The Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, yesterday met behind closed doors with the former United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister, Tony Blair, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The closed-door meeting was described as ‘private’.
At the end of the meeting, there was no press interview.
There was also no official statement issued concerning the meeting at the time of filing this report.
Blair was the UK Prime Minister between 1997 and 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party between 1994 and 2007.
The Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, on Friday met behind closed doors with the former United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister, Tony Blair, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The closed doors meeting was described as ‘private’.
At the end of the meeting, there was no press interview.
There was also no official statement issued concerning the meeting as at the time of filing this report.
Blair was the UK Prime Minister between 1997 and 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party between 1994 and 2007.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday said he would advise Labour Party lawmakers to vote down a Brexit divorce deal that Theresa May is trying to clinch with the EU.
Nearly six months before the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU, there is little clarity about how the world’s fifth largest economy and its preeminent international financial centre will trade with the EU after Brexit.
Blair, Labour prime minister from 1997 to 2007, said voters should be given another referendum on whether to stay in the EU as he saw deadlock in British politics.
If May gets can strike a deal with the EU, she has to get it approved by the British parliament which is divided on Brexit.
Labour has indicated it is likely to vote down any deal May brings back.
When asked if he would advise Labour lawmakers to vote down a possible deal, Blair said: “It really is difficult.
“The alternatives are all worse because if you do get to a blockage in parliament that is what opens up the possibility of going back to the people.
“My view is this only happens if there is blockage in parliament.
“However, if there is blockage in parliament it is a very simple argument. You say look we have been two and a bit years trying to reach an agreement that works, parliament is blocked.”
Both opponents and supporters of Brexit agree that the divorce is Britain’s most significant geopolitical move since World War Two.
However, they cast vastly different futures for the 2.9 trillion dollars UK economy and the world’s biggest trading bloc.
Blair has repeatedly called for reversing Brexit, echoing other critics such as French President Emmanuel Macron and billionaire investor George Soros, who have suggested that Britain could still change its mind.
Blair said that if Brexit did happen, the economic dislocation would be such that the United Kingdom would have to pitch to investors that it would be the best place in the world to do business.
Former British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair has pledged his support to the Kaduna State governor.
He spoke yesterday when he visited Governor Nasir El-Rufai at the Sir Kashim Ibrahim Government House in Kaduna.
The former Prime Minister runs a foundation which builds capacity of government officials on good governance delivery.
Blair said: “The Tony Blair Foundation will provide technical and other assistance to Kaduna State to enable it deliver democratic dividends to its people, especially in investments, basic education, healthcare and agriculture”.
Blair, who promised that his foundation will provide necessary assistance to state governments whenever required, described the meeting with El-Rufai as “an exciting opportunity to visit Nigeria and see how governance is being run and done”.
He noted that there is great goodwill and desire for the country to do well under President Muhammadu Buhari, especially in the fight against corruption.
El-Rufai described Blair’s visit as timely because it allowed him and his exco to share Blair’s experience.
The governor said the task before his government is how to deliver so much with very little resources at its disposal hence, the need for the Tony Blair Foundation to assist in building the capacity of key drivers of government.
Former British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, on Thursday pledged his support for Kaduna State Governor, Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, in his bid to deliver good governance to people of the state.
Blair, who was the British Prime Minister for 10 years, made the pledge when he visited Governor El-Rufai at Sir Kashim Ibrahim Government House, Kaduna.
The former British PM now runs a foundation which builds capacity of government officials on good governance.
He said: “The Tony Blair Foundation would assist Kaduna State in terms of technical assistance and other supports to enable it deliver democratic dividends to its people especially in the areas of investments, basic education, healthcare and agriculture.”
Mr. Blair also met with members of the Kaduna State executive council at the governor’s office where he was briefed by the governor and members of his cabinet about the successes recorded by their ministries as well as their challenges and asked for his assistance.
He commended the relationship between his country and Nigeria, and how Kaduna and his Foundation would work together to transform the state’s public service sector for efficient service delivery and increase prosperity.
He pointed out that the hardest thing about governance is being able to deliver on campaign promises to the people.
Blair, however, assured that his Foundation’s staff were ready to provide necessary assistance to the state government whenever required.
In 2003, US President George Bush, and Tony Blair, the British Labour Prime Minister, led their two countries into a military invasion of Iraq. It was an unholy alliance that stirred things up in the Arab world. Although long expected after months of tension and inconclusive diplomatic engagements at the UN, the invasion of Iraq by the US and the UK took the world by surprise. It was sudden, massive, and had taken place when the Iraqi crisis was still the subject of intense debate and negotiations at the UN Security Council. Bush and Blair claimed jointly they invaded Iraq because they had received credible intelligence report that Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, was in possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs. In a matter of weeks, the war was over. Saddam Hussein was toppled from power and a joint interim local government, under the aegis and control of the US-led coalition partners, was set up in Baghdad. But it lacked legitimacy and, despite military and political support from the US/UK occupation forces, soon fell apart from sectarian violence and conflicts all over Iraq. The official British Chilcot report on the war released last week in London confirms the perfidious and despicable role of Tony Blair, the British Labour Prime Minister, in the war.
The war was unpopular globally, even in countries, including the Arab world, that would normally support the US. Many critics considered the invasion of Iraq illegal and illegitimate under international law. The UN did not authorise it. It evoked deep global divisions and controversy on the credibility of the intelligence report on which the decision by the US and the UK to invade Iraq was based. Many considered it an unjust and unjustified war based on false and faulty intelligence reports. Specifically, President Chirac of France, which did not participate in the invasion of Iraq, declared publicly that the decision to go to war in Iraq was hasty and premature and that the ongoing negotiations at the UN Security Council had not been concluded when Bush and Blair decided to wage war on Saddam Hussein. All peaceful options had not been fully exploited and exhausted before the joint US/UK invasion. In fact, while the US and the UK had made up their minds to go to war in Iraq at all costs, a UN weapons inspection team that had just returned from Baghdad reported to the UN Security Council, in New York, that it had not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. If there were any, it added, they had probably been destroyed in Iraq by Saddam Hussein so as to avoid a war against his country, a war that he did not want. But this report no longer made any difference to Bush or Blair. A decision to go to war had already been taken and they would not be deterred even in the face of credible evidence that the intelligence reports they claimed to have on the WMDs lacked any credibility globally.
For years after the war, the British Labour Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair, continued to defend his decision to go to war on the grounds that the evidence he had was that Saddam Hussein did have the WMDs. He even lied to the House of Commons in the UK that Saddam Hussein could trigger his weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes, and that he had to act in the interest and defence of the UK by taking his country into war with Iraq alongside the US. But even at the time his claims about the WMDs were hotly disputed in Britain. The war was unpopular in Britain and there were strong public protests and demonstrations against it. Many condemned Blair as Bush’s ‘poodle,’ arguing that, despite Britain’s self-acclaimed ‘special relationship’ with the US, which is not often requited by the US, there was no real political, security, or moral obligation on the part of Blair to support Bush’s senseless war in Iraq. They could point out that under Harold Wilson, a former British Labour Prime Minister, the UK had stayed out of the American war in Vietnam. Some of the harsh critics of Tony Blair’s toadying to the US were able to recall that when Anthony Eden, the British Conservative Prime Minister, invaded Egypt in 1956, in concert with France and Israel, over Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal, the US denounced the invasion as an unjust war and forced Eden to withdraw his forces from Egypt. Such was the weight of US and local criticism of the war that Anthony Eden was forced to resign from office as prime minister. He had resigned as Foreign Secretary in 1934 in protest against the policy of appeasement by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. But his misguided invasion of Egypt in 1956 effectively ended his brilliant political career.
Now, from the report of the Chilcot official enquiry into the despicable role of the UK in the joint invasion of Iraq we are now able to confirm what had been suspected all along, that Blair did not have credible and incontrovertible evidence that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. There was little or no consensus in the British intelligence agencies, particularly the MI6, on this, although the head of the British M16 was reported as tending on the whole to present to Tony Blair only intelligence reports that were favourable to the claim that Saddam Hussein was in possession of WMDS. So, in effect, the British Government and Parliament were conned by the Prime Minister into supporting an unpopular and unjust war in Iraq based on false intelligence. The report also revealed that the two cabinet Ministers, Jack Straw, the Foreign Minister, and his Defence colleague, Hume, whose views should count, were not fully briefed by Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, on why Britain had to go to war in Iraq. They were swindled into accepting his perfunctory and unsatisfactory briefs on which basis they decided to go along with Tony Blair on the Iraqi war. This reinforces the view of a steady increase in the powers of the British Prime Minister. From being first among equals, he is now more presidential and, like the US president, will normally have his way on any major Cabinet decision. In the Iraqi war Blair had his way despite reservations from some of his Cabinet colleagues.
Now, as reported by the Chilcot enquiry set up in 2009, what was even more galling about the decision of the British government to go to war in Iraq is the manner Tony Blair toadied to Bush on this grave issue of war and peace in Iraq. Right from the start, Bush had decided he would go to war in Iraq over the false intelligence claim that Saddam Hussein had WMDS. After 9/11 Bush had made up his mind to shake things up in the Arab world by dealing with the ‘bad’ guys. Whether or not Hussein had WMDs was immaterial to him in his narrow and unsophisticated view of the world which he simply divided into the ‘bad and good guys’. Saddam Hussein was a bad guy and had to be removed from power. A regime change in Iraq, Bush concluded, had become imperative. In the several trips that Tony Blair made to Camp David for talks with George Bush he was left in no doubt that Bush was determined to go to war. According to the Chilcot report, Blair made a feeble attempt to delay the final decision on going to war by suggesting to Bush that the matter be placed before the UN Security Council. Bush agreed to go to the UN but insisted that while a role by the UN was useful, he did not consider it as necessary. A UNSC resolution was in fact passed later urging Saddam Hussein to rid his country of the WMDs, or face the consequences. But this did not amount to the endorsement by the UN of a unilateral military attack on Iraq by the so-called coalition partners, or the use of force to resolve the crisis.
As revealed by the Chilcot report, even as a junior coalition partner to the US, Britain did not make adequate defence preparations for the war. Blair ignored warnings from the Defence Ministry and British defence establishment that Britain lacked and could not provide the resources, the equipment, to go to war in Iraq, and that the British military should first be re-equipped. This advice was ignored by Blair. The consequences of the war have been truly tragic and continue to reverberate around the world, including the US, with increased terrorist violence and insurgencies all over the world.
For Britain, the upshot of this criminal negligence on the part of Tony Blair was that young innocent British soldiers were sent to war, in harm’s way, severely handicapped. 179 of them needlessly lost their lives in the war leaving their loved ones to mourn their needless and premature deaths. The war against Saddam Hussein was won by the coalition forces. But it left Iraq and the whole of the Arab world in turmoil, in a far worse situation than ever before. Violent sectarian conflicts have widened as the ISIS simply moved into the vacuum left behind by the departing coalition forces. Instead of a localised war in Iraq, we now have the ISIS’ full blown war in Syria that has again brought in the US and Russia into combat in the region. So, the objectives of the war for securing peace and stability in the world have not been realised by both the US and the UK. Here in Nigeria, the Boko Haram, which claims affiliation to ISIS, is a direct consequence of the Iraqi war in which we were in no way involved.
The Iraqi war raises some basic but old issues about why nations go to war and the extent that their leaders can be trusted in making the right decisions on war and peace. Nations do not on their own decide to go to war. This decision is taken on their behalf by their leaders based on their own judgments about any perceived threat to the nation. As was the case in Iraq the decision to go to war or the reasons advanced for doing so are often wrong. Even in a stable and advanced democracy such as the UK and the US, such mistakes can be easily made by leaders who go to war when there are no real or direct threats to their countries. That was the tragic mistake of the former British Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, the longest serving Labour leader and Prime Minister for well over half a century.
Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, on Thursday said the world would be “in a worse position” had he not taken the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
The former PM said despite the “terrible consequences,” removing Saddam Hussein “moved with the grain” of what was to come in the region.
Mr. Blair also said it would be “far better” if he had challenged intelligence on Iraq’s weapons in the run-up to war.
The official inquiry into the 2003 war was strongly critical of Mr. Blair’s government and United Kingdom military chiefs.
Sir John Chilcot’s report, published on Wednesday, said Mr. Blair had overstated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, sent ill-prepared troops into battle and had “wholly inadequate” plans for the aftermath of the conflict.
Mr Blair told the BBC that although mistakes had been made, the decision to join the United States-led invasion had been the right one.
And the ex-PM hit back at claims he had secretly committed the UK to help U.S President George W Bush topple Saddam Hussein and then overstated the threat posed by Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction to sell the war to the public and MPs.
Mr Blair told the BBC he had not “made some irrevocable decision to go to war” at that point.
“We were giving the United States a very clear commitment that we would be alongside them in dealing with this issue,” he said.
The United States pushed the United Kingdom into military action in Iraq “too early,” a former British ambassador to the United Nations has said in the wake of the Chilcot report.
The long-awaited report said ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair had overstated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein – and military action was not a last resort.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, UK ambassador to the UN in 2003, said Mr. Blair had wanted a UN resolution backing action.
But he told the BBC that senior U.S officials thought it was a “waste of time.”
The Chilcot report was published on Wednesday having taken seven years to compile.
Sir John Chilcot – chairman of the UK’s Iraq War inquiry – concluded Mr. Blair had sent ill-prepared troops into battle and had “wholly inadequate” plans for the aftermath.
The 2003 invasion had not been the “last resort” action presented to MPs and the public, Sir Chilcot said, adding that there had been no “imminent threat” from Saddam Hussein, and the intelligence case was “not justified.”
Sir Greenstock said he felt Mr. Blair had wanted to wait longer before taking military action.
It would have been “much safer” to give weapons inspectors in Iraq another six months to continue their work, he added.
Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said on Wednesday that the President-elect, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, must capitalize on the goodwill among Nigerians to take drastic decisions that will impact positively on the nation’s economy on the long run.
Represented by Peter Mendelssohn at a two- day policy dialogue on the implementation of the agenda for change organised by the Policy research and strategy directorate of the All Progressive Congress Presidential a Campaign Council, the ex- British PM said one of such decisions will be to drastically overhaul the nation’ soil sector by immediately reposition the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and eliminate corruption in the sector.
He said “Let me give you an example of another emerging economy that I have spent time more recently. President of Indonesia was elected last year with huge public support. As a foremost businessman without link to the political elites, he was hailed as a leader who could transform Indonesia.
“One of the things he did after being inaugurated last October was to slash Indonesia’s hugely expensive and inefficient, but yet popular fuel subsidy, a policy decision which had toppled previous administrations and consistently brought people out into the streets. He decided to do it straight away.
“He had that goodwill and had that authority and that was the time to move. Obviously, when there was a low price of oil, it made it less painful, but it was well timed.
“On one part, the new President has demonstrated to his people and the international market that he was serious about economic reform and that he was no longer to be underestimated and the protests on the streets ended up being minimal compared to previous times.
“As you know, addiction to fuel subsidy is not limited to Indonesia. I am saying take advantage of that goodwill of being elected to take difficult decisions that may inflict immediate pains, but will in the long terms be of interest to the country and the government.
“What you do in the first 100 days is important and symbolic and can also have tremendously positive repercussion for the government and throughout country. You have a limited window of opportunity to make an impact as a government. Looking at Nigeria, I would say your vulnerability is corruption and that is not new to you, particularly around the oil sector.
“People in this country seem to be able to do things with impunity and beyond the reach of the rule of law or proper accountability and the judicial system. You can crack the NNPC nut or you can make a start on it in the first 100 days and if you do so, you would have built a very strong foundation for what you have to do in the next four years and beyond.
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