The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Osuntokun

  • The second coming of President Trump

    The second coming of President Trump

    Donald John Trump was sworn in as president of the United States of America to succeed Joseph Biden the Democratic Party incumbent after a bitterly fought campaign against Kamala Harris on January 20. Former president, Joe Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris did everything to the letter to make the transition perfect and in order, starting from the certification of Trump’s election by the Congress headed by Kamala Harris, and the actual swearing in on January 20.

    I am not sure President Trump got the message because, in January 2021, Trump was not at the swearing in of Biden as president because he said he was robbed of the presidency by rigging while in the previous December, he had wanted his own Vice President Mike Pence hanged by the Trump inspired mob. What a world! And this happened in the so-called home of modern democracy as often claimed by the United States.

    Now Trump is president and the whole world is watching. The first thing he did on the first day of his second coming was the signing of about a hundred executive orders that carried the weight of law while bypassing the Congress and affecting virtually everything his government was going to do with the exception of the financial appropriations to run his entire government. This would have been a bridge too far. But he has signed executive orders freezing all foreign assistance, removing illegal immigrants from the United States soil, firing civil servants and asking Elon Musk to cut the fat out of the unnecessary bureaucracy and trim the federal departments. He is banning automatic citizenship of children born in the States by illegal immigrants, stating that there are only two genders recognized by law – male and female and presumably all others would be illegal; withdrawing the USA from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and stopping the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) from communication with the WHO. He has also withdrawn from the UNESCO, and from the Climate Change Convention. He has mercifully not withdrawn yet from the UN and its specialized organizations and NATO.

    He has maintained threatening postures to Canada and Mexico and renamed, unilaterally, the Gulf of Mexico the gulf of America. Some of his orders are actionable and a judge in Washington State has declared ultra vires his order of denying citizenship to children born in the USA by illegal immigrants. There will be several court actions against his orders. Some American hemispheric countries to which immigrants are being dumped have protested that his agents brought back their nationals in chains but he has threatened them with tariffs if they refuse to take back their nationals who have illegally entered the USA. These actions of President Trump are hugely popular with his Republican base and with white Americans who, over the years, have feared that the flood of immigrants may make them a minority in their own country.

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    Whatever the reasons for the overwhelming victory of Trump  last November, his promise to radically change things was one of them and immigration and inflation were at the top of the whole table of restructuring promised by Trump. He has not started tackling the issue of inflation yet but he has given orders to members of his cabinet that they will have to fight inflation which is hydra-headed wherever it rears up its ugly head. Well; talk is cheap. Everyone is waiting for Trump’s action on inflation now that his controversial cabinet has virtually been stream-rolled through Congress. The most controversial being Pete Hegseth who narrowly passed Senate confirmation only when the also controversial Vice President  James David (JD) Vance  cast a tie breaking vote for him in a Senate dominated by the Republican majority. This fact indicates that the Republican majority may yet be a restraining instrument for the rather wild and unstable president. 

    The big things he promised would have to go to Congress. Such issues as medical care and tax reduction for the rich, reform of the Pentagon and his plan for infrastructure would have to be tabled before Congress where his party does not have the kind of overwhelming support given to him country-wide in the last election.

    His choice of ambassador to the UN is already raising eyebrows because he said there is no such people as Palestinians and his ambassador designate to Israel says the Lord Almighty gave the land of Israel to the Israeli people and there is nothing like West Bank of the River Jordan but Samaria. Now these are the people who will be trying to conduct United States’ diplomacy in the Middle East, the  gun powder tinder box  of the world where the three monotheistic religions of Judaism,  Christianity and Islam are dangerously existing in close proximity and therefore needing expert hand to prevent ever ready explosion.

    Trump himself on the day people are remembering the liberation by Soviet troops in 1945 of Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland where over a million Jews were incarcerated and incinerated, carelessly said Gaza Strip, home to over two million Palestinians may need to be cleared of the Palestinians. While he was pandering to Jewish conservative politicians including Netanyahu who may want to annex the West Bank and Gaza, his policy super czar, Elon Musk was attending the Alternative for Germany (Alernatif Fur Deutschland) party regardless of it being branded a neo-Nazi party and even giving a NAZI salute and asking Germans not to feel guilty about the sins of their ancestors.

    The contradictions surrounding Trump gives one a lot of worry and many right thinking Americans are beginning to worry. One of such people is the Independent Senator from Vermont, Senator Bernie Sanders who rightly claims that the American government has been captured by oligarchs just like that of Russia and that Elon Musk alone virtually outspent the Democratic Party and used the influence of money to buy the presidency in which he now is going to play a prominent part in which he may even eclipse old man Donald Trump!

    Donald Trump’s policies when they finally materialize may disrupt the system as he himself has said he wants to do. He will upset many leaders of countries in the world beginning from the Allies in the North Atlantic Treaty  Organization which has been asked to spend five percent of their budgets on defence when many of them are still struggling to meet the two or three percent which was previously the benchmark.

    Certainly most of the European countries like Germany and France would not be able to meet this target on ideological grounds and in peace time. Is Trump going to exit NATO as he has done to other international organizations? Is he also going to militarily annex Greenland from Denmark a fellow NATO ally? Is he going to attack Panama in order to seize the Panama Canal?

    I was in Canada last summer and the province of Ontario patriotically shows visitors how they fought the British and even their Southern neighbours the USA in the 19th century and if push comes to shove they probably will fight again. Trump should not take Canadians for granted because they are justifiably proud of their country. Yes, Canada benefits from trade with the USA but so does the USA benefit from trade with Canada. The same can be said for Mexico that Trump with little sense of history has been threatening and insulting.  It is not necessary to make enemies of the amigos!

    The same goes for the Chinese and the members of the EU that the American president has been threatening with high tariffs. No country is an island. We live in a symbiotic world and the world is interdependent. It is true that the USA is the linchpin of the world economy but China is the workshop of the world making goods from consumer to industrial and sophisticated goods like chips without which the USA Silicon Valley will not thrive. Yes it is true Chinese prosperity has been largely due to her access to American market but this has been on bilateral basis and Chinese interests hold trillions of American bonds. The point I am making is that the economy of the two superpowers have become intertwined that sudden separation will not be without serious consequences.

    The so-called third world including us in Africa, the proverbial wretched of the earth, are not totally useless in this struggle for survival.  Some of our countries out of desperation for fairness in an unkind world have joined the BRICS group apparently as a threat to dollar imperialism. We have got also the market as small as it may be; we also have the natural resources, forests and land. Mr Trump had better be careful not to burn down the bridge and destroy the tremendous goodwill which previous American administrations had built over the years.

  • Pre-colonial culture in Nigeria

    Pre-colonial culture in Nigeria

    Culture is the total way of life of a people as it manifests in their cuisine, dress, belief, world view, language, leisure, work and play.  There is a universal human culture because all men and women are descended from a common ancestry/ But in course of time, there develops noticeable differences determined by our different history and environment. 

    Nigeria is of course a plural state made up of some nations and nationalities.  It follows therefore that there are as many cultures in Nigeria as there are different nationalities. Nevertheless there has been a gradual synthesis of cultures in the Nigerian area even before the area became known as Nigeria.  The peoples of the large area watered by the Benue and the Niger rivers had historically been in contact with one another before the advent of colonialism. So we can identify a commonality of culture at least in the material sense. 

    Most of the languages in this wide area with the exception of Hausa and Kanuri belong to the Kwa family of the Niger-Congo group of languages.  The material remains of the Nok, Ife, Benin, Bida and Ugbo-Ukwu form a cultural continuity artistically. Furthermore the system of government in the wide area falls within two broad typologies namely chiefly institutions and acephalous or segmentary system of political organization. The Hausa Kanuri, Nupe, Igalla, Jukun/Chamba, Yoruba, Efik, Edo, Itshekiri and a few other share very well established monarchical forms of government while other ethnic groups like Igbo, Idoma, Urhobo, Tiv, Ibibio, Anang, Kamberi, Kilba, Ebira and the majority of the smaller nationalities operated along segmentary or stateless societies.  Even the Fulani who later became identified with the rulership of the emirates are largely segmentary people. 

    It is safe to say acephalous village societies were the commonest political culture in pre-colonial Nigeria.  In some of the monarchies the kings were regarded as divine and they or dead ones were sometimes elevated to the status of gods as was the case with Sango of Oyo.  But kings were largely seen as being second to the gods.  Most people in the Nigerian area in pre-colonial times worshipped a pantheon of gods in ascending hierarchy before the Almighty himself.  The people believed in the Supreme Being whom they variously called Olorun (the owner of heaven) Abasi, Chukwu, Chineke, Ubangiji, Osanobua, Oghene and so on and so forth.  The Almighty was usually not approached directly but through lesser gods to whom they offered animal and food offerings as propitiation for their sins.  Sometimes religion was exploited by the rulers to ensure loyalty of the subjects.  In this regard, priests were sometimes part of the royal retinue and in some cases the roles of the kings were so highly ritualized that they and the priests were sometimes indistinguishable as in Ife, Benin and in Wukari. 

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    The kings wherever they were to be found were not absolute rulers.  Their seemingly absolute powers as vice-regal to God were constrained by councils of notables who were most times independent of the king’s power as ‘kingmakers’ and tribunes of the people.  There is evidence to suggest cultural borrowing and emulation by groups in the Nigerian area in pre-colonial times.  The Tiv and Chamba for example were influenced by the Jukun to the extent that Tivs for example began to adopt Jukun institutional symbols such as drums and to organize themselves in small principalities.  What is true of the Tivs was also true of several Ekiti and Akoko principalities who borrowed insignia and titles from the Bini monarchy. It seems that the stateless or acephalous peoples felt disadvantaged in competition with organized monarchies that they began to adopt the chiefly political organizations.  This is responsible for the presence of kingdoms in the western periphery of Igboland heavily influenced by the Igalla and the Bini. 

    At the family level, what was common of the people of the Nigeria area in pre-colonial times was patriarchy and fathers ruled the homes as kings and wives and children obeyed them without question. A man had the privilege of having as many wives as his pocket will bear and the senior wives ran the domestic affairs of the families.  Children were communally brought up.  All children were regarded as belonging to the community and every truant of a child could be chastised by any older member of the community. 

    There was absolute respect for age and everybody in society knew his place according to one’s age.  In some places, there were age-grades association serving as instruments of socialization and mobilization for community effort and for war of defence in times of crisis. Most of our ethnic groups followed patrilineal descent. There were matrilineal societies like the Itshekiri and others but this was the exception rather than the rule.

    Social organization in the centralized polities like Oyo and other Yoruba kingdoms, Benin, old Calabar, Hausaland, Kwararafa (Jukuns), Kanem-Borno, Nupe and Igalla kingdoms as well as the kingdoms in the western periphery of Igboland was more complex than in the village democracies of the Igbo, Ibibio and a host of other segmentary peoples.  It should be obvious that it takes some effort to live in cities where there were contending interests which had to be harmonized than to live in villages.  Many of the centralised polities witnessed various modes of stratifications and specialization. Some employed the stratagem of secret societies like Ogboni and masquerade cults like Ekpe as instruments of execution of judicial decisions. 

    Virtually every community in the Nigerian area in pre-colonial times practiced ancestral worship.  The dead was sometimes buried in homes or near homes and people would go to the graves of their ancestors to pray and to ask their departed souls “not to sleep” and not to forget their descendants who may be going through some problems.  Africans generally believe in a continuity of existence and the afterlife was part of the African cosmology.  Masquerade cults sometimes pretended that the masquerades were earthly representations of departed ancestors.  People of course knew this was untrue but it was part of the culture to know the truth in this particular case and pretend that things were otherwise. 

    The masquerades which came out periodically and most times annually provided some form of entertainment and diversions from the drab existence of life.  Medical facilities were rudimentary but herbal medicine was usually efficacious.  There were also medicine men or shamans who claimed superior knowledge of life and to whom people took their problems.  In most cases the simple life of the people ensured that their medical ailments were such that available medical knowledge took care of.

    People ate organic food without additives and since there was no refrigeration food was fresh and this must have had some positive result on the health of the people.  The result of this was that many of the present ailments were unheard of in those days of yore. The cuisine was also unsophisticated involving liberal consumption of yams in various forms among the vast majority of Nigerians in the forest and central areas of Nigeria.  The food culture in the Savannah and Sahel areas involves the liberal use of grains such as wheat, millet, corn and sorghum.  Protein came in form of fish and game meat and beef, lamb and goats in the Northern parts of the country.  Palm oil which came from palm trees growing widely in the South was an important part of cooking while peanuts oil was common in the North.  All kinds of leafy vegetables were consumed and spices, particularly peppers were preferred condiments.  Some of the dishes such as the one in Yorubaland and Hausaland were peppery while the Igbo and others in the South-eastern part of what became Nigeria used peppers sparingly.

    Not all Nigerian people in pre-colonial Nigeria wore woven cloth.  Many of our people went about oblivious of their bareness or nakedness in what a humourist called their birthday suits.  The Yoruba, Hausa and Kanuri had always had thriving native textile industries.  The Yoruba were so successful in this regard that the Portuguese used to buy “blue cloth” from them for use in Upper Guinea Coast in the 15 and 16th centuries at the beginning of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

    The Nigerian area before the coming of colonial rule was of course not sealed off from the outside world.  The Sahara desert had not always been a barrier between the Mediterranean and the Nigerian area.  The trans-Saharan trade had provided a medium of contact between our people in the Savanna and the Mediterranean Coast.

    Trade in goatskins (Moroccan leather) had always thrived between Kano which was a commercial emporium in the Savannah and North Africa since the 14th century.  The contact was so strong especially with the advent of Islam in the 9th century that Kano became not only a centre of commerce, but of intellectual erudition.  Islam came early to Borno by the 8th century through the Fezzan and the Sudan with Islam also came horses and donkeys from Egypt as beasts of burden.  Their presence revolutionized travelling especially among the elite and also transformed most of the wars fought among the states from wars of attrition to wars of movement. 

    Islam changed almost completely the culture of people in far North of what became Nigeria.  It affected the way they dressed, ate, worshipped, married, and buried their dead, their languages and world view generally. The Jihad associated with the name of Usman dan Fadiyo, (Uthman bin Fudi) and his brother Abdullahi transformed the lives of people in what later became the caliphate stretching from the desert in the North to Nupeland and part of Yorubaland and Borgu.  Even Borno which has the primacy of place in the history of Islam in Nigeria was not untouched by the revolutionary changes in Hausaland.  Attempt by the Fulanis to take over Borno from the Saifawa dynasty that had ruled the place for hundreds of years did not succeed but it led to a regime change spearheaded by a Muslim cleric Muhammad-el-Kanemi, a Kanembu resident in Ngazargamu the then capital of Kanem-Borno. Islam provided unifying culture for the several different cultures in Nigeria and Arabic provided a written language which the rulers used not only for the spread of Islam but also for records necessary in the emerging sophisticated polities from the 19th century onwards.  Even area as far as Lagos was not untouched by Islamic culture before the advent of colonialism.  Islam came to Yorubaland including Lagos through the coming of itinerant Turkish traders and through Nupe malams who served sometimes as barbers and apothecaries.  By the 19th century preachers came from as far afield as Borno to Lagos. 

    There had always been contact between Yorubaland and Hausaland and particularly between Yorubaland and Borno. The Kanuris maintained “jokingly relationship” with the Yorubas whom they considered as “lost brothers” and the Oyo Empire relied on Borno for the supply of horses which they used to build the cavalry forces with which they overran most of Yorubaland and neighbouring Aja speaking people and the Fon of Abomey.

  • Government needs to appoint ambassadors now

    Government needs to appoint ambassadors now

    The Tinubu administration has been in power for about one and a half years and almost for half of its term and has not deemed it necessary to appoint principal representatives of the president outside Nigeria. The ostensible reason for not appointing envoys is the bad economy. After a year and a half of economic reforms, the time is ripe to use all the tools available to government to tackle whatever ails the country and diplomacy is one of those tools government can use to bring life into the economy.

    First of all, let me say the problem of adequate funding of our diplomatic missions is not new. It is a perennial problem and other administrations since the 1970s have tried unsuccessfully to confront this problem. There has been effort to rationalize diplomatic representation abroad by pruning down the number of missions. I have had personal experience in this regard under the Babangida military regime and Obasanjo civilian administration. We closed a few missions and consulates down and the problems became manageable but it did not totally disappear. It was a very difficult problem because missions were opened over the years because of specific reasons and to close any mission down would send wrong signals to the host country or countries even outside the host countries. We took a look at regional representation and tried to look at representation from regional prism but the question of in what country to locate missions to look after the affairs of our country without sending negative feelings to other countries in the region. For example, if we take the example of the Caribbean basin and which of the missions in Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba, Jamaica and Venezuela to close down without sending wrong signals. For serious political, cultural and strategic reasons, we can’t touch Cuba. Jamaica and Trinidad are necessary for cultural and racial reasons and Venezuela and our country are members of OPEC and we may need their support in crude oil allocation among member countries. In South America, we have missions in Brazil and Argentina and if we treat Venezuela as part of the group of our missions on that continent and perhaps add Mexico that would not be regarded as too many, so we cannot rationalize any of the missions out of existence.

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    Now to North America. The United States is the elephant in the room that we cannot touch. I believe we have closed down our consulate in San Francisco which used to serve Nigeria’s interest in the western part of the United States. We have a consulate in Atlanta to serve our interests in the South and Midwest of the USA which cannot be closed down because of the close to one million Nigerians in that region and their contribution to the economy of Nigeria through their home remittances. We have a full mission in Washington DC and a consulate in New York. We also have a permanent mission to the UN in New York. To an uninitiated person, this may appear over representation but each mission and consulate does different things. In a dire economic situation, we may be forced to close down the consulate in New York. We have a full mission in OTTAWA Canada which we cannot touch because Canada and Nigeria are senior and important members of the Commonwealth. Besides, the rising population of Nigerians in Canada compels us to begin to think of having a consulate in either Edmonton or Calgary or Vancouver cities in Alberta and British Columbia provinces in Canada. We share cultural and educational ties with Canada and we can exchange experiences with the country on the proper constitutional development of a cultural and pluralistic federal country.

    Moving to Europe which is our long time trading partners where almost every mission’s existence can be justified. All countries that are able and can afford it have missions in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Russia. For economic reasons, we cannot trifle with our missions in these countries. These days, it is necessary to have missions in Ukraine which is a large country from which we buy grains particularly wheat since bread has become a basic staple in Nigeria and our people seem to have refused to have bread made from other substitute. Since the emergence of the European Union, we have also had to have a mission to the political and economic entity but our mission there is happily covered from our mission to Belgium. The Netherlands (Holland) has been a long-time trading and investment partner with Nigeria. It is the home of Shell Oil Company that was involved in the development of the Nigerian oil sector.  The Netherlands is also hosting the World Court which is an important organ of the UN and to which we have been dragged before a couple of times in recent times. We can close down our missions in Hungary and Belgrade without much to lose. Our small mission in Dublin can stay for educational and cultural reasons.  We have closed down our consulate in Liverpool which was a waste of resources. We can cover Portugal from Spain just as we cover the Vatican from there.

    Now to the Middle East and the vast Asian continent. It is absolutely necessary to maintain our missions in Japan, India, Pakistan, and South Korea but not in North Korea. We can continue to have missions in Malaysia and Thailand but not in the Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.  In Australasia, our mission in Canberra Australia is important for Commonwealth ties and we can cover New Zealand and other Commonwealth pacific islands from our mission in Canberra Australia.

    We have to have missions in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. But do we really need missions in Syria, Lebanon and Kuwait or any other area of the Middle East that cannot be covered from expanded missions in the most important countries in the region?

    Now we have to severely prune down our missions in Africa. With a mission in Pretoria and Consulate in Johannesburg we don’t need separate missions in Botswana and Mozambique which can be covered from either Zambia or Zimbabwe. We need our missions in the DRC and Angola but not in the Central African Republic (CAR) or Congo Brazzaville and Gabon which can be covered by our mission in either the Cameroon or Malabo. Our East African missions in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda should remain so also should Ethiopia and Sudan remain. When the chaos in the region is over, we may have to rethink our presence in South Sudan and Eritrea. In North Africa, we cannot close our mission in historic Egypt, Morocco Algeria and Libya but Tunisia should be closed down. All our missions in our sub region constituting ECOWAS should remain open while we should shut our mission in Mauritania unless that country returns to ECOWAS.

    From this panorama of our diplomatic representation and the rationalization of a few of the missions, I am suggesting the government should seriously consider sending heads of missions or ambassadors for obvious reasons. The present situation of heads of missions ad interim is not good enough or sustainable in the interests of our country .The Ike Nwachukwu time in the Foreign Office came up with the idea that our diplomatic relationship should be subjected to full cannons of ECONOMIC DIPLOMACY. Missions should be judged on the economic dividends accruing to our country by the returns of attracting investment, economic aid and or political and military support for Nigeria. Any mission where the diplomats remain in their offices drinking tea or wine would be deemed not to have earned their posting. Missions also should be involved in joint Nigerian and host chambers of commerce where they exist and sponsor them where they do not exist. Missions in African countries we have helped to liberate must find areas Nigerians can be involved in joint ventures with nationals of those countries and by this I don’t mean nefarious trade in human trafficking and prostitution and drugs which unfortunately our people have been accused of in Southern Africa. Angolan shores for example are swarming with fish. I remember we encouraged the Ibru group to go there in the 1980s and 1990s but their staying capacity was not what we can write home about. I am happy that  Dangote Cement  and some  Nigerian banks  are active  in many African countries to reap from our diplomatic labour in the past because it is the friendship Nigeria has established  there that permits Nigerian companies to have access to those countries . Embassies can perform all kinds of activities, they can negotiate and sign treaties in their plenipotentiary capacity they can even perform civil marriages between Nigerians and nationals of host countries.  Fees are chargeable in this regard. They of course perform immigration duties of issuing passports and visas which bring in considerable revenue to the national exchequer. If you don’t know this, ask the embassies of the UK and the USA about the enormous revenue accruing to them from these consular services! They can encourage cultural exchanges such as in athletics and soccer in which Nigeria’s image can be strengthened. Our football teams can earn forex from such engagements. A well and thoroughly organized series of cultural exchanges can bring much dividends and publicity to Nigeria.

    The minister of Foreign Affairs and all ambassadors are advisers to the president in whose province belongs the foreign policy of any country. As they say the buck stops at his desk but no president or head of state can or is capable of carrying out unaided his own foreign policy and this is why he must have not only a foreign minister but also foreign missions.

    I understand the limitations imposed on poor countries weighed down by the burden of poverty and economic downturn but happily Nigeria does not belong in this group and we must not give the impression that we are down and out. Nigeria can fund a pruned  diplomatic representation all over the world with I believe half a billion dollars and hope to generate a return commensurate with our investment in terms of foreign direct investment, technical assistance, educational assistance and trade. Having said all this, Mr President, send ambassadors to head your foreign missions as soon as possible.

  • Manmohan Singh (Sept. 26, 1932 – Dec. 26, 2024)

    Manmohan Singh (Sept. 26, 1932 – Dec. 26, 2024)

    Manmohan Singh was educated at Hindu College and Punjab University in Chandigarh India. He later went on to St. John’s College Cambridge in 1957. In 1960, he started a doctoral program in   Nuffield College, Oxford that explored India’s export performance in the 1950s. After a stint with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Manmohan Singh taught briefly International trade at the University of New Delhi. He joined the civil service in 1972 as Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance and in 1982, he became governor of the Reserve Bank of India, that is, the Indian Central Bank.

    According to him, he was surprised in 1991 when the then Indian prime minister,  P.V. Narasimha Rao, who  had succeeded Rajiv Gandhi who was assassinated while trying to make peace in neighbouring Sri Lanka between the majority Sinhalese and the Tamil minority and had been engaged in a brutal civil war that had lasted for years . From these preambular statements, we can see that Manmohan Singh was an accomplished academic, economist and bureaucrat who was drafted into politics by the Indian National Congress at a time the country was going through severe economic crisis and a non-politician was needed to straighten things out.  The Indian National Congress Party was headed by Sonia Gandhi, the Italian wife of Rajiv Gandhi and traditionally whoever was head of the Congress Party after electoral victory headed the government as prime minister but Sonia Gandhi felt her Italian origin would be exploited by Indian nationalists and that was how Manmohan Singh became prime minister on the instigation of Sonia Gandhi, the Italian widow of Rajiv Gandhi in place of her murdered husband who had been prime minister of India. .Manmohan Singh was the first Sikh prime minister of India a symbol of the liberal disposition of the Indian Congress Party that was even prepared to make Sonia Gandhi, an Italian lady, executive head of the government of India but perhaps on second thought, demurred and made a member of a religious minority, the Sikhs, prime minister.

    He embarked on swift economic reforms that turned India into an economic global powerhouse although critics say there were still hundreds of millions of Indians left behind in a country of 1.1 billion people. One of the mainstays of his regime was internal development of India and reconciliation with Pakistan with which India related with mutual hostility if not hatred leading to constant wars three of which were fought between 1947 and 2004. This was because of border conflicts especially over the ownership of Kashmir. Kashmir and Jammu formed a province inhabited by mainly Muslims but whose pre-colonial ruler was a Hindu maharaja. The agreement partitioning India and Pakistan was based on the principle of “religion of the prince being the religion of the people” and since Kashmiri ruler was Hindu, it did not matter if all Kashmiris were Muslims. This has been the basis of the permanent and recurrent enmity between India and Pakistan. Although Manmohan Singh recognized the insolubility of the problem, he still felt a modus vivendi between India and Pakistan was necessary in the interest of their people who shared ethnic and cultural similarities except in two different religions.

    Singh himself was born in Northern Punjab which later became part of Pakistan after the murderous migrations which followed partition of the British Indian RAJ into India and Pakistan in 1947 after independence. Although he did not succeed in the reconciliation of the two most important countries in the Indian sub-continent, but he gave it his best shot especially knowing the two countries were nuclear weapons states and were probably able to use nuclear weapons against each other in the face of defeat and slaughter by the victorious nation.

    Singh came into prominence in 1991 as minister of finance after having served as governor of the Central Bank of India. He was responsible for reforming the foreign exchange system, deregulating the Indian economy and systemizing it and opening the vast Indian market to foreign and local investment. As finance minister, he pursued the policy of liberalization which facilitated the introduction of cell phones even though their allocations and those of coal mining licences were marred with accusations of corruption. But there is no doubt that the opening of the over bureaucratized Indian economy created millions of white collar jobs and the emergence of a much bigger middle class in the country of about 1.1 billion people.

    As prime minister of India from 2004 to 2014, he presided over a coalition government but with strong backing of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which had ruled India for about 38 years since independence beginning from the first Indian Prime Minister, Jawarlal Pandit Nehru, who was prime minister for 16 years. The fact of a coalition government did not prevent him from bringing in economic reforms that were eventually to leapfrog India to a country whose economy was to be reckoned with that of her giant neighbour and competitor, the People’s Republic of China.  This has led to Manmohan Singh being justifiably compared with Deng Xiaoping of China. His reconciliatory efforts with Pakistan came to an abrupt end in 2008 when a jihadist terrorist group, the LASKAR -el TAIBA, based in Pakistan launched a three day assault on targets in Mumbai which killed 171 people. Nationalists in India called for retaliation and bombing the location where the terrorists had their base. The government of Pakistan denied involvement claiming that the terrorists were Indian Muslims who had chaffed under Hindu majority humiliation over the years. Singh remained withdrawn for most of the time when the Indian nationalists headed by Narendra Modi, his successor called for his head. He later argued that a great leader cannot afford to surrender to emotions. Despite the crisis, the Indian National Congress Party which put him in his position was returned to power in 2009. The introverted and quiet prime minister in 2014 said he was no longer interested in heading the government. His exit probably facilitated the rise of Narendra Modi, the unabashed Hindu who was ready to dismantle the liberal religious secular tradition of India championed by the Nehru-Ghandi dynasty and their party, the Indian National Congress for decades with an open claim that India was a Hindu country. 

    Singh was not a regular Indian politician. He was not even an elected member of the LOK SABHA, the lower House but a nominated member since 1991 of the UPPER HOUSE the RAYJA SABHA. His government achieved what no Indian government had achieved before him, a phenomenal annual economic growth of 9 percent. During his premiership he had good relations with Washington and even Beijing and was supportive of Afghanistan to which he extended economic grants.

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    He will be remembered in his country as the man who laid the foundation for modern Indian economy that has catapulted the Indian economy to number three ahead of Russia, Germany and Japan and coming after those of the United States and China. Singh was prime minister in 2009 when BRICS was established linking economic cooperation and coordination of Brazil, Russia, India and China and later joined in 2010 by South Africa to challenge the hegemony of the American dollar in global exchange and trade relations which even though not totally eclipsing the American dollar, is  however giving people in Washington DC some headaches..

    Manmohan Singh was an important leader of the Commonwealth of Nations and a strong advocate for democracy. When he left government in 2014, he went back to the University of Panjab as professor of economics where he constantly warned Indians not to put populism above democracy for the long term interests of India was in democracy not in what the Indian nationalists called strong government.

    I first met him in the summer of 2003 when he was still finance minister. He headed a Commonwealth Secretariat’s committee on pro-poor government in which I had the honour to serve. This was shortly before the December 2003 CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Governments’ Meeting) in Abuja. He supervised a short book we prepared for the Abuja adoption and declaration on pro-poor government challenging the Commonwealth to focus on the poor in their development plans as strategies. I witnessed his simplicity, quiet demeanour and self-abnegation while heading the committee and speaking with the confidence of a man who had managed the economic destiny of over a billion Indians.

    When I visited India when he was prime minister in 2004, he invited me to his home for breakfast but which I couldn’t attend because of flight schedule. He left a great impression on me especially while talking about peace in Africa and suggesting coldly that Africa must learn to be on its own and that to expect help from others was unrealistic.

    In all we do on this continent and in this country, we must take into account of the realistic advice of this man who knew his onions so to say. African countries should desist from shamefully filing up in Beijing, London, Paris, Washington, Berlin and Tokyo to be cajoled and patronized by the chief executives of those countries.

  • Jimmy Carter: An unforgettable global citizen

    Jimmy Carter: An unforgettable global citizen

    The 39th United States President, James Earl Carter junior (October 1, 1924 -December 29, 2024) lived a full life and there is no doubt that his Christian faith influenced his long and exceptionally successful and impactful life. I had wanted to write about the late prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh (September 26, 1932 – December 26, 2024) who died three days before President Jimmy Carter at the age of 92. He too was a man of faith, a Sikh by birth whose simplicity, scholarship and devotion to duty touched the lives of millions of Indians.

    Of course Jimmy Carter’s life and death are of greater significance in terms of reach and impact because of the power of the United States. What is significant in their lives is the longevity; Carter lived over a hundred years while Prime Minister Singh lived over 90 years in a world where the average life span ranges between 50 and 60.

    Jimmy Carter was born in a small village of Plains in the backwoods of State of Georgia in America in what is regarded as the Deep South of the country usually associated with slavery and its enduring legacy of racism, segregation and intolerance. He rose against this background to the height of the American presidency, a position which he imbued with compassion, tolerance and collective governance in which he gave positions of prominence to black people like Andrew Young, whom he made ambassador to the United Nations and gave black people a feeling of belonging and presence in the United States.

    There is something interesting about American history and politics especially as they concern the progress of black peoples in the country. The presidents who made more impact on the lives of black peoples are usually from the Southern part of the USA. Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president of the USA from 1963 to 1969 was very pivotal in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 which enfranchised millions of Black Americans and gave them a voice in politics. It is not only Democrats that should be commended in this regard .Presidents George H. Bush and his son, George Bush gave blacks prominent positions in their governments but it was President Carter who opened the way although Presidents John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson had laid the foundation of Black empowerment.

    I lived in Montgomery county,  Maryland  more or less a stone throw from the White House during  the presidency of Jimmy Carter  and I was privileged to see the influence of President Carter in the unfolding liberalism in the United States even though he himself was regarded as Conservative evangelical Christian from the South which was regarded as the bastion of lingering racial prejudice against blacks.

    His fairness and honesty showed their effect in his foreign policy. He brought the Jews in Israel and the Arabs together  in the Camp David Agreement negotiated over a week between President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978 under the prodding of President Carter. This led to peace agreement and exchange of ambassadors between Israel and Egypt which have endured until today. It also led incrementally to peace between Israel and the kingdom of Jordan. Although President Anwar Sadat was assassinated for this by Muslim die-hards but this peace accord has remained the corner stone for which an eventual peace in the Middle East may revolve.

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    President Carter also signed with President Martín Torrijos of Panama series of treaties in 1977 which eventually led to the transfer of the Panama Canal Zone to the government of Panama in 1999, a treaty which the coming President Donald J. Trump is threatening to revoke because he feels that American shipping interests are not receiving fair treatment vis a vis Chinese shipping.   President Carter also in December 1978 normalized relations with China following the tentative steps of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He realized how important it was for America to have normal relations with the People’s Republic of China despite America’s commitment to the defence of Taiwan.  He also felt proper relations with China would give the US opportunity to have triangular relations with China and the USSR. This step, President Carter in his reminiscence, said was his greatest achievement of his presidency.

    President Carter also signed in Vienna in 1979 with the USSR president Leonid Brezhnev the so-called SALTII treaty proposing a limit of the number of missiles with multiple independent nuclear warheads. Even though the treaty failed to limit the arms race, it however proved that the two superpowers were willing to reopen negotiations on nuclear arms limitations. The treaty was however not ratified because of the opposition of Republicans and conservative Democrats. The invasion of the Soviet Union of Afghanistan shortly after in December 1979 after the abortive SALTII treaty led to a freeze in American-Russian relations culminating in the American-led boycott of the Olympics games in Moscow in summer of 1980.

    Earlier on in February 1979, the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran, a long-time American ally was overthrown and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an anti-American cleric replaced him and subsequently, the entire American Embassy staff was captured and imprisoned within the embassy. This was a terrible embarrassment which the president had to do something about. President Carter was advised by his military and intelligence staff to use force to free the embassy staff. The military air-borne embassy rescue attempt failed miserably with the loss of seven American servicemen on April 24, 1980. This sealed the fate of the president who lost the presidential election to Ronald Reagan, the governor of California who promised strength compared with President Carter’s weakness against American enemies. At the same time, American economy was suffering from rampant inflation affecting the whole world. With his apparent failure abroad and inflation at home, President Carter was defeated in a Reagan Republican landslide in November 1980.

    This was not the end of the Jimmy Carter story. He set up the Carter Centre in Atlanta Georgia and buried himself there turning out tomes of highly regarded books on the environment, peace in the Middle East advocating a two state solution. He was very fair in his assessment of the Israeli/ Palestinian issue unlike what President Biden has done in which he gives the Israelis weapons to annihilate the Palestinians while shedding crocodile tears about the starvation of the Palestinians. President Carter’s centre also went round the world ensuring proper elections and counting of votes so that democracy would have genuine roots in the will of the people. He teamed up with the non-profit organization, the HABITAT, to build thousands of houses for homeless people all over the world. The Jimmy Carter Centre was with other organisations responsible for eradicating Guinea worm disease in Africa and Asia.

    He was also involved in the control and eradication of other bacterial and viral diseases all over the world. He was for 40 years after leaving office, the unofficial face of American diplomacy in Russia, China, North Korea and other places where the official US diplomatic reach was not welcome. He was a man of peace and he won the Nobel Peace prize in 2002. The world has lost a great man and humanity has suffered an irreparable loss.

  • Y2024 as mixed bag for me and as a Nigerian

    Y2024 as mixed bag for me and as a Nigerian

    Thank God the year 2024 is coming gradually to an end. On the international scene, there have been wars in Europe waged on Ukraine by Russia, wars in Gaza and Lebanon by Israel and growing unease between Israel and Iran. All across the Sahel in the Sahara, the countries have been plagued by Jihadist insurgencies of one kind or the other. These insurgencies are mixtures of racism and fundamentalism but camouflaged as going back to the old time religion of the prophet!

    Muslims are supposed to be brothers and it is very problematic interpreting these Sahelian wars as religious. Our country Nigeria has not been spared.  In fact, for almost a decade, we have been bogged down in the far north of our country fighting rebels claiming to be fighting to purify adherents of Islam. Nigeria has coordinated its response with the republics of Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Benin in its resistance and pacification of the distressed areas of the Northwest and Northeast. The inability of France to see to the end of these conflicts in Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad and Niger as the dependent governments of those countries would have wanted, has had ramifying effects on the politics and economic situation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). There has been military coups d’état or change of governments in some of the Francophone countries and expulsion of France and the withdrawal of the United States’ military presence in Niger and Chad for example. The call for restoration of democratic rule in the ECOWAS countries has precipitated crises in the sub-region and has led to the formation of an association of Sahelian states of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger and their consequent withdrawal from ECOWAS.

    We have not seen the end of the crisis yet. Wars have been raging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR) as well as the Sudan proper and in the new Southern Sudan Republic. The war in the Congo is not new and this has been going on and off for more than a decade tying down considerable numbers of United Nations troops and sometimes intervention from neighbouring countries of Zimbabwe, Angola, Uganda and Rwanda. The war in the Sudan has largely been ignored because the lives being lost in thousands are African lives that the world apparently regards as expendable because little attention is paid to it when compared with other areas of conflict in the world. It could also be the world is suffering from the ennui of African conflicts being the norm rather than the exception. In Asia, wars have broken out for almost a decade between the government and the rebels in Myanmar leading to thousands of death. Only The Americas, Australia and Western Europe have been spared the scourge of war.

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    But we can generalize that wars are still a rarity in current human affairs, while the areas termed “federations of peace “remain the norm. The world is however like the human body. When one part hurts a little, the whole body hurts. To drive this point home, the global inflation leading to human distress and hunger in many parts of the world are not unrelated to the disruption of the supply chain which the wars have affected in a closely integrated global economy. The cost of bread globally particularly in Africa, Europe and the Middle East has skyrocketed because the disruption of shipping in the Black Sea has affected the trade in wheat from Russia and Ukraine. The war itself has poisoned relations between Russia and the West to such an extent that Russia is threatening to use nuclear weapons. The situation is becoming more and more complicated to the extent that North Koreans are fighting on the side of Russia and the war in a small European theatre is taking on the colour of a global conflict. 

    The whole world is waiting for Donald Trump’s promised magic of ending the war in a jiffy when he is sworn in as president of the United States on January 20. Since the end of the Second World War, the conflict in Ukraine, apart from the Cuban Crisis of 1962, is the closest thing in which Russia and the United States have come to direct confrontation with dire consequences for global peace. The war in the Middle East between Israel and Iranian proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, may yet spill over to Syria which is in a state of political flux and its neighbours, Israel and Turkey are carving out territorial areas of influence may yet lead to more complexity in which America may be involved when President Trump assumes power in the United States in January 2025.

    The threat to the world from global warming and adverse climatic change has also not abated. The extreme weather that is becoming the norm all over the world poses existential threat to the world the only habitable planet we know of. It does not seem some politicians like Donald Trump who doubt the scientifically proven case of global warming are ready to slow down industrial and human activities in order to save the environment. The series of conferences of parties on how to reverse the trend of global warming has become a global jamboree in which nothing changes because people put national economies before environmental enhancement and the tendency nowadays is to kick enhancement measures forward. In the meantime, while the climate problem confronts humanity with threat of annihilation, pandemic diseases are not far behind and it does not seem mankind is more prepared than what happened to the world with Covid-19 when millions of deaths were recorded all over the world including in the most technologically advanced economies.

    Coming home to our country Nigeria, we have had a bad patch this year to put it in a diplomatic language. Prices of everything have soared because of the geometrical decline of the national currency. It is not just the cost of imports that are beyond the average consumer, local farm produce like vegetables, fruits and other necessities of life because of the cost of transportation are also priced out of their purchasing power.

    I have sympathy for those in government who have had to bear the anger of the masses. I have had to tell people that every government would like to be popular if it had the means and that I have not seen a government that would create an unfavourable environment for itself because of the harshness of economic conditions. A dictatorship that is not answerable to the people would enjoy the people’s support, if the economy was buoyant. Having said this, any democratic government must do all it can to work for the happiness of the greatest number of its people. It is obvious to me that previous governments in this country have lived beyond their means and our people have eaten the fruits and the seeds of the harvest without investing for the future. We mismanaged our economy from the 1970s till the present economic crisis. If we had industrialized the country and developed agriculture and built an excellent infrastructure, we would not have had a national currency that is virtually worthless. With all the natural resources both human and economic that we have, our Naira should be worth more than this.

    But I can see some light at the end of a dark long tunnel. We should in the foreseeable future, never have to import refined petroleum and its products. If the roads under construction linking the North from Sokoto to Badagry and the West with the East from Lagos to Calabar reach approachable levels of development and open up the country, they should affect agricultural production and trade as long as other means of transportation like railways, other arterial roads and aviation and shipping are not neglected. It also seems that the activities of the rampaging cattle herders have been curtailed. All governments of the federation, local, state and federal, should assist businesses to create jobs to absorb the teeming population of our youth whose empty stomachs pose a terrible danger to the security of our country.

    If the country was safer than it is now, people will be traveling more than they are doing now and that will reduce the pent up tension in the country due to emotional hardship of not seeing relatives as it used to be in the past. Governments should communicate more often than now with the governed. Those in government should scale down conspicuous consumption manifesting in huge houses and retinue of staff and fleets of cars and generally lavish living which gives the impression that government is dishonest when it asks people to tighten their belts. 

    Above all ,governments must do whatever it takes to drastically bring the cost of living down so that our people will not be dying needlessly struggling to share free food donated by churches, government parastatals and non-governmental organizations. The state and local governments must be challenged by the citizens to be aware of and alive to their responsibilities as the governments closer to the grassroots and the source of the people’s problems. The people must also rise to the present challenging situation and work at getting out of the proverbial poverty Africans appear condemned to. Our hope is that the year 2025 will be better.

    Personally, I pray that I will be happier next year and not suffer the loss of any young member of my family as I have this year. The death of Jumoke, my niece but more like a daughter because I brought her up like my own child has brought the futility of life graphically to me. I feel like what an American cynic said that “life stinks”.

  • Syria: Prostrate Arabs and Israel’s hubris

    Syria: Prostrate Arabs and Israel’s hubris

    The collapse of the Bashar Hafez dictatorship in Syria and the overthrow of the 53 year old Hafez al- Assad Alawite minority regime in Syria has come without any sympathy and with much relief and welcome in the international community and the Arab world. Bashar Al Hafez succeeded his father Hafez al – Assad (1930- 2000) in 2000 after his death. He was not supposed to be a ruler. He was training as a specialist ophthalmologist in London when he was recalled to take the mantle of leadership after the accidental death of his older brother who had been trained and primed to succeed his father.

    The elder Hafez was a politician and one of the supporters of the Syrian wing of the Ba’ath party and also a military officer as was characteristic of the Arab world. Historically, Syria has had a chequered trajectory, beginning as part of the Ottoman Empire before the First World War and ending as a mandate of the League of Nations assigned to France after the war. The territory was a hotchpotch of different groups namely of the Druze, Alawite, people of Aleppo and those of Damascus who were organised independently of each other. Opposition to French rule seemed to have brought some unity which was expressed in armed rebellion periodically from 1920 after King Faisal Hussein abdicated the throne to pave the way to the time of the French mandate.

    The period of fragile French control spanned the period 1920 to 1945 when the Free French forces finally withdrew from Syria after sporadic fighting to pave way for the Syrian Republic which staggered on until 1971 iron and brutal rule of Hafez al-Assad provided some disciplined order under the Ba’ath party. The Ba’ath party was founded on April 7, 1947 as the Arab Ba’ath party by  Michel Aflaq, an Orthodox Christian, Salah al -Din-al Bitar, a Sunni Muslim, and the followers of Zaki al-Arsuzi, an Alawite (a small sect of the Shi’a) who later became an atheist in Damascus. This party’s ideology was based on social justice and the unity of all Arab countries and it had branches in all Arab countries but with the branches in Syria and Iraq being the most formidable.

    Ba’athism enunciated some form of socialism or Arab socialism as they called it. It was secular in nature and wanted state control of all resources particularly land for the benefit of the Arab masses. It also wanted the distribution of land to the peasants against the then prevailing monopoly and ownership by monarchs and religious bodies. It preached some form of populism which made the party very attractive to the Arab masses. It also wanted the unity of all Arab lands and its motto was “Unity, Liberty, Socialism”. The party ruled Syria at least in name from the coup of 1963 to the fall of Bashar al-Hafez. Initially the party meant well before it became a dictatorship of a few military politicians climaxing in the Hafez Al-Assad seizure of power in 1971 to the hurried fleeing in the night by his son Bashar after 24 years of disastrous rule during which the ancient country of very rich culture was destroyed and close to one million of its people were slaughtered in a fratricidal war which lasted for 14 years leading to mass exodus of millions of its people to Lebanon, Turkey , Jordan  Germany and many other countries in Europe and the Americas . Apart from Bashar Hafez, his backers in Iran, Russia and the Hezbollah in Lebanon were largely responsible for one of the cruellest slaughter of a people whose offence was asking to be free.

    The country became a protectorate of Russia which had a large air force base few miles from the coastal town of Jableh. Russia also has a large naval base at Tartus on the Mediterranean coast which the Kremlin considers most strategically necessary if Russia is to continue to be seriously considered a global naval power. Iran, the other military power supporting the Assad regime does not have a base in Syria but maintained command and control presence in Syrian high command necessary to conduct operations within Syria using largely Hezbollah forces. Syria was the strongest eastern wing of the forces of resistance against western and Israeli intervention in Arab land and the larger world of Islam and the unfortunate Palestinians were used mostly as cannon fodder.

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    The collapse of Syria has completely exposed the Iranian and Russian flanks in the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey which harboured about three million Syrian refugees had always had troops in northern Syria to keep in check Syrian Kurds that Turkey considered terrorists interested in joining Iraqi, Turkish and possibly Iranian Kurds in creating an independent Great Kurdistan. There were also a few American troops monitoring the presence of adherents of the Islamic State (IS) in northern Syria. This was the situation in Syria while Bashar was in power in Damascus.

    On December 8, a major offensive against Bashar al Assad, president of Syria was launched by opposition forces led by Abu Mohamed al-Julani, head of the group known as Tahrir al-Sham, a group that had been named a terrorist group by American government and its allies and supported by mainly Turkish forces and some renegade Syrian forces against Damascus after previously capturing Aleppo, the second most important town in the country and overrunning other towns on the way to Damascus. President Assad fled to the Russian air force base from where he and his family escaped to Russia which officially stated it has offered him and his family political asylum. Even before the announcement, the Syrian embassy was flying the flag of the liberating group. The United Nations has asked for global humanitarian support for the Syrian people and a lifting of sanctions against the country and presumably against those the West had previously called a terrorist group. The group leading the fight in Syria had had previous association with Al Qaeda and sometimes with the Islamic state of Abukar al-Baghdadi but has now dissociated itself from its previous connection with the two terrorist groups.

    The Arab world seems to welcome the ouster of the Assad regime and Qatar is promising huge financial support and so is the UAE. Not much has been said by Egypt and Saudi Arabia which are apparently still waiting for reaction of their principals in Washington DC. The American Secretary of State has been holding meetings in the Jordanian capital with leaders of Jordan and the UAE and Saudi Arabia to agree to a common front on Syria. Turkey is backing the regime and has been busy fighting the Turkish enclave in Northern Syria. Turkey is expected to play a major role in the stabilization of the new Syrian regime. The defeat of the Hafez Al Assad regime remains a major defeat and blow for Iran and Russia. No one knows what the two countries are planning jointly or separately to do in Syria. Russia seems bogged down in Ukraine to be too bothered with Syria unless the hubristic rampage of Israel which has been grabbing Syrian land near the Golan heights, sinking Syrian navy, and bombing Syrian army barracks and destroying chemical weapons depots pushes the new regime into the warm embrace of Russia for protection if the Israeli allies do not call Israeli to halt the hundreds of military and bombing raids into Syria.

    The Arab League has called Israel to stop what it is doing in Syria but moral remonstration without military backing amounts to nothing in the situation on hand. Iran appears tamed by joint Israeli and American sabre-rattling against it and it is hobbled down by the possibility of Israeli attack backed by American massive air support. Unless America and its allies move quickly to offer support for the new regime based on mutuality of interest, the Russian presence will stay because the new regime needs it and the humiliation of Russia demands it finds credible support somewhere that Israel will respect. It does not seem the doddering American regime on its way out understands the opportunity being presented to it if Israel, its apparent boss in Jerusalem, will allow it to take it. Turkey which is a member of NATO dominated by the USA may find it more rewarding in Syria allying with Russia for joint influence in the new Syria rather than allowing Israel unhindered promenade into Syria. We are entering interesting times in the Middle East.

  • The return of President Mahama

    The return of President Mahama

    On December 9, the electoral commission of Ghana declared Dr  John Dramani  Mahama, candidate of the National  Democratic Party (NDC) and former president elected president again after having lost power eight years ago to the Oxford University-educated 80-year old Nana Akufo -Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). This time, the 68-year old Mahama defeated Akufo-Addo’s vice president,  61 years old  Mammadu  Bawumia , winning  almost 57% of the vote . The people of Ghana seem to remember the infrastructural exploits of building roads and providing low cost housing for the vulnerable sector of the electorate and the general Joie de vivre in Ghana prevailing in the country during the time of Dr Mahama. There were accusations of corruption which remained unproven during the  John Dramani Mahama’s years and the same has been levied against the Akufo-Addo presidency which has borrowed  huge foreign loans to support its dollarization policy of the regime which has not solved the economic problems of Ghana despite the recent discovery of crude oil in the country and the rise in the country’s production of gold  and other minerals, a rise which has been marred by indiscriminate  illegal mining by Chinese itinerant miners whose activities are alleged to have devastated some communities in Ghana. Just like in Nigeria, where mineral exploitation has apparently led to the decline in agricultural production, cocoa production which is Ghana’s main foreign exchange earner has also declined.

    Akufo-Addo presided over such a bad economy in a generation with high inflation, unemployment and huge almost unpayable debts that the (NPP) was driven out of power by a disappointed electorate. One great outcome of the election which was bitterly fought but which the losing candidate graciously conceded even before the final tally of the votes which other African countries including its bigger neighbour Nigeria should learn from.

    The incoming president has promised to renegotiate the recently borrowed $3 billion from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) for the purpose of restructuring the economy. He has also promised to curtail the inflationary spiral and introduce tax reforms and bring back his previous policies of infrastructural modernization. How he would accomplish this without raising taxes remains a moot question. The problem with Ghana is overdependence on imports and the people’s taste for foreign goods and the neglect of home made goods. Perhaps this is the time for closer look at how to make the economy work for the people through closer integration with the economies of its neighbours in ECOWAS particularly the Ivory Coast and Nigeria. The recent election in Senegal that has led to questioning of old dogmas of colonial dependency and the military coups in Guinea, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad manifesting opposition to previous colonial arrangements, should call the attention of any party coming into power in the region of the need for radical economic rethinking different from what sufficed in the past. Akufo-Addo when faced with economic problems at home chose the easiest victims of targeting Nigerian traders and imposing heavy charges of making them deposit some millions of

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    dollars before they could be given trade permits thus ignoring the protocols of ECOWAS which allow freedom of movement of people and capital. This policy created bad blood between the country and Nigeria and did not solve the problems that they were intended to solve but rather complicated fraternal relations between Ghana and Nigeria. The incoming president would have to solve this problem but Nigerians must desist from taking liberty for license and abusing the freedom granted to them in another country as our compatriots have been accused of doing in Kenya, South Africa and Namibia and other places in Africa and outside the continent.

    On a personal note, I wish to congratulate the new president of Ghana who by previous performance should be able to handle the problems of economic development of Ghana without hankering after a second term which seems to hinder the performance of newly elected presidents in African states and other parts of the world. Since he was president before, he is not new to the job because he presumably will be barred from another term. He is not new to the political and economic leaders of the West African region and Ghana’s trading and economic partners abroad. He can assume the friendship of Nigeria’s current leaders since he comes from the same ideological hue from the largely socialist tendencies of the APC ruling party in Nigeria.

    On personal terms, he is well known in Nigeria. He has a doctorate degree honoris causa in literature from Ekiti State University. He is a creative writer on his own and a close admirer of Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe – two of Nigeria’s foremost writers. I have no doubt that in times of difficulties, the current government of Nigeria would give him support as much as possible because he is a friend of Nigeria unlike his predecessor Akufo-Addo who was openly envious if not totally hostile to Nigeria. Dramani Mahama‘s party the NDC sees itself as the inheritor of the radical legacy of Kwame Nkrumah, the founding father of Independent Ghana who built the country on nationalist foundation totally different from the ethnic tendencies of rivals who depended on Akan supremacy of the Asante/ Fante coalition whereas the party of Nkrumah’s tendencies tried to rally the smaller ethnic groups of Ghana notably the Ga, Nzima, Ewe and the Northern groups.  This group seems to have held together despite the fact both candidates of the NDC and NPP are from the North.  Coming from the North would also help the incoming president to understand and appreciate and prevent incursions of northern cattle rearers into the country and precipitating the kind of security problems in Nigeria and other West African states.

    The economic mismanagement of Ghana was blamed on Muhammadu Bawumia who was in charge of the economic management of the country as vice president to the rather elderly Akufo-Addo who was more given to philosophical flourish and long speeches and Mammadu Bawumia paid for it by the defeat of his party. Whatever was responsible for the defeat of the ruling party, the tendency of the ruling party losing power in Africa has been established in Botswana, Namibia and even South Africa where the power of the ruling ANC was vastly reduced in recent elections and on a global level by the defeat of the Conservative Party by the Labour Party in Great Britain and the Democratic Party by the Republican Party in the USA.

  • Worst of times for global security and stability

    Worst of times for global security and stability

    When we read Charles Dickens’ “A tale of two cities” in 1960 as one of our West African literature examination books for that year, we did not quite appreciate what picture the author was painting about Europe towards the end of the 18th century when he wrote it was the best of times and it was the worst of times, we were all going to heaven and we were all going to hell and so on and so forth in contrasting images of those times.

    Our knowledge of pre- French revolutionary Europe was not quite deep. In any case, how could we in the backwoods of the world understand what happened in European history unless we were students of history? Like most of our subjects in pre and post-independence Nigeria, we were poorly taught including not only the sciences and mathematics, but also the liberal arts especially literature in English. We made do with memorizing whatever we didn’t understand because some of our teachers probably didn’t understand what they were teaching us. One teacher of mine trying to explain “cross gartered” stockings started twisting one leg on top of the other like a Yoruba masquerade until he fell to the ground to the  embarrassment of everyone. Explaining the pattern on the stockings of a noble man was simply beyond his ken!

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    Our English literature teachers in secondary schools in Nigeria in 1960 were Africans who had never stepped out of Africa before. Some schools were lucky to have English teachers teaching English language and literature. People reading our scripts after examinations probably would not have known about how superficial our knowledge of the subjects we offered was. But later on, from our travels, we understood the interface between most of our school subjects and lived experiences  in Europe and this may be why many of our children nowadays do very well in foreign countries when exposed to better facilities, museums  ,libraries,  laboratories, mass media and appropriate pedagogy. My generation and those before us struggled gallantly to acquire Western education despite the inappropriateness and inadequacies of it as we now find it.

    I hope my readers will permit this diversion from the core of my message. All I can say for these times is that we are living in the worst of times at least in most underdeveloped countries but most in particular, in Africa. We have never had it so bad! In my life time up to date, we have seen our country become independent and a sovereign nation.  Those of us young at that time inherited the deep state so to say. Our generation became professors, captains of industry and commerce, administrators, governors of states, permanent secretaries, military generals, state ministers and commissioners and even presidents before the whole state structure collapsed on us because of poor management, greed, corruption, roguery, selfishness lack of patriotic fervour and other negative things that can pull a country down.

    We have now thrown our country into economic downturn and doldrums and reduced our countries to playthings in the hands of operators of international finance and manipulators of racist global pecking order in which the fairer skin you possess, the better chance you have for personal and national survival and advancement.

    I read an article in an English paper that seriously said that the problems facing mankind is due to overpopulation, overdependence on governments, indulgence and too much freedom which we have taken for license and that only wars can solve our current global problems. The cynical writer went through several episodes of global revolutionary changes and catastrophes leading to drastic reductions of population by direct consequence of wars and collateral damages and through diseases and pandemics like the Spanish influenza that came after the human wastage of the First World War and recently the Covid-19 which killed seven million approximately in the world. Even though the writer welcomed advances in medicine that have cut the deleterious effects of diseases, he nevertheless suggested that reduction in deaths was not necessarily good unless accompanied by controlled population increases and not the geometric rise we have seen in global population which has become a ticking bomb that is waiting to explode anytime soon. The writer was convinced that unless we go through such global cataclysmic population reductions as experienced in wars and pandemics, we would continue to have the challenge of growth and development occasioning environmental abuse and serious and threatening climate change as we have in today’s world.

    The question then is should we welcome and embrace the civic and humane collapse of international order in which stronger nations attack weaker ones with all the ferociousness that modern weapons short of nuclear weapons  can inflict? The war of Russia on Ukraine, a smaller country just wanting to survive is a case in point.  Russia may justifiably feel threatened by an ever expanding NATO but unleashing ferocious war on a smaller and hitherto fraternal neighbour is not and cannot be justified under international law and protocol. The same goes for the genocidal war of Israel on Gaza and Lebanon and the unrestrained Russian bombing of Arabs in Syria in aid of so-called Syrian regime, whether provoked or not cannot be justified on human level.

    The internal violence in Myanmar between the government and rebel forces cannot be justified solely on preservation of national unity. How many people deserve to be killed because of the struggle for national unity? Does the dead unite with the living in this case? Thank God we don’t have many of these wars in Africa but we have ethnic wars fuelled by the search for precious metals needed in developed countries for electric vehicles’ butteries and mobile phones and other gadgets needed in the technological world. The DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) for almost two decades has suffered because of such wars leading to loss of millions of souls there and neighbouring countries like Central African Republic CAR, Angola, Chad, Southern Sudan and Sudan itself. Even though Africa’s borders are poorly defined leading to feeling of irredentism in parts of the Maghreb and the Horn of Africa, for now, Africa has been largely spared of such wars that have sometimes ruined relations in Europe and South America. This does not permit smugness on the part of Africans that we are spared the destructive wars of other lands because Africa was not only drawn to both the first and second world wars, it will surely be drawn to any major breakdown of international order whose origin may be far from the African continent because the world is a global village.

    The United States increases its already overwhelming arsenal on the grounds of need to defend democracy in Taiwan against China while the Chinese are doing the same on the grounds of the need to bring Taiwan into union with the people on the Mainland of Peoples Republic of China.  The Chinese wants to dominate the South China Sea and rightly sees the Americans as interlopers. The Americans would resist the emergence of China as a global and economic power.

    The point to make is that the sky is big enough for all birds small and big to fly. Why should America arrogate to itself the role of global gendarme? The America of Donald Trump and its Make America Great Again (MAGA) mission of going it alone and doing whatever pleases it on global issues of the economy and the environment does not augur well for global peace. International order since 1945 has been maintained by well attested global system based on international law and justice and no one country should change it, because as fragile as it is, it has worked reasonably well all these years. North Korea even though demographically smaller than South Korea is building a nuclear arsenal to force a richer South Korea with its poorer self without asking the crucial question of what the people want. At the rate the world is becoming unsafe for non-nuclear powers, it is only a question of time before Japan, Germany, Brazil, Iran, Turkey, Argentina, Ukraine and possibly Saudi Arabia force themselves into the nuclear club.  Already, nuclear India is poised on jumping on nuclear state Pakistan in a war of mutual annihilation.

    If we are not careful, what we will have is a strategy of the grave in which the whole world unites to self-destruct. Unfortunately, even though we seem to foresee this scenario, it will take superhuman efforts and intelligence and international movement and willpower to summon the political courage and effort necessary to prevent global self-destruction. That is if before that time the environment has not collapsed because of the present sustained level of abuse and degradation leading to eventual self-destruction.

  • Russian war on Ukraine: Need to avoid global conflict

    Russian war on Ukraine: Need to avoid global conflict

    The incoming president of the United States, Donald J. Trump during his recently won election promised to end the Russian war on Ukraine within 24 hours of being in the White House which should be on January 21, 2025. The world waits with bated breath for this magical solution and surprise for this complex conflict. No one expects a sudden end to a conflict that began incrementally from about February and March 2014 when Russia annexed the Black Sea port of Crimea which for hundreds of years had served as the Russian empire’s winter port connection to the world but which had been handed over to Ukraine when the Soviet Empire was dissolved in 1994. As part of a post-Soviet era settlement, it appears the Americans and its NATO allies had given the remnant of the Soviet Empire-Russia, that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe which was previously part of the Warsaw pact but this promise was obeyed in its breach. NATO did not only expand into Eastern Germany, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and into former Soviet territories in the Baltic viz; Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia and now into neutral Sweden and Finland.

    It is argued that it is in this situation of Russia feeling it is hemmed in and surrounded that President Vladimir Putin is able to whip up nationalist sentiments in Russia in his war in Ukraine. Putin and many Russians do not see Ukraine as a separate country from their home because some of their former rulers were either Ukrainians or partly Ukrainian.  Substantial part of Eastern Ukraine is populated by ethnic Russians that President Putin likes to call “Russia abroad”.  This is a dangerous belief by Putin who seems to feel wherever there are Russians must be part of the Russian motherland! The case becomes more complex because it appears substantial portion of Ukrainians who are not ethnic Russians want a separate country of their own.

    Much lives have been lost in the war,  in fact hundreds of thousands of young men and others  have been lost as collateral damage during bombing raids and shelling and many millions of Ukrainians have been scattered all over the world in the USA and Canada and all over Europe and displaced in their own country itself.

    The peace plan being touted by Donald Trump and others want to concede the territories already captured by Russia to it which is about a quarter of the country in the East and South East. How would President Zelenskyy sell this to his compatriots without being seen as a traitor? On the other hand, President Vladimir Putin has drawn the red line beyond which he would never allow enemies to cross. It is not even likely he would accept the rump of Ukraine joining NATO. If this is the peace plan Trump wants to ram down the throat of Ukraine, my guess is that the war would continue until the Ukrainians are totally defeated or are made to surrender after the Americans under Trump cuts off their supply of weapons. Would America want to lose face among their allies in Europe and elsewhere where dependence on their commitment would mean nothing especially in such places like Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia and the Middle East?

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    This is one of the reasons why outgoing president, Joe Biden as a last minute action allowed the Ukrainian government to start using American long range weapons with about 190 kilometres range to hit the Russian army within Russia something he had said he would not do for months despite President Zelenskyy’s plea. When the first salvo of these weapons were released, President Putin asked his military to respond with a new kind of weapons with multiple warheads just short of nuclear weapons which apparently no anti-missile weapons in the west could intercept. He also said he would use these new weapons against any country that supplies the long range weapons used against Russia to Ukraine. Does he mean he was prepared to attack France, Britain and the United States without precipitating a global nuclear conflict and catastrophe? The world is at this brink and most of us do not know that a mistake in one little corner of Europe can again plunge the world into a global conflagration the cause of which we know nothing of.

    Yet, the problem seems so intractable that compromise seems impossible while absolute victory or defeat seems unacceptable to many involved in finding a solution. Meanwhile, the United Nations that was set up for times like this have been rendered impotent by the super powers who prefer to resolve conflicts in which they are involved outside the purview of the United Nations thus reducing the global body to a mere talking shop and international treaties and agreements are reduced to mere chiffon de papier. Even though we in the third world can smugly say we are not directly involved, but the world is a global village. What affects one affects all others. If there were to be war in which the global environment is poisoned through the use of nuclear weapons, in the words of President John F Kennedy “the living will envy the dead” because the environment would have been so poisoned by radioactive fallout that whatever plants or food that survived would not be fit for human consumption and civilization, according to the nuclear scientists, Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer human civilization would have ended. This possible scenario and end to human civilization is what a few deranged politicians are toying with in order to satisfy personal or national ego. It behoves the leaders of countries not directly involved in Africa, Asia and Latin America to stand up for the rest of the world.