The pretext of genocide, loss of sovereignty and demise of a country

“So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.” Voltaire   Oscar Wilde, (D. 1900) the Irish […]

“So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.” Voltaire

 

Oscar Wilde, (D. 1900) the Irish author, poet and Playwright, known for his wits, was reported to have said that, America is the only country which went straight from barbarism to decadence, without going through civilisation. The more documented version is that of Georges Clemenceau, the former French Prime Minister, who said, “America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilisation”. Charles Dickens, (D. 1870) the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, the author of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, was once asked about an American gentleman, his reply was, “I do not know any American gentleman. God, forgive me for putting such two words together.” Quite a number of prominent literary figures like, George Bernard Shaw and political leaders like Winston Churchill, have been reported to have said different versions of the same reality, that there was never an American civilisation. One can confidently say that, among the literary, scholarly and diplomatic circles, there is a consensus, that America was never known for its finesse or decorum, rather it is known for its violent foundation, rouge trajectory and a decadent culture. And the evidence is overwhelming.

A quick IA overview says, “The historical experiences of Native Americans (also referred to as “Red Indians” in older terminology) in the Americas involved a drastic population decline and systematic violence, land dispossession, and cultural suppression that many historians and sources describe as genocide. The population plummeted from an estimated 10 million before European arrival to less than 300,000 by 1900.”[1] Some of the methods used in this devastation include: introduction of the old world diseases like small pox, forced removals, like Indian Removal Act of 1830, which led to the ‘Trail of Tears’; Warfare and Resource destruction, leading to starvation; Forced Assimilation and Cultural Genocide, forcing them to be Christian American; Forced sterilization, often without knowledge or consent of Native American women.[2] AI, proceeded to say, “These actions match the criteria for genocide as defined by the United Nations, which includes killing members of a group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, inflicting destructive living conditions, preventing births within the group, and forcibly transferring children. The historical record, as detailed in works like An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe 1846 to 1873 by Benjamin Madley, supports this characterisation.”[3] The famous book ‘Roots: the Saga of an American Family’, by Alex Haley, produced in 1976 (made into a film) has conveyed the horrific tortures to the big screens and you can’t watch without an outrage against the Europeans who perpetrated these atrocities in America. And now the Epstein Files, the horrors of which are still unfolding.

Enough of the barbaric foundations of America, let us look at the decadence. America has from its very beginning led the world in murder rates, drug addicts and incarcerations statistics. The crime rates in American cities[4] have been consistently the worst in the world. The level of Godlessness in American cities made the Times Magazine[5] of April 8, 1966, to lead with a cover tittle, “Is God Dead?” A previous article, from October 1965, had investigated a trend among 1960s theologians to write God out of the field of theology. The 1966 article looked in greater depth at the problems facing modern theologians, in making God relevant to an increasingly secular society. In the late 80’s another cover of Times Magazine was ‘Hell is an American City’, in which it was argued that, only two things appear to be most important in America, money and sex and that you can always use one to get the other.

Gore Vidal, a prolific American writer and public intellectual known for his cynical epigrammatic wit, thought to be the greatest American writer alive, until his death in 2012, wrote “On the American obsession: He titled a collection of essays Sex, Death and Money.” Vidal often argued that American society was obsessed with money, sex, and celebrity, often stating that these topics were used to distract the public from politics. Vidal was also famous for saying that, “We should stop going around babbling about how we’re the greatest democracy on earth, when we’re not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic.” Adding that, “We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.”[6] Just to be sure, Gore Vidal was not some leftist American, no, he was a mainstream capitalist American intellectual. In the 70’s he crisscrossed American cities giving lectures about the dangers of communism. He reported that in one of this lecture, during the question and answers session, a lady took the mic and said to him that she had two questions: the first question was, ‘how can she, as an American housewife, fight communism?’ The second question was ‘What is communism?’ He highlighted the fact that, here is an American ready to fight what she doesn’t even understand. That is America!

This idea of Americans fighting what they don’t quite understand and their amnesia, their failure to learn any lessons from history is something the world has suffered from, for some time now.. We recall their fiasco in the Vietnam war where they had to withdraw in humiliation; what they thought was a small inconsequential country, Somalia, turned out to be a hard nut to crack and they left in a hurry with ignominy, shifting the burden to Ethiopian troops; in Afghanistan, it was the rag-tag Taliban, they fought for years, that eventually chased them out, again with ignominy. In Iraq they were found lying about ‘weapons of mass destruction’, they dragged their allies and at the end, it was another fiasco. Every country America had entered, it left in shame and it left the country worse than they found it. And they don’t seem to ever learn from their mistakes. Today they have started what many American citizens said is an Israeli war, without an exit plan and now it is already looking stuck. This is what makes America dangerous. Again, just to be sure, this is the conclusion of informed American scholars.

In an article titled, ‘The United States of Amnesia: US foreign Policy and the Recurrence of Innocence’ jointly written by Simon Philpott and David Mutimer, published on line, 01 Jul 2009, they critiqued US foreign Policy, and dwelt on the dangerous American way of doing things. They said, “This article interrogates the ways in which the United States ‘forgets’ the consequences and effects of its foreign policy in the making of its identity. In particular, the article argues that such forgetting enables the United States government to frame its interventions in world affairs as innocent and morally driven. … The article concludes with the observation that the processes of forgetting past action when framing the context of new interventions, make the United States a dangerous force in global affairs.” True to this conclusion, we can now see how Trump, who said that he was a peace president, even looking forward to a Nobel prize for peace, has in this second term already bombed nearly eight countries. In the latest one, Trump appears to have gone into it without thinking through, without clear objectives and without an exit strategy. Now we are all paying for the chaos in the global energy and stock markets, disruptions in global supply chains, with American allies crying, American economy bleeding and American citizens on the street demonstrating.

Why this long anthology on America when the article is on Nigeria? It is necessary to take time to deconstruct America, because the level of ignorance about America in Nigeria, is astonishing, especially among those who went to America to report Nigeria on a purported genocide. I am glad that the Christian leaders, who dared to speak, have settled the issue of genocide, since they have recognised the known fact that the genocide is against Nigerian citizens, irrespective of faith. For anybody who knows America to take the issue of genocide to a country which was founded on genocide and itself a promoter of genocide, a country that has not spared its black population to this day, especially under Trump, a president who has not hidden his contempt and disgust for blacks in their own country, a president who has insulted African countries as shitholes, etc. One has to be a Trump to be able to imagine that America can solve his problem.

What is even more intriguing about the people reporting their country to America is that they apparently don’t know that America is being accused of creating Boko Haram, and that only recently the congressional hearing on USAID revealed how America was funding Boko Haram and ISIS. They have been known to have created the Taliban and several other insurgents around the globe. The presence of foreign hands in the Boko Haram phenomenon has been collaborated by Prof Bolaji Akinyemi’s interview on a national television. I was in government when the then America Ambassador brought a team of American scholars to meet the Muslim scholars of Borno. When they arrived at the venue in Maiduguri, the Americans asked for Muhammad Yusuf, the founder of Boko Haram. Borno scholars were shocked. The Americans were told that, the young man was not qualified to be a student of any of the scholars assembled there.  Muhammad Yusuf was a non-entity, he was expelled from a school he was teaching in Damaturu, he was prompted by politicians and apparently funded by foreign sources. So he was not the making of any Muslim group, he may have borrowed some religious rhetoric, as a camouflage, but he is essential a foreign agent and represented what the British investigative journalist, John Pilger called ‘war by other means’. This is not the place to say more, the point being made is that Boko Haram, rural banditry are foreign creations and records are pointing USA and her European collaborators, so, how can they be part of the solution?

Apparently, ignorant of what America is, and blinded by local parochialism, those who reported Nigeria played into American hands. They may well have been induced by the Americans to report Nigeria just to avail the US an entry point. Now that they are on the ground, those who reported may no longer matter, they have become pawns in the game. I have seen a clip of one of them already complaining. America is busy laying an infrastructure to compete with China, especially in mining the rare earth metals. Many have noticed the sudden escalation of insecurity since the American boots got on the ground; the frequency and quantum of attacks have increased, the Ngoshe, Gwoza disaster where only about 50 Boko Haram fighters destroyed a camp of nearly 450 soldiers and of course Ngoshe town itself, is only one such incidence. The Maiduguri suicide bombing, the Rukuba massacre, and the many more deaths that go unreported and unattended have become the new social ecology. The arrival of the Israelis and the signing of an agreement, the content of which we have no idea, is ominous, for Israeli records in the killings of Gaza and occupied West Bank, a belligerent country being investigate for war crimes, is well documented.

As I was beginning to scribble this article a news item came in, that Amnesty International was reporting that the Nigerian DSS has started arresting youths sharing clips criticising Israel. I heard the spokesman for Amnesty International arguing, over the BBC, that in a democracy, criticising leaders cannot be a crime. I immediately remembered Voltaire, who said that, ‘If you want to know who controls your government, look at who you are not allowed to criticise.’ If indeed the Amnesty claim is true, then our government has been taken over by Israel and America, the two most dangerous countries on earth – a serial violator of UN resolutions and international law and a bully, which has destroyed every place they enter. It is important to note that the Presidents of both countries are facing serious problems in their home countries, one is facing a case of political corruption and the other is facing the Epstein files scandal. We saw how, during Clinton, these pressures created Lewinsky missiles, precisely to distract attention, albeit at colossal losses of human lives and properties.

All these are happening because we have lost our sovereignty. We have leaders that only brag here at home, terrorising opposition, but kneel down to receive instructions from the US, Israel and now the UK. Our President’s March trip to UK was another glaring evidence of our loss of sovereignty. It appeared he was there to receive instructions; first about the GBP 746m loan; half of which goes back to British companies; British steel will get close to GBP100m to supply 120,000 tons of steel, which will create 10,000 British jobs, while our Ajakuta Steel Company lays idle and our youth roam the streets, looking for jobs that are not there. Then came the transfer of criminals in British prisons, even as we have nowhere to place them in our already congested prisons. Sharing of intelligence is a euphemism for surrendering our vital data, just as we did with the French. Data in the hi-tech world of the 21st century is sovereignty, whoever owns your data owns your future. The question is what has Nigeria gained in all these? As Mark Cuban would say “Always find the fool in the deal. If you don’t find one, it is you.”

All these expose our political leader’s ineptitude and servitude. They appear to have no idea of the contours of the terrain of international politics. They have no spine or balls to standard up to defend their national interest. They dont even seem to know what their national interest is. Only God knows what crimes they have committed to be so beholden to the most dangerous countries in the world today. From the moment the Americans declared Nigeria a ‘country of particular concern’, our leaders started panicking and nothing more was rational or procedural. We only hear ‘cock and bull’ stories. It was after the missiles have landed on our soil that we heard that there was an agreement, some independent sources deny any such agreement. The silence of the Minster of Defence says it all. The National Assembly was quite, for if there was any such agreement, it must be ratified by the National Assembly before it becomes operational. What all these come to is that we have lost our sovereignty. Our leaders have sold out. They have shown that they have neither conscience nor courage to defend their country, they lost the moral right to become leaders and this is the greatest disservice, some would say the greatest treason, that leaders can commit against their country. It is now for enlightened citizens to decide on what to do to salvage their country.

All this has happened because, the elite, who should be quick at realising the implications of these foreign policy blunders, sat on the side, watching and probably agonising in the privacy of their homes and offices. It is even possible to find some empty-headed, short sighted elite who would even be happy that America is here to solve their problem. I saw a distressed politician calling on Trump to come and save democracy in Nigeria! What a tragedy. Well America, will not and cannot solve our problems. America (or is it Trump?)  is transactional, look at the nasty trade wars with its long term allies. America is here to solve its problems, as we shall see as things begin to unfold. We need to ask the question why the Nigerian elite appears incapable of rising to the occasion, when the corporate interest of the country is at stake. How can otherwise educated people fall prey to the weaponisation of identity by rouge politicians? Why have we not been able to give this country direction, rather, we have allowed largely unscrupulous, ignorant politicians to continue misdirecting the country? Why have we been unbale to craft an elite consensus around some direction and unite our energy and thoughts into making this country the great country, the pride of Africa, that it should be?

I don’t claim to know the answers to the questions I am raising, but I believe that at this crucial stage, a historical cross-road, we need to raise them and come to some elite consensus which can harvest the enormous talent and channel it in building this great African promise, that Nigeria is. What I know, however, is that majority of Nigerian elite are wallowing in ignorance of the changing global architecture and at home, ignorance of the other; we spent most our free time and resources abusing each other to no end. We take pride in being from this or that tribe, as if we bribed God to raise us in those tribes. What is the sense in taking pride in an act in which you contributed nothing, it could not have been your choice, you just woke up and found yourself there. So what is the heck? You may take pride in being more knowledgeable, more understanding, more accommodating, or more enduring, etc., because that requires your personal efforts, but certainly not in waking up to discover that you are of this or that tribe. China has officially recognised 56 different ethnic groups, (if you consider the sub-ethnic groups you may be looking at about 300 identities) who has ever heard any Chinese talk about them, the Chinese are busy building China, today China is formidable. The Chinese seemed to have been listening to Leo Tolstoy, the Russian Literati, the author of the classic, ‘War and Peace’, when he said, “If you make it a habit not to blame others, you will feel the growth of the ability to love in your soul, and you will see the growth of goodness in your life.”

It is depressing to find out that even academics who should know better are caught in this web of irrationality and triviality. About four years ago I was a speaker at a conference at the University of Ibadan. A professor and fellow panelist said in his presentation that the Caliphate was the major problem of this country. I asked him how many of the 300 books and works of the three top Caliphate leaders he had read? The answer was None. I asked him if he was aware that quite a number of these manuscripts are located in the Arabic Department of University of Ibadan, on which many postgraduate students had done their Masters and PhDs? The answer was No! I told him that my first lesson on the Caliphate was from a book, titled ‘Power and Diplomacy in Northern Nigeria, 1804-1906: The Sokoto Caliphate and Its Enemies’, written by Professor R. A. Adeleye, a brilliant historian from the University of Ibadan, and if he was aware of the book, the answer was another No! So, here we are, a professor, apparently from the University of Ibadan, who is thinking very much like Gore Vidal’s American Housewife, ready to fight something he has not taken the time to even understand. This happens a lot, sometimes stifling communication, creating a kind of ‘dialogue of the deaf’ on important national issues. Some of us are used to taking these libelous statements in our strides because a lot of these elite are ignorant, we ignore them because we know that ‘dogs only bark at persons they don’t know.’

If we continue to be complacent or complicit we shall soon discover that we have no country to call our own. We only need to look at Congo DRC, the richest country in Africa whose resources are daily looted while their population agonises in excruciating poverty and fight proxy, self-destructive, tribal wars on end. DRC Congo has nearly 70% of the world Rhodium deposit and half a container of rhodium in the world market sells at nearly $2billion, yet when I visited just over a year ago parts of Kinshasa the capital is very much like our Yanya, Maraba or Kuchi-goro, the satellite slums of Abuja. If we keep watching and doing nothing or become complicit, this is exactly where we are going to end up. America and Israel, and before them France, are not here to help us, they have never helped anybody; they are here to help themselves to our detriment. They have no record of helping anybody, they have records of murders, looting and destruction. We must not relent, for as Frederick Douglass would say, “Power never concedes anything without a demand; it never has and it never will.” James Baldwin would add, “But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Malcom X would caution that, “Nonviolence is fine as long as it works.”

So, what to do? We are watching our only country being taken over, by France and more recently, by America and Israel, for their selfish interests and to our loss. We are watching people who claimed to have been elected and sworn to protect the constitution of the Federal Republic  of Nigeria, chickening out, and failing to stand up to this invasion. This has all been possible, largely because of the complacency and complicity of the Nigerian elite. The implications are obvious; that we are on our way to losing our only country. We are already divided along religious and tribal fault lines, so that, as we fight each other, our natural resources will be stolen and we will be left high and dry, to be slaves to this criminal gang. Studies by American institutions on the demise of Nigeria have been on the table for the last quarter century; the latest being the study by the Airforce University[7]. This is not tenable, we cannot sit and watch our country being bankrupted and decimated. We need to come to our senses and rise up to the occasion. The first step, for me, is an elite convening on how to survive and thrive in the treacherous circumstances. We don’t need any body’s permission to start. What we need is a few courageous souls to begin the convening, ensuring inclusion and the rest will take care of itself. It has to be immediate, swift and unrelenting.

 

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” -Edmund Burke