The western nations have become apprehensive in recent years about their post colonial states degenerating to failed states characterised by weak ineffective and corrupt central government as a result of misrule by their new rulers. Thousands of hungry and jobless immigrants from ex-colonies are flooding the metropolitan nations in droves. At home the falcon can no more hear the falconer. The resources from their satellites states that once supported welfare services have been cornered by multi-nationals driven only by greed. To forestall the looming anarchy at home and abroad, the western nations seem to have started the new ‘scramble for Africa’.
The new scramble has become more compelling because of globalization, the new god that proclaim all of us, the rich and the poor, equal participants in the globalised economy. The west also need to forestall the looming anarchy as a result of migration of frustrated, desperate jobless youths to Europe where the percentage of the unemployed is in some places is as high as 30%. Some two years back, France experienced first-hand, the anger of the hungry when frustrated homeless immigrants descended on the properties of their wealthy hosts. Last year, it was the turn of Britain as angry youths freely moved around London, looting and setting fire on malls.
Anarchy is slowly creeping into Italy, Greece and Spain.
Now, western leaders have decided to check the greed of their citizens and their collaborators in the poor African countries manned by incompetent thieving political class. Only last month, US President Barack Obama had during his second inauguration warned “The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob”. The French, after the massive destruction of property by disgruntled immigrants two years back have become very active in Ivory Coast, Guinea, Tunisia and Mali. UK Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking in Davos last week ahead of the G8 meeting scheduled for June 17 and 18 in Lough Erne, Northern Island, UK, had complained openly about squandered “Nigeria oil exports worth almost a hundred billion dollars”, an amount he said was “more than the total net aid to the whole of Sub Saharan Africa”.
Also making reference to Nigeria where a few years back “a $800m discrepancy between what companies were paying and what the government was receiving for oil”, was discovered, Cameron had hinted “the western leaders and Japan are going to push for more transparency on who owns companies; on who’s buying up land and what purpose; on how governments spend their money, on how gas, oil and mining companies operate; and on who is hiding stolen assets and how we recover and return them.”
Now that we all know sovereignty is dead and finally buried by globalization; if you ask me, I would suggest we formally invite the British to take over. Some two decades back, long before the current surreptitious move by Britain, late Olabisi Onabanjo, alias “Aiyekoto”, an accomplished newspaper columnist and a resourceful Second Republic governor of Ogun state had echoed the same sentiments.
Today, there are more pressing reasons why Britain should come back. First we have been betrayed by our ill-equipped and ill-educated military adventurers starting with Gowon who said ‘money was not our problem’, (Of course the western companies provided wide range of consumer items to wipe out his ill-advised Udoji award) to General Ibrahim Babangida that fraudulently claimed there was no alternative to Structural Adjustment Program, (SAP). SAP which supported importation of Italian tiles, Italian shoes and Italian clothes and tyres sounded the death knell of our own budding industries. Today our exchange rate which was approximately one naira to one pound in 1982 is N260 to one pound sterling.
Their military new breed politicians have not fared better. Infrastructural decay, unemployment and collapse of industries have come to characterize their war against Nigeria these past 13 years. To feed ourselves we depend on massive importation of rice, fish, chicken, palm oil, ground nut oil etc.
There are other reasons we must support the return of Britain to Nigeria.
Fifty two years after independence, no one can say precisely what the population of Nigeria is. We don’t even know who is and who is not a Nigerian. Since 1963 controversial census figure decided by the courts, we have not been able to have a credible exercise outside the 1953 colonial figure which defied all known demographic laws.
Our judiciary lost its innocence when, under the guise of celebrating our sovereignty, we did away with the ‘Privy Council’ in order to cage the opposition Action Group (AG) party. We have since moved from “Coker’s My hand are tied” judgment, to twelve two-third ridiculous judicial pronouncement to install President Shehu Shagari in 1983, to plea bargaining where our judges and senior advocates have been claimed to smile to their banks while those who have stolen the nation blind escape with a slap on the wrist. Nigerians also earnestly yearn for a British Chief Justice to derail the ambitions of ’thieves in the state Houses’ currently preparing for a comeback as governors, senators or on the verge of installing their minions as governors with stolen money.
Of course, if there is a survey of the police, they will probably opt for a British Inspector General (IG). First, many occupants of that position since the departure of the last British IG ended up as villains. Some have been paraded in chains like mere criminals for siphoning billions of naira meant for police welfare and police equipments. Some have demonstrated their prowess in election rigging. None has excelled in the task of protection of life and property, the only reason we traded our freedom for government protection.
Unlike America, where President Obama only this last Tuesday insisted American street police will not be allowed to be outgunned by criminals, our ill-equipped and ill-trained police men have become sitting targets for criminals. They are neither safe on the streets nor in their barracks. We read on the pages of newspapers often how criminals walked into police barracks, killed those on duty, cart away their weapons and set the police station of fire.
Since we can neither secure our water ways or borders, we need a British head of the armed forces. The Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala recently told us that the nation loses $7b annually to oil bunkerers in the creeks. The Pipeline Professional Association of Nigeria (PPAN) put the figure at N100b annually.
With a standing army, navy and air force, the federal government was said to have awarded a security contract of $103m to Tompolo to help fight crime on the sea particularly against pirates, who are credited to be ‘too powerful for the Nigerian Navy to control’.
To protect our pipelines, it was claimed ‘General’ Government Tompolo Ekpumopolo, got contract to the tune of N3.6bn; Asari Dokubo, 1.44bn; ‘General’ Ateke Tom, N560m and ‘General’ Ebikabowei Boyloaf Victor Ben, N560m. While defending the government action, which Okupe said was done by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, he said, “since this exercise began, the crude oil production has jumped from 1.8mbpd to 2.6mbpd. It is safe to suggest British takeover of our armed forces because it will be seditious to suggest a change of their Commander-in-Chief.
As I watched Dr Anwen White, a female neurosurgeon of Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital, who on BBC Monday evening described as ‘routine’ a skull reconstruction and a cochlear implant surgery on 15-year-old Malala Yousufzai, shot by the Taliban for advocating women education, I secretly wished for the return of British to a teaching hospital like the UCH rated as one of the best three in the commonwealth of nations in 1960.
With the death of sovereignty, and the ascendancy of globalization, the new god, we have nothing to be ashamed of by asking Britain to start from where they stopped in October 1, 1960.
