Professor Bolaji Akinyemi is always a delight to listen to whether as a professor of Political Science in our International Relations graduate class in the early eighties, as Director General, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) engaged in intellectual debates during seminars and symposia with his colleagues, or as Foreign Affairs Minister explaining his ‘audacious ideas about a strong and resurgent Africa’ and even as public intellectual taking the uninitiated through the labyrinth of diplomatic chess game. He was as usual at his best last Monday on Arise Television programme. And for little distraction by those self-proclaiming patriots who have no regard for Alexander Pope’s admonition that ‘only fools rush in where angels fear to tread’, Prof Akinyemi, our own inimitable Henry Kissinger had a simple advice “Don’t miss ingredients for making pepper soup with that needed for making egusi soup”.
Prof Akinyemi has never lost faith in Nigeria in spite of his over 40 years efforts to let our ill-trained and badly-recruited leaders understand that strong and vibrant external relations determine how the external world rates our domestic policies. He has in fact always believed Nigerian should play the role of Africa super power. It was for this reason he, among other audacious policies, initiated the Technical Aids Corps scheme that today thrives in other African and Caribbean countries and the concept of medium power to mediate if possible among warring rival super powers. It was during his period that ‘Africa as the centre piece of Nigerian foreign policy’ acquired real meaning as we led the apartheid war against hypocritical Britain and USA.
It was therefore not a surprise that in the wake of recent Nigerien coup, he insisted Nigeria must take the initiative in the planned battle against the military adventurers whose forceful entry into politics did not seem to be an outcome of the usual manipulation of electoral process by greedy elected West African political leaders. It similarly did not fall into the category of conspiracy theories that often link military coups in Guinea, Sudan, Mali and Chad and elsewhere in the Sahel region to French colonial and post-colonial policies that only impoverish former colonies.
Akinyemi also believes attempt by AU-led South Africa to give an ultimatum to the coup planners, was an attempt at undermining Tinubu’s leadership as ECOWAS chairman since by convention, it is the responsibility of ECOWAS leadership to first interfere in crisis afflicting the West African sub-region.
Predictably, he has hailed the decision of ECOWAS under the leadership of Tinubu to give the coup plotters a one-week ultimatum to hand over power to President Mohammed Bazoum who remains the legitimately elected president and head of state of the Republic of Niger as recognized by ECOWAS, AU and the international community. The body has also threatened to ‘take all measures necessary’ ‘including the use of force’, to restore constitutional order in the Republic of Niger, in the event the regional body’s demands are not met within one week”. In this regard, ECOWAS has the backing of US and France.
Professor Akinyemi believes there is always a cost to leadership especially for a country like Nigeria that claims to be the giant of Africa. For him therefore, Nigeria has no choice but to lead the crusade, citing the case of Kenya, small players in the international arena that recently deployed Kenya soldiers to her troubled neighbours and Kenya police to Cuba, currently experiencing civil disorder in far-away South America.
In those days, talk of alternative to democracy and lusting after other world views apart from capitalism often attracted a death sentence. We saw it in Latin America where elected leaders were routinely toppled or assassinated. In Africa we remembered how Nkrumah lost power. In Nigeria we witnessed how Murtala Muhammed, for declaring that Africa had come of age and should be allowed to take their destinies in their own hands, was brutally assassinated by Dimka. We saw how Buhari, for rejecting IMF loan and its ‘conditionalities’ which included the liberalization of our economy to allow free inflow of labour from western societies, was replaced by Babangida. We were recently told by Museveni of Uganda how six African Heads of state inside an aircraft going to mediate between Gadhafi and the West that was in breach of UN resolutions later bombed Libya where Gadhafi was killed like a criminal, were ordered by NATO to return to their states.
President Tinubu in his new role must learn how to walk the tight rope. The crusade must be about ridding Africa of its own demons including corrupt civilians autocrats. Coup planners are often aided by the West while those who do not have their backings have been likened by Professor Akinyemi to someone riding in the back of a tiger.
The West has never seen Africa beyond object of exploitation, From August 8, 1444 when Portugal through Lancarote de Feitas landed the first group of 235 slaves seized from modern day northern Mauritania in Lagos, Lisbon, the British and French and other European powers until 1870, about 426 years later exported slaves from the Gold Coast, Badagry and other parts of West Africa.
As colonized nations, African countries were repeatedly raped by the metropolitan power in order to resolve social conflicts and dislocations in the metropolitan states. At independence in 1960 after centuries of Belgium’s brutal reign, Congo had only about five graduates and about 600 Roman Catholic priests. Lumumba the elected Prime Minister later murdered by Belgian troops had only six years of schooling while Mobutu, his successor who aided the West’s exploitation of Congo for another 30 years enlisted in the Congo Army as a cook.
While 80% of Nigeriens have no access to electricity, one third of electricity in France is said to come from Nigerien uranium. For this reason, many have argued that American and French military bases in Niger were to aid continued exploitation just as many others have also pointed out that ISIS and Al-Qaeda terrorists, purportedly being fought, were unleashed on the Sahel Region following the invasion of Iraq and Libya by the West in breach of international law.
Under neo-colonialism, which Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah said was the last stage of imperialism, African nations were further short-changed as they had no one to turn to for redress since the multinationals who inherited the new post-colonial states were driven only by profit motives. With globalization, African youths because of hostile environment created by IMF and World Bank are dying in the desert and drowning in the Atlantic Ocean to return to second slavery in Europe. From slavery to globalization therefore, what we have is but a change in paradigm. Nothing has changed.
This is why President Tinubu’s crusade must be about the above enduring African challenges and not about democracy, the new god which different nations including China, Russia and even some military juntas today claim to worship.