Amuta
Donald Trump’s gunboat foreign policy of unguarded words and unguided targeting has taken aim at a difficult target: Nigeria. Nigeria is in the gunsights . But it is a wrong choice. Nigeria is huge, complex, amorphous and a geo strategic nightmare. Though divided by diverse faiths and cultures, Nigerians have , curiously, after over six decades emerged as one people. We are united by our defects and strengths. Interestingly, the most unique uniting factor among Nigerians is the co-existence of the world’s two dominant religions as a permanent and axiomatic reality. We value our tenous reality but are forever looking out for each other especially when confronted by a common external adversary.
In the past one and half decades, violence and death have become part of our new normal. Boko Haram and allied religious groups have killed many. Free lance criminals and casual killers have claimed many casualties. The dead are both Christians, Muslims and innocent bystanders. Many Nigerians have died from causes other than their faith. In Nigeria’s persisting insecurity people die traveling to seek life. Others die on their way to the farm. Some also die on their way to and from work in cities.
Characterizing Nigeria’s killing industry as anti Christian genocide is ignorant and mischievous. Nigeria has a problem of safety of life irrespective of where you face to worship. Insecurity has made the country dangerous for people irrespective of faith and affiliation. Violence and unplanned death follows people around the country. Mostly in the mid sections of the country, frictions over land resources and grazing space have degenerated into mass killings among rival communities. Settled farmers get killed defending their farmland and crops. Herders kill and get killed for grazing spaces for their cattle. Matters of faith are inextricably tied to these issues of economic survival. In a dominantly Muslim and Christian nation, it is easy to see religious dominance in nearly every crisis.
Those Nigerians excited about the prospect of a US intervention had better think again. Let us go beyond Trump’s showmanship and bluster. America has deep interests behind this threat. Direct access to Nigeria’s over 30 billion barrels of oil means something to America’s imperial mind set. Our gas supply is an attraction as well. Vast deposits of all kinds of minerals including rare earth minerals is an additional irresistible allure. Our market is vast with close to 300 million people . The competing Chinese presence in our economy is big , expanding and enviable.
For a global power with a huge appetite for spheres of influence and limitless resources , the US cannot ignore Nigeria for too long. China as a competing influence in Nigeria may have vast economic influence and interest in Nigeria . But it will not go beyond cheap loans and infrastructure contracts. Its foreign policy avoids the commitment of Chinese military forces outside China. The Chinese will sell you guns and teach you how to operate them but they will not send their soldiers to die in tropical forests and open savannahs.
America has no acumen for fixing nations. Though exceptional in self healing, America cannot fix other lands. Even under its best leaders , Anerica is best at ruining those nations where it intervenes abroad. Even with the best intentions, America has never been a nation builder. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq, Libya…Syria…have all been ruined by American military intervention. Kuwait saw the danger of prolonged American presence and opted to treat the Americans as liberation contractors. Kuwait paid them $16 billion(49 billion in today’s value) in cash to get out fast after liberating them from Saddam Hussein.
In all cases, any land visited by American intervention forces ceases to exist or is destroyed for decades. America’s embrace is a hug of death. No nation touched by it remains whole again. Even those it now claims as ‘friends’ and allies are merely convalescents from that embrace of death. Japan and South Korea are lands mortality injured by the lethal American embrace. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two of the world’s most vast killing reminders ever are indelible. Lives damaged by the scalds of war remain as reminders of this lethal embrace. And successive American regimes still call Japan ‘friend’ of America? And they
stage an annual memorial to remind the Japanese of that baptism of blood. With a friend like that, who needs an enemy?
America starts out in a foreign escapade pretending a messianic role. It takes what it wants from the invaded territory and quits later in disarray. The escape from Saigon and Kabul are instructive. Today, the trumpeted savior of nations can hardly save itself. America is today a broken giant. It is a shadow of itself, now a museum of its founders’ democratic ideals. It has murdered democracy, diversity and justice while waiting on the queue for admission into the league of Third World authoritarian nations.
The US threat to intervene militarily in Nigeria ostensibly to protect Nigerian Christians is a typical Trump fake narrative. The inventor of ‘fake news’ is wrong as usual. Nigerian Christians are not under a genocidal threat. Yes Nigerian Christian’s have fallen victim to Nigeria’s embarassing insecurity especially in the hands of Boko Haram and allied Sahelian jihadist terrorists. So also have other innocent Nigerians who neither go to mosque or church. Churches and mosques have been bombed. Terrorists have attacked and stormed markets, places of worship and homes. The killers are fundamentalist jihadists as well as casual bandits and other criminals taking advantage of an atmosphere of lax security.
The most organized club of killers in Nigeria happens to be
Boko Haram and its successor affiliates. Boko Haram is a fundamentalist religious group but its aims are beyond faith and sect. It has killed many people irrespective of faith. They are territorial and pseudo civilizational in a decadent sense. Their nuisance and disruptive impact spread throughout the Sahel: Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, Niger, Chad etc. The same America sedt up the Africa Command of the US Central Command (AFRICOM) to help fight Jihadists in the Sahel with little result to date.
The threat of war on Nigeria over this alleged anti Christian genocide is therefore one among Trump’s obsessions with wars and shooting. He had bombed Iran, is currently shooting randomly at boats suspected to be ferrying narcotics gangs off the coasts of Venezuela and Colombia. He and his adolescent secretary of defense have renamed the Department of Defense as ‘Department of war’: how childish?. These are the actions of a president who openly hustled a few months ago for the Nobel Peace Prize. The pursuit of global peace through sporadic and indiscriminate foolish unprovoked acts of war is the path of a deranged king!
In the unlikely event however of a US military intervention in Nigeria, the invaders will find many opponents. China has openly expressed its opposition. The EU has said it stands by Nigeria. in Nigeria itself, the following array of adversaries are waiting: the Nigerian military whose jobs would be on the line, Muslims who would find support from Middle East radical groups, ordinary Nigerians whose reality would be disrupted
The avoidable implications of a direct US intervention would therefore be immense and immediate . Nigeria as the world has come to know it will cease to exist. It would be a military catastrophe and humanitarian disaster of the greatest magnitude in history . The outflux of refugees from Nigeria will overwhelm West Africa, Western Europe and even the US. The lesson of our history is that Nigerians are best left alone in their land to sort out their problems.
Direct US military intervention will in addition neutralize Nigeria’s residual capacity for internal cohesion. The military will be destroyed along with the police, State security and other structures. Over 300 million people in more than 250 ethnic affiliations will be unleashed without order, controls and a government. A quantum of hunger, poverty and unrivaled lawlessness will create the world’s most dangerous territorial space. Sheer anarchy unleashed by the greed of an unguarded super power and the ineptitude of foolish political elite at home. Thomas Hobbes could never have imagined so hopeless a state of nature. The killings that the Americans came to end will then know no boundaries: Christians killing Muslims and Vice versa, the poor killing the rich, inter ethnic militias clashing, lawless youth squads roaming the streets and butchering even the American messianic invaders. The messiahs will turn into evil villains and the victims of yesterday will become aggressors. An uncontrollable racketeering in black market arms will thrive. Eventually, the Americans will flee at the sight of the mess Trump will have gotten them into. Trump’s greatest legacy will be Armageddon in Africa!
The rich Nigerian Christian leaders who have funded this anti Nigerian lobby together with their Christian Evangelical right wing collaborators in America need to understand the full implications of what they are about to set off.
Similarly, the bulk of the Nigerian diaspora who are celebrating the Trump ‘support’ need to have their heads re-examined. Home would be on fire and unrecognisable. No one in their right mind will look forward to home when it is a ruin of war. Only insane people openly call for their homestead t be turned into a theatre of war.
There is a diplomatic way out. Tinubu should speak with Trump the way Zelensky has been doing. Humour the tyrant and his huge ego. Quickly Appoint a diplomatic liaison to engage with Washington on this misperception.
For the Nigerian political class, the hour calls for greater seriousness. Running from pillar to post in search of excuses among themselves will not help the politicians. In not guaranteeing security, the government has failed. The most elementary responsibility of a state is to guarantee the security 0f all who live within of life and property of all in its sovereign space. The concept of territorial integrity of the state makes no room for the existence of ‘ungoverned spaces’. A nation that allows for ungovernable spaces to the extent of negotiating boundaries of sovereignty with criminal contestants of power has lost it all. The most fundamental definition of sovereignty is total unconditional command and control of the entire national territory and all that goes on within it.
The National Assembly needs to quit being a conclave of overpaid entertainers. It needs to stiffen the penalties for terrorism, crimes in religious locations, crimes motivated by faith. Existing inter faith bodies need to be reinforced and strengthened. Governors of states with inter religious clashes need to legislate boundaries which should be temporarily manned by national security personnel 24/7.
On the general governance front, there is work to be urgently done. The Defense establishment response should now be more specialized and time bound with performance deadlines and targets. Tenure of commanders and service chiefs should be tied to performance. The military option open to both Nigeria and the US is not invasion or senseless air strikes. It is collaboration in training and intelligence gathering. Nigeria needs US assistance to overcome its insecurity. The US needs a safe, fair and stable Nigeria to better understand the emerging Africa.
