What does France want from Tinubu?

There is no gainsaying that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu received the loudest “international recognition” of his presidency yet during his recent two-day state visit to France, the first by a Nigeria president since Obasanjo was received by Jacques Chirac in May 2005, almost 20 years ago. But since there are hardly coincidences in politics, certainly […]

There is no gainsaying that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu received the loudest “international recognition” of his presidency yet during his recent two-day state visit to France, the first by a Nigeria president since Obasanjo was received by Jacques Chirac in May 2005, almost 20 years ago. But since there are hardly coincidences in politics, certainly not in international politics, we must raise the appropriate question: What does France want from Nigeria that it would treat our president to the most lavish state reception of his presidency so far?

This question is legitimate and important for several reasons. First, state visits are no ordinary things in diplomacy and international relations. A state visit is the highest expression of mutual relations between two countries, usually initiated at the instance of the host country. More than that, it is often the most effective mechanism for pivoting new diplomatic goals and agendas, or consolidating existing ones, by one country with another. In this case, we can safely assume that the invitation came from France, and not the other way around, and if so, to what ends?

This is particularly important because bilateral relations discussed and agreed during state visits between two leaders are often shrouded in secrecy, and tend to be vastly different from what is said publicly at joint press conferences by the two leaders. So, we cannot say we know what France wants from Nigeria by merely looking at the details of what Presidents Tinubu and Macron said in public, or even signed in documentary agreements designed for photo-op opportunities.

President Tinubu received more than a red-carpet reception in Paris. The French made sure that the Nigerian delegation got the message that they regarded this as an important visit. President Emmanuel Macron welcomed his Nigerian counterpart at the Les Invalides complex, a place that holds so much of France’s imperial history, vestiges of which now seem threatened across much of Africa. Macron was profuse with praise for our president, whom he referred to as a “friend”. At a joint press conference, Macron said President Tinubu is “a great leader”, who will transform Nigeria the way he transformed Lagos, precisely the sort of things that Tinubu, politically embattled at home by an increasingly restless citizenry groaning under the weight of his economic policies, would like to hear said about him by a foreign leader, better still a European one.

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But this direct flattery of our president did not end there. It was directed at some points in the visit to the entire delegation, larger than ever before, as you would imagine. “The energy that we have felt among your ministers, investors and business communities, has completely convinced us the French and also the whole business world to invest in your country and make Nigeria a major partner for now and for the future,” Macron said. Moreover, Macron spoke in Nigerian pidgin English, to the boyish relish of the Nigerian delegation, and of our media back home. And at one of the events, French musicians sang out afrobeats lyrics by our Nigerian artistes, P-Square, again to the surprise and merriment of the joyous Nigerian crowd at the visit.

The message written all over these diplomatic tactics should be unmistakable: the French are trying to say to Tinubu and his delegation, and the rest of us back home that Nigeria and France are not just friends but brothers, and that in fact we are one. This is not a bad message in itself, but at what expense? This brings us to the second reason why it is important for the rest of us to ask questions about what France wants from Nigeria at this point, and what, if any, President Tinubu promised the French.

You see, flattery—in the form of personal praises, platitudes, photo-ops, and so on—has long been an effective device in the tool-kit of international diplomacy. Remember how Nixon and Chairman Mao tried to flatter each other during the former’s state-visit to China “That changed the world”, as American media would later dub it, in 1972? In recent years, given the declining quality of leadership in Africa, flattery has evolved to become the most effective means by which “world leaders” gain strategic concessions on the cheap from African leaders without giving anything concrete in return. All that leaders from other parts of the world and their representatives need to get something from Africa, often something very expensive, at minimal costs to themselves is to lavish flattery on their African counterparts. They know very well that African leaders crave for nothing more than the approval and praise of particularly Western leaders, and they use it to advantage.

Consider, for example, William Ruto, the Kenyan President. In late May this year, shortly before economic tensions in his country would boil into a violent protest, Ruto was treated to a similarly lavish state reception by President Biden at the White House. It was the first state reception at the White House for an African leader since John Kufuor of Ghana in September 2008, and only the sixth Biden had hosted in four years. But what did Kenya get out of it? It is not clear yet. Ruto got his 15 minutes of fame at the White House, but it is not clear what Kenya would get out of it beyond promises of debt relief and the high-sounding Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership (STIP) with the US.

And of course, Biden described Ruto as a promoter of “African solidarity” and Kenya as “A Major non-NATO ally” of the US. The Americans, on the other hand, got precisely what they wanted, and had long worked for: for Kenya to lead a “Multinational Security Support (MSS) Mission” of some 2,500 policemen from mostly African and Caribbean countries, about 40 per cent of them from Kenya, to help stabilise Haiti, a country ravaged by gang violence and long in a near state of anarchy. The irony of this suicide mission may be lost on Ruto, but not to other discerning people. No one has messed up Haiti over centuries than France and the United States, but of course, they would not send their own people to almost certain death at the hands of Haitian gangs in the name of keeping the peace. But no problem, you can get Kenyans and other predominantly African and black nations to do the job.

Thus, we here in Nigeria must look to the French flattery of our president with a pinch of salt, after all, almost nowhere is the maxim “There is no such thing as a free lunch” truer than in international politics. This is particularly important at a time when everyone knows France is in trouble with an increasing number of its former colonies in Africa, as its high-handed and contemptible relations with them ignite massive resentments among Africans, even as Russia and China continue to knock on its African doors with surprising success.

Finally, we must worry because President Tinubu appears to be running a one-man foreign policy, and since the consequences of foreign policies often outlast the administrations that enter into them, we must ask yet again, what did President Tinubu promise the French that is not now in the news? We must know because our future as a secure nation might yet depend on it.