliance leads one to the belief that we are witnessing mobilisation for war unless care is taken.

    Recently the British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said we were living in dangerous times. This was echoed by the new American Secretary of State for War Pete Hegseth.  One would have said this was the usual exaggeration for which the Donald Trump crowd is known for. But coming from the British prime minister, one cannot simply dismiss it because this was a preambular statement to the launching of a new British Defence and Strategic Review document which is going to increase Britain’s defence spending to 3% of the country’s GDP.  This will be well above the current 2%, still way below the 5% President Donald Trump is demanding from all NATO member countries even though the current amount the USA is spending is $895 billion just about 3.4%of its GDP which is way above the current expenditure on defence by the next three countries of China, $ 266.85 billion, Russia $126 billion and India, which comes fourth with an expenditure of $75 billion. From these figures, it can be seen that the USA alone spends more than the next three countries combined. The British prime minister’s statement was further explained by the Secretary of State for Defence, Right Honourable John Healey, who claimed that his country aims to build about 11 attack submarines, expand the carrying capacity of the British Navy and reinvigorate the air force by buying additional American-built F35 and increase the number of British-built typhoon aircraft and start recruiting people into the fighting force of the army while keeping the current men and women happy by improving their accommodation and stipends.

    All these coming from a socialist government which traditionally preferred to spend money on social services indicate that its analysis on threat to the realm is serious. This of course should be taken in the context of the NATO members feeling about the unreliability of the USA as a partner because of the statements of Trump who has perhaps rightly been saying that American Defence partners must share the burden of defence and not expect America to carry their burden as it used to do hitherto. This sharing of burden on defence extends not only to NATO members alone but to Japan and South Korea and to the rich Arab oil kingdoms and to Israel where the Israeli tail wags the American dog!

    As at the moment, Trump is prepared to fight future Israeli war against Iran and to possibly level the Persian theocracy down unless it kowtows to Israeli diktat and abandons its nuclear program. The current doctrine of expanding defence spending has also been embraced by the new German chancellor, Friedrich Merz who has publicly committed his country to go beyond 3% of GDP from its current low of below 2%. Merz has signed agreements with Ukraine to help it defend itself by building its own defence industry. The German posture on defence is influenced by President Putin’s aggression in Ukraine because ordinarily Germany is forbidden to rearm because of its militaristic past but in the current global context, the Western Alliance sees nothing wrong with Germany’s rearmament. For reasons of the big powers guarantee of Germany’s permanent disarmament, the Germans would probably have built their own nuclear arsenal for which they are capable of doing and the know-how of which they have. The current aggression of Russia in Ukraine has led to President Macron’s signing defence agreements with Poland in addition to the European Union’s opposition to the Russian threat.

    All these coming after Trump’s bluff that has not impressed President Putin, it seems the Europeans are determined to defend themselves with or without American support. A coordination of British, French and German preparedness to defend their interests on the continent of Europe and their threat to seize accumulated Russian financial assets and investments in Europe may eventually force Putin to count the cost of his policy of rebuilding the lost Russian empire and the reconstruction of the collapsed USSR.

    Recently the security conference in Singapore to which the Chinese virtually ignored by sending a low ranking delegation to witness, the campaign of rearmament carried to their door step with President Macron delivering the key note address and offering France’s support for their defence of democracy, and development for countries in South East Asia and warning those countries of the need to be prepared to defend their country’s autonomy. He also called on China to prevail on North Korea to stop its continued intervention on the Russian side in the current war between Russia and Ukraine on European continent.

    The American Secretary of State for War Pete Hegseth was less diplomatic as characteristic of American “open diplomacy” established since the time of President Woodrow Wilson at the end of the First World War by openly accusing China of threatening Taiwan and the Philippines and calling on countries in Asia to be ready to resist Chinese communist threats by increasing their arms spending. He gave the impression that America is prepared to defend Taiwan which is against Trump’s campaign statement that he would not commit American troops to the defence of Taiwan. The Japanese and the South Koreans were not openly attacking China.  But Japan in recent times seems to have abandoned its pacific policy to a policy of armed neutrality in Asia but is ready to protect the Japanese homeland. In the first Trump administration, the Japanese were publicly goaded to develop their nuclear umbrella. The Japanese did not publicly state their position apart from saying the American-Japanese treaty of defence was sufficient.

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    My guess is that the Chinese does not have expansionist ambitions on the Philippines except to contest fishing rights on disputed islands in the South China Sea and Vietnam is capable of resisting Chinese ambitions. As for Taiwan, the eventual unification with the mainland is a foregone conclusion with or without America’s acquiescence.

    To make the new Arms race palatable to the suffering electorate in Europe particularly in Great Britain, politicians are now talking of a new concept of “DEFENCE DIVIDENDS” meaning that with expansion of defence industries in their neighbourhood, jobs will be created for working class people who can either enlist in the armed forces or work in arms industries. The idea of defence dividends are not strange because when a country’s economy is put on war footing, there seems to be the appearance of full employment which is a false prosperity against which the post 2nd World war American president and previous Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during the Second World War, General David Dwight Eisenhower warned against when he advised his country against being taken over by the “military industrial complex“.

    There is however no doubt that there is a growing hysteria about the possibility of an outbreak of war in Europe and the rest of us cannot just ignore it because of our distance from the current theatre of the conflict in Eastern Europe. However we can hope that like all other regional wars of the past since 1945, the Russian war in Ukraine will be contained because its spread and development into a nuclear confrontation is just too ghastly to be imagined. Even President Trump knows this and he is probably capable of palliating the military desire of his MAGA group by going to war against Venezuela and other weak countries in the Caribbean or South America accusing them of poisoning America people with their allegedly nefarious involvement in drug smuggling into the US which is less risky against a nuclear armed opponent.