LESS than 24 hours after Tibor P. Nagy, the United States assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, took to Twitter to condemn the bloody army crackdown on protesting members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (MIN), the Nigerian Army also took to Twitter to mock the hypocrisy of those who condemn the army for using deadly force to disperse the Shia protesters on Abuja streets. Mr Nagy had said: “Very concerned by the deadly clashes between Nigerian security forces and IMN members. We call on both sides to exercise restraint, and we urge the Government of Nigeria to conduct a thorough investigation and hold accountable those responsible for violating Nigerian law.”
Irritated by the US statement, and miffed by a similar denunciation by Amnesty International (AI) condemning the violence and calling on the Nigerian authorities to hold the army accountable, the Nigerian Army also posted on its official Twitter account a video in which President Donald Trump on Thursday warned that American troops would fire at migrants who threw rocks at US soldiers deployed along the Mexican border to prevent illegal entries into the US. In the video containing the US president’s statement, Mr Trump had said: “We’re not going to put up with that (migrants massing towards the US border). They want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back. I told them [troops] consider [a rock] a rifle. When they throw rocks like they did at the Mexican military and police, I say consider it a rifle.” Even though Mr Trump backed down on Friday, saying in an interview that American troops would have no reason to fire at anybody, the Nigerian Army had already seized upon his statement to justify the killing of Shiite protesters.
Last Friday, army spokesman, John Agim, defended the Twitter posts, saying: “The video was posted in reaction to the Amnesty International report accusing the army of using weapons against pacifist [Shia] protesters. Not only did they use stones but they were carrying petrol bombs, machetes and knives, so yes, we consider them as being armed. We intervened only because the IMN members are trying to harm our people, they are always meeting us at security checkpoints and trying to provoke us, they even burned a police vehicle.” Though the army has taken down the post after a firestorm of protests on social media, the harm was already done. The army acknowledges using deadly force against the protesters, but insisted that about four or six Shia members were killed. IMN spokesmen, however, insist that more than 40 of their members were killed in cold blood during the protests that lasted a few days.
It is hard to say why the Nigerian Army seized upon Mr Trump’s retrogressive statements to draw a parallel between the Nigerian protest and the US migrant problem, not to say understand why they justify the killing of scores of protesters. The US was facing what Mr Trump described as the perils of migrants, many of them from Honduras and other parts of Latin America; on the other hand, Nigeria was facing protests from its own citizens, all of them Shiites. Rather than acknowledge its awkwardness in tackling the Shiite problem, with much of that problem self-inflicted, the army has tried to find excuse to clamp down on the group. Neither the army nor the police, nor even the government itself, has managed to put together a coherent policy to handle protests, peaceful or not. In fact, increasingly, the army has seemed to be the first line of defence in tackling protests in many parts of Nigeria. More and more, in effect, Nigeria is being militarised, and civil and military rule are becoming indistinguishable. This plain fact is lost on the Muhammadu Buhari presidency and desperate and frightened Nigerians, as the army steadily encroaches into police and law enforcement duties uninvited.
Unfortunately for the Nigerian Army, they are the first in Africa to openly indicate that they were inspired by Mr Trump’s highly execrable methods of governance. Even though he is contemptuous of Nigeria and nearly all of Africa, the US president is not averse to being regarded as a role model. He has welcomed the return of far-right and populist governments in Europe and elsewhere, and is eager to offer a hand of fellowship to such governments, as he recently did to the newly elected Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Mr Trump’s style is instinctively iconoclastic, short-sighted, incoherent and deeply deprecatory. It is, however, fetching him great results, socially, economically and politically. He is not under pressure at all to re-examine both his style and policies, and is even less minded to abjure his divisive and irreverent methods. But not only does Mr Trump fail to emblematise the core principles of American strength and future, irrespective of his short-run successes, he may injure America’s long-term interests in ways that are incalculable and in dimensions that are unimaginable.
For Nigeria to be inspired by what is clearly an American aberration is an indication of both the vacuity of the Buhari presidency and the absence of a clearly defined, long-term national security interest. The Buhari presidency has so far taken on soft targets like the Shiites, partly because they are loathed by their neighbours in Zaria, where in 2015 the army killed about 347 protesting Shiites, and are feared by many Nigerians who uncritically equate them with Boko Haram. It is a miracle that going by their Trumpian inspiration the presidency has not yet taken on the press as villainously as the US president is doing. But they’ll probably get there if voters permit in 2019. It is even clearer that Nigeria has unwisely embraced President Trump’s inflammatory style because the country lacks both national ambition and identity. If the US was willing to shoot hapless migrants, how does that encourage the Nigerian Army to shoot its citizens?
There are countries in Europe that could serve as inspiring examples to the Nigerian military, especially given how difficult it has been for them to wriggle a little free from their sullied image connected with extra-judicial killings, lawlessness and brutality. If the army ignores the right examples in favour of the wrong examples, it is because the government has been unable to define an ambition for the country. With the right political structure and a leadership possessing depth and vision, Nigeria could better any country in the world’s best regions. Unfortunately, there is little imagination in leadership, and it is not surprising that the army now embraces the wrong examples and even wronger values. They are unable to properly decipher the national issues they confront, and are consequently incapacitated from aspiring to higher goals and values. With a government chronically debilitated by lack of foresight and selfish goals, Nigeria will continue to make a fool of itself globally. Already, the leading global media outfits which published the Nigerian Army’s embrace of the Trump logic were too bewildered to hide their disappointment. Anyone who read those reports on Saturday would sense how the foreign media had taken the measure of Nigeria and dismissed her as incompetent.
The army did not shoot four or six Shiite members, as they said. Amnesty International and Shiites themselves counted more than two or three dozen dead on Abuja streets. It was a massacre perpetrated before the whole world. The government’s approach to protests, as they have demonstrated in the past, is bloody, archaic and retrogressive. It is clear they can’t seem to divorce themselves from the military style of governance, nor are they able to esteem human life as they should as an elected government. Since 1999, despite being elected into office, Nigerian presidents have continually indicated that they are capable of much worse atrocities. Sufficiently provoked, they will always spill blood and defend it on the grounds of national interest. They have no conception of Nigeria, no vision of which heights to aspire to, and no uplifting examples to attempt to better or even best. There are no statesmen around anymore, and no empire builders whose knowledge of great empires inspire them to build a society far more organised than many European countries.
Given the pathetic manner the army has defended their horrifying show of force in the past one or two years in some states, it is hard to see any president enunciating great reforms capable of turning them into a truly national army. It will not happen, not with the present structure, and not with the present crop of leaders. If care is not taken, the country may be too far gone to be snatched from the jaws of mediocrity and villainy. For if the heads of the security and law enforcement agencies as well as the presidency cannot even grasp the elementary fact that they are not overlords but servants of the people, and that in their work they must be guided by the fact that every life matters, how on earth can they grasp the far bigger and much nobler need to, in the age of Trump, act, talk, think and perform better than an aberrational American president who is clearly in need of rehabilitation and re-schooling? The only consolation is that no matter how long it takes, those who perpetrated the recent killings in the name of the state will still be held accountable, if not tomorrow, then on the day after tomorrow. After all, as Friedrich Von Logau said, “Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all.”
We have our fears. If this is the definition of freedom of expression it is a matter of time before some people start calling for the assassination of the opposition figure and some fanatics will carry out the act in an even shorter span of time. When this happens the likes of Amnesty International will accuse the government of carrying out the attacks. The risk of such accusation pales in significance when compared to the danger of Nigeria going up in a conflagration, which is consistent with what this so called international organization has always wanted.