New Telegraph Thursday Back Page of May 2, 2024
By Ike Abonyi.
“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.” – Andre Gide
The United States of America is a great country by all standards. It has so many socio-political and economic models the rest of the world look up to. But what is also clear is that it is a dubious nation with so many contradictions that lead one to question its sincerity, especially regarding other nations.
I finished reading the State Department’s report on 11-month administration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu. No doubt, the distasteful report pumped up my adrenaline and I decided to have this conversation in the Political Musings of this week. All too often, the US thinks that the rest of the world is foolish, that it can lead the rest of us by the nose on its own terms. Possibly, the US thinks that doing such a damaging report on Tinubu might mitigate the US duplicitous attitude towards Nigeria’s democratic journey in 2015 and 2023.
According to the report under reference, “There was no significant” difference between Mr Tinubu’s nearly one-year performance and that of former, Muhammadu Buhari. The report outlined the American government’s assessment and scorecard of Nigeria’s human rights practices, saying that despite many reports that Mr. Atiku Bagudu was complicit in the late Sani Abacha’s looting of the Federal Government’s treasury—the much of which has been repatriated to Nigeria by several nations, including France, the UK, and Switzerland—Mr Tinubu still forwarded Mr Bagudu’s name as a ministerial nominee to the Senate for screening and confirmation. The US was furious: “Mr Tinubu turned a blind eye to Mr Bagudu’s widely reported transgressions, even entrusting him with the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning last August.”
This is the same US that also turned a blind eye when Atiku Abubakar of the PDP used all legal means to provide damaging evidence against Tinubu even in the US courts. Yes, our memory might be short but there are some very vital issues Nigerians and democratic watchers cannot forget easily. Nothing in that report excites anybody, whether in government or in opposition. Rather, it shows very clearly the deceitful role America plays in the name of propagating democratic ideals in the Third World. The same US scandalously says that the outcome of the 2023 poll reflects the feeling of the people. Nothing exposes the US hypocrisy more than these reports.
I think the US needs to be told in a very plain language that its cunning, fiendish, and dexterous roles in Nigeria’s democratic process have been unhelpful. Not too long from now, what is happening to France in Francophone Africa will begin to happen to the US in Africa. The US is not direct colonial masters like Europe but its busybody attitude has been irritating.
When the US produced an American of African descent, Barack Obama, Africans jubilated because of the erasing of some psychological inhibitions on Africans, especially blacks, and hoped that sincerer interest would be paid to Africa as a deprived region of the world. But as Obama’s era turned out, it remains the worst for Africa. Nigeria has been literally going down politically, economically, and developmentally, and is still paying for the political atrocities committed by America under the watch of a president of African descent.
Nigeria, the giant of Africa, home to over 200 million blacks, has been witnessing diminishing returns in her political and economic progression since the Obama era. Nigeria since 2015 is in their next chapter which America facilitated. Since 2009 Nigeria has witnessed the worst security challenges in history, all consequences of America’s next chapter on Africa that has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. How, you may want to know.
It was America under Obama that brutally eliminated Africa’s best political leader in terms development, welfare of citizens and the progress of a country, Muamar Ghadafi of Libya. At the time Ghadafi was taken down his country was the best run in Africa in the use of resources for the benefit of the people, yet the US engineered his killing because he was fronting for Africa’s economic independence.
The assassination of Ghadafi became a manure for the terrorism that engulfed the Sahel region, including giving birth to the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria’s Northern region. Libya as a country since the death of Ghadafi has remained destroyed with the populace in disarray.
Similarly, in Nigeria, after Obama failed in his craze to get President Goodluck Jonathan in his pocket over the same-sex laws joined in the mobilisation against him resulting in his famous next-chapter appeal for Nigeria's democracy. Obama repeatedly urged Nigerians to vote for the next chapter and do away with the then current chapter that Jonathan represented.
He did not stop at the speech but dispatched his Secretary of State John Kerry to Nigeria to openly undermine Jonathan by creating “divide and rule” in the geopolitical North. John Kerry, after meeting with some northern eggheads in Sokoto without involving the Nigerian government or coming to Abuja, arranged a return meeting with them in Washington. Eventually, Obama’s next chapter arrived with Muhammadu Buhari edging out a feasibly intimidated Jonathan. The abduction of the Chibok girls which was the biggest dent in Jonathan’s regime was also highlighted by the Obama regime just to further bring the administration down. Obama’s wife even escalated the Chibok issue but 10 years after, America that came to rescue one American in Northern Nigeria has been unable to help Nigeria release 91 Chibok girls still languishing in the forests with the terrorists. What a selfish super power.
Clearly, as it turned out, the next chapter on Nigeria is Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Ahmed Tinubu. This is a fact we live with and that will continue to dent the international reputation of the United States on its contributions to democratic development in Nigeria and Africa.
In 2023, the US had ample opportunity to correct its misadventures on Nigeria when one of the leading presidential candidates who even grabbed it forcefully and ran is well known to them but they tactically blocked his records from being made public and allowed him to emerge as the president with all the records known to them.
As America struggles to stop Donald Trump from contesting for President because of his disgusting specks of dirt, Nigerians muse about whether Joe Biden and the Democrats have the moral burden to stop anybody from going for the US presidency after what it condoned in Nigeria in 2023.
So, nothing can be more provocative to discerning minds in Nigeria than America coming to tell us that after 11 months nothing has changed on corruption in Nigeria. One wonders what they were expecting to change knowing what they know about the principalities controlling the government.
If goats do not give birth to sheep, why should America think that Nigeria's government under the watch of Tinubu will transform overnight and give Nigeria a corruption-free system. It’s either Americans are not as intelligent as we perceive them to be or they are in their intellectual arrogance thinking that Nigerians are dunces to swallow everything that comes from them.
The kind of report Nigerians are expecting to come from America on Nigeria should be apologetic for not acting well to put Nigeria well even when it had all the opportunities to do that.
Not to do that is to let us buy into the raging story that sincerely US does not want a politically and economically strong and viable Nigeria? A viable Nigeria will create a superpower in Africa and may reduce the omnipresence of the US in Africa. Otherwise, what is difficult in encouraging good governance in Nigeria. Why should the US with its father-figure role in democracy continue to tolerate and even romance with a democratic government that didn’t come through the people’s popular franchise? Any government in a democratic setting that did not originate from the mandate of the people cannot be expected to attend to the people’s needs.
In international diplomacy, it would be utopian to expect national action free from double standards or a situation guided by fairness and equality. But one expects a big brother to help the younger siblings to grow by showing some consistency and moral principles in their decisions and actions.
It’s hypocritical to demand respect while encouraging double standards while defending the guilty and condemning the innocent.
For America, the US social critic and Professor of linguistics, Noam Chomsky, is right: “For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.” in fact in democratic journey in Africa, America: Runs With The Hare, Hunts With The Hound
To cry when a bird cries and indifferent when fish bleeds, is a double standard and pictures what America is doing to democracy in Nigeria and indeed other African countries. Let’s reset our land and have a democratic system that discourages and demeans corruption and lack of virtue. God help us
