THE Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) aroused the rage of Nigerians this week when it revealed in its periodic newsletter called “EFCC Alert” (which it shared with news organizations on Monday) that it had recovered up to 30 billion naira of the money allegedly stolen by suspended Humanitarian and Poverty Alleviation minister Betta Edu.

The rage wasn’t directed at the EFCC, of course. It was directed at Betta Edu for the deficiency of morality it must take for her to steal that much money in just six months of being a minister. The rage also comes from people’s extrapolation of how much unconscionable theft of our public wealth must be going on in this administration undetected. What sort of moral climate conduces to such stratospheric pillaging of the public till without a tinge of compunction or fear of consequences?

Just when Nigerians were roiling in the storm of EFCC’s revelations, Edu’s lawyers denied them and threatened to sue the BBC for publishing them, even though scores of news outlets also published the same story.

Her lawyers allege that the story about the recovery of N30 billion from her and the investigation of 50 banks connected to her, which we read inseverallegacy and digital-native news outlets, was repurposed from the BBC.

Well, that’s not accurate. As I indicated earlier, EFCC’s bulletin, called the “EFCC Alert,” is the source of the story, and it was shared with multiple news organizations, including the BBC.

If the information about the extortionate amount of money allegedly recovered from Edu is false, the blame for this should go to the EFCC, not the BBC—or, for that matter, any news site.

In order to write this column, I searched for the EFCC Alert to see what exactly it contains. I would have reached the same conclusions about Betta Edu as the BBC and other news organizations did if I were still in the news business.

Here’s the original, verbatim wording from the “EFCC Alert” that informed the BBC story:

“Update on Betta Edu investigation. We have laws and regulations guiding our investigations. Nigerians will also know that they are already on suspension, and this is based on the investigations we have done, and President Bola Tinubu has proved to Nigerians that he is ready to fight corruption.

“Moreover, concerning this particular case, we have recovered over N30 billion, which is already in the coffers of the Federal Government.

“It takes time to conclude investigations; we started this matter less than six weeks ago. Some cases take years to investigate. There are so many angles to it, and we need to follow through with some of the discoveries that we have seen. Nigerians should give us time on this matter; we have professionals on this case, and they need to do things right. There are so many leads here and there.

“As it is now, we are investigating over 50 bank accounts that we have traced money into. That is no child’s play. That’s a big deal. Then you ask about my staff strength.

“And again, we have thousands of other cases that we are working on. Nigerians have seen the impact of what we have done so far, by way of some people being placed on suspension and by way of the recoveries that we have made. You have seen that the programme itself has been suspended. We are exploring so many discoveries that we have stumbled upon in our investigation.

“If it is about seeing people in jail, well, let them wait. Everything has a process to follow. So Nigerians should wait and give us the benefit of the doubt.”

It’s entirely possible that the EFCC meant that in the past six weeks, it has recovered 30 billion naira from multiple corruption cases of which Betta Edu’s is one. There are many clues to that in the “alert.”Perhapsthe EFCC chairman has challenges with articulate, elegant, and clear communication in the English language.

However, in the absence of any countervailing facts, it’s reasonable to assume that the EFCC Alert meant that 30 billion naira was recovered from Betta Edu and that more than 50 bank accounts belonging to her are being investigated.

After all, the title of the bulletin is “Update on Betta Edu.” It also talks of “suspension” (and Edu is the only public official we know of that is on suspension on account of corruption), although it uses the pronoun “they” to refer to the subject of suspension, implying that it could be more than one person.

Nonetheless, in referencing the recovery of 30 billion naira, the EFCC Alert talks about “this particular case”; it doesn’t say“these particular cases.”So, it’s wholly within the bounds of reason to conclude that “this particular case” refers to the title of the news bulletin: “Update on Betta Edu investigation.”

I hope the EFCC will clarify this issue for us—and, of course, be more careful in its public communication in future.

But it doesn’t really matter if Betta stole 30 billion naira in six months and salted away money in 50 bank accounts. The truth is that the ministry she supervised is a cesspool of some of the most fetid and audacious corruption that Nigeria has ever seen since the restoration of civilian rule in 1999.

Right from its inception, it was conceived as the hotbed of graft, as the featherbed of in-your-face venality. Its origins are traceable to the Muhammadu Buhar regime’s National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), which was conceived to putatively contain poverty and deprivation in Nigeria.

NSIP had within it such programs as the N-Power Programme, the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP), the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme, and the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), which is made up of the MarketMoni, FarmerMoni, and TraderMoni schemes.

Former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo headed NSIP. But the Buhari cabal later realized that NSIP was a prolificcash cow that lined several pockets and missed its supposed targets. I was one of the earliest people approached to expose what the cabal was convinced was humongous corruption in the NSIP that ran into tens of billions of naira—complete with what seems like fool-proof documentary evidence.

As I said at the time, I refused to be used to amplify the internal discord of the common oppressors of the Nigerian people. When Osinbajo was using TraderMoni to induce poor people to vote for Buhari, the cabal had no problem. They only discovered his “corruption” after the fact.

So, they reached out to other fringe sources and figures to give publicity to the corruption in NSIP, which caused Osinbajo to threaten to sue a whole bunch of people. They achieved their aim of calling attention to the rot in NSIP, which justified taking it away from the vice president’s office and constituting it as a separate ministry.

Thus, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development was born. The Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration renamed it as the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation.

Because it was conceived in corruption, born in more corruption, and nourished in even more corruption, it can’t be anything but corrupt. It has become the posterchild for bizarre, eye-watering, consequence-free corruption.

Recall that on April 10, 2020, Maryam Uwais, then Special Adviser to the President on Social Investment, told Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily program that she couldn’t account for the billions that she and the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs putatively gave to weak, poor, and vulnerable Nigerians to ease the hurt of the coronavirus pandemic because, “Those who benefit from the conditional cash transfer of the Federal Government as palliative to cushion the effects of the lockdown caused by the deadly Coronavirus don’t want to be addressed as poor people. That is why we can’t publish their names.”

For her part, Sadiya Umar Farouq, Uwais’ superior, turned heads when she said she expended billions to feed schoolkids who weren’t in school because of COVI-19. Betta Edu was merely walking a well-trodden path in the ministry.

If Tinubu wants to be taken seriously, he should not only outright terminate Edu’s appointment as a minister, but he should also scrap the entire ministry she heads. That ministry has no reason to exist.

The conversation about an Inland Port facility in Onitsha, Anambra State is not New. And it came up last week at a private gathering. Many will recall that the ‘port’ was formally commissioned by late Dr Alex Ekwueme, Vice President to late Alhaji Shehu Shagari. It never really functioned in real terms. It is still the pet dream of many and all issues pertaining to it are presumably being discussed on the platforms feasibility, economic common sense and basic marine science and knowledge of regional ecology.of plain and verifiable aquascience.

We submit here that the project is a desirable one. It is also feasible from the angle of provision of port infrastructure. It has, in addition, been routinely declared desirable from the standpoint of those who are quick to point to the volume of container traffic from Lagos to Onitsha and other parts of the South East. But isn’t it possible that this is already beginning to look like a White Elephant Project that would be counted as a major investment in the South East, if successfully executed? Just asking.

What needs to be re-evaluated, perhaps, fully is its feasibility from the angle of security of goods and route; as well as its viability from the angle of the simple required maritime ecosystem. For some people, the mere fact that it was conceived to ease trade, reduce the cost of imported goods in South East markets, create jobs and generally enable the South East and environs realize their full economic potential makes it an eternally important economic infrastructure.

Papers have been written on it over the years, with Environmental impact assessments (EIAs), cross references with nations that had to devise means of raising water levels when needed; and a near-consensus among experts on the economic benefits.  

One of the major overlooked, and largely unacknowledged, problem is the probability of not ever really getting enough water for the primary business of a port. You need water for a river port and the Onitsha end of the river Niger does not have enough. Dredging is a good idea, but it will give you a bigger ditch and wipe out the means of livelihood of water dependent local economies.

The confirmed practice elsewhere, of “gating” and later discharging the water to secure enough depth, is usually on the cards whenever this matter is on the table. All things considered, the challenges that come to mind regarding the proposed Onitsha River Port are: (1) How the river dams along the Niger, Benue and their many tributaries have reduced available water at onitsha by over 68%; (2) Possibly unrealistic projections about the prospects of the project; (3) The credibility of some of the existing Environmental Impact Assessment (AIE) reports, especially against the background of climate change and other environmental factors; (4) Direct politicization of the economic value of a river port in Onitsha, as against Port Harcourt and Calabar.

We must also consider the following; (1) the game plans of individuals who wish to upgrade their relevance by fighting to secure vital “federal project for Ndigbo”, while sometimes knowing that it will either not work or that it will not bring the alleged benefits, and, also; (2) The questionable security along the inland waterways, especially with active militants, Egbesu Boys, and freelance oil bunkerers, creek-dependent mischief makers and others. Will the vessels really make their way through the creeks, while vehicles on our roads in broad daylight and even trains are unsafe?

Some of the discussions about Onitsha Port actually remind one of discussions about electricity supply a few years ago. The Federal Government was then building massive gas turbines for electricity supply. Everyone was talking about the mega watts that would be added to the national grid after the power-generating turbines were completed. But no provisions were made for gas. The then minister confessed at a private forum that there was also no “gas plan” and that much of our gas was already mortgaged to foreign customers. When he was pointedly asked: “So if the turbines are ready now, as we speak, they won`t contribute a single megawatt to national power supply, because no arrangements have been made for gas”? The shocking answer was “Yes”!

So those who are looking forward to a vibrant port in Onitsha should think of a “water plan”. The dams built across the rivers Niger and Benue, and their tributaries, over the years have reduced the overall water volume. There are now tiny islands, and unprecedented siltation, at the Onitsha end of the river. While the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources is serious about irrigation and dry season agriculture, it must remember that the long stretch of the Niger across Kebbi State, itself a veritable food basket unknown to many, takes more that its fair share of the needed water.

We may digress a bit here, to urge the Ministry of Environment to work more closely with the Agriculture ministry and the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), because of the current global response to the devastating impact of dams on people and the environment within the past 60 years. It is a fact of our collective experience, across all continents, that dams have altered ecosystems, ruined food chains and obliterated local economies for hundreds of thousands of kilometres of waterways all over the world.

The confluence of some cold rivers with warmer ones have been permanently altered worldwide, while some flowing waters have been made to stagnate and create saturated water that wiped out fresh water aquatic life. Some rivers are now fragments of their former selves and others have dried up completely, as can be seen when you drive from Enugu, through Anyigba, to Abuja.

It is on record, for instance, that massive fish populations were killed on the Snake River, Idaho, in the US by dam construction; leading to the decimation of salmon species, among others. An Idaho State Senator, Frank Church, who originally supported dam building later rose in defense of natural waterways and spoke against dams. It was the same Frank Church who, after he saw the damage to the environment, eventually wrote the Wild and Scientific Rivers Act, passed in 1968.

No one can deny historic significance of the Suez Canal and its economic value to this day, but the general global concern today about the fate of streams, rivers and other natural waterways comes from the realization that long-term damage is being done to ecosystems, following the unsustainable violation of natural habitats by damming. The negative impacts on the global food web and even the climate are staring us in the face everywhere.

Available global evidence shows that one of the main reasons freshwater fish numbers have declined all over the world, leading to a loss of 80% of fresh water wild life since 1970, is the damming of rivers. Let us recall the verdict of the World Commission on Dams, in 2000: that dams had displaced between 40 – 80 million people, making it the single human activity with the greatest capacity to create Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

Even in the US, the initial excitement that greeted the epidemic of dam building in the 1940s and 1950s was followed by fierce and bitter battles between environmentalists and dam builders. The issue at the time was that dams blocked and impounded the waters of some of the most important rivers of the American west.

It was already established, years back, that over 22,000 kilometers of free-flowing rivers in the US are protected by Frank Church`s Act.

But our waterways are available for all comers. The fate of communities displaced by dams all over Nigeria today is rarely a topical issue. What does NIWA really do today? How many people still take a ride on sections of the River Benue that were once used for water transportation? Who drank up the water and created empty water channels and dry rivers with massive bridges between Lokoja and Anyigba, and all over Nigeria? I am certainly not the one!

Let those who, threatening to build a river port in Onitsha remember that there is also a scaling up of plans to build more dams across waterways that discharge into the Niger trough. Let them also not forget that this is happening years after the US came upfront on a campaign to “decommission” many dams. Recorded successes in this regard, with measurable positive environmental impact, include removal of the dam on the Elwha river in Washington State. One year after the last dam was removed in 2014, the Chinook species of fish, which had not been seen there for more than 100 years reappeared.

More than 4,000 Chinook spawners were counted above the former dam site. It is also in the US that people are taking proactive steps to reclaim their lives, by removing dams that interfered with their ecosystems and way of life. The Mohawks, in New York State, recently removed the Hogansburg dam on the St. Regis River, thus becoming the first US sub social group to remove a federal dam. This action of the Mohawks opened up nearly 700 kilometres of stream, liberated the natural habitat of migratory fish and restored many local economies.

After the last dam was removed from the River Elwha, for instance, river fish populations flourished. In a world where Brazil’s environmental agency has suspended the licensing process for the Sao Luiz Tapajos dam, the second largest hydroelectric dam in the country, we have no official attitude on dams. In a world where the World Bank recently suspended financial support for the Inga 3 dam on the River Congo, and where Chile`s largest power generator, Endesa, stopped six hydropower projects, we have no position on dams. Even the Chinese have stopped their plans to construct a series of dams across the country`s last free-flowing rivers, the Nujiang. The Peruvian authorities also suspended the construction of several dams across the Marañón River at about the same time that Geute Conservation Sur, an organization dedicated to the defense of ecosystems with high conservation value, is providing legal analysis to develop a new law for river protection in Chile.

The concern about water and free waterways is such that the world is focusing on transboundary cooperation between nations for conscious and deliberate management of the ecosystem and water volume throughout the length of major rivers. Are we doing the same in our country? The conflict between China and Thailand over development on the Lancang/Mekong River says a lot about what is going on all over the world in connection with waterways today. To think that the government of New Zealand has gone so far as to “recognize” the Whanganui river by giving it the same constitutional rights as a person? This was done as a way of showing that free-flowing rivers have great impact on food security, water access, biodiversity conservation and propagation of the overall global ecology.

In sum, and bringing the matter back home, let us think of think feasibility, viability and advisability of the port; as we think of dams, the environment, the disappearance of river-dependent local economies and the collapse or conspicuous shrinking of fish markets in various parts of the country.

It would be good if we all realise the truth that nobody is going to build our country for us. As of now, the country needs to be built, brick and mortar, little by little. It is a good sign that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has set up an Economic Team that looks quite formidable. No longer would the crucial business of the economy, the most important aspect of building our country, be left only in the hands of politicians. Looking at the team makes one to have the confidence that the government is serious about its self-imposed assignment of making tomorrow better than yesterday. The new team includes such giant private-sector players like Aliko Dangote, Tony Elumelu, Amina Maina, Funke Okpeke, Segun Agbaje and Rasheed Sarumi.

The effect has started showing. In Nigeria, whatever goes up does not come down, except you-know-what. But the naira exchange rate to the dollar and other international currencies is going down. We also hope that the price of petroleum and allied products would also stabilise. That is the opportunity and promise that Dangote Refineries, Lagos, has offered our country. In the months ahead, we would be able to grasp the full implication of Nigeria having the largest and most modern petroleum complex in the world.

The Dangote Refinery is sitting on 180 acres of land at the Lekki Free Trade Zone in Lagos State. It is going to be producing diesel, aviation fuel, petrol and other petroleum products. It has the capacity to process about 650,000 barrels of oil per day. When fully operational, it is expected to provide direct and indirect employment to 135,000 people in Lagos State. The refinery has cost almost 20 billion American dollars.

Already, even before the refineries start firing in all cylinders, its competitors in Europe and other theatres are jittery. Several refineries in Europe, which for some decades have been exporting petroleum products to Nigeria, are going to face a hard time. First, the Nigerian market would no longer be available for them. Second, Dangote petroleum products may also be ready to give them a good fight in the European market. This would be the first time an African company would directly threaten European companies in the theatre of Europe. There is no doubt that the months ahead would be very interesting.

However, it is not yet time for chest-beating for Nigeria. The old establishment is quite influential in the power loop of Nigeria and may pull one or two stings to make things happen here. The Dangote Group is already feeling the heat where it hurts most. For many weeks it could not buy crude oil to refine. Without crude oil, the refinery is not more than a tourist attraction. To start its operation, the Dangote refinery had been on queue with other competitors to get crude from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company plc. The NNPC has the monopoly to sell Nigeria’s crude. To get a share of the market, you have to be in the good book of the power-that-be. That is a delicate dance which the Dangote Group is learning in a hurry.
Of course, economic independence, which is more difficult and protracted than political independence, is not going to come on a platter of gold. In a recent newspaper interview, Professor Ehiedu Iweriebor of the Department of Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies, Hunter College of The City University of New York, defines Dangote Refinery and its related projects as the “Freedom Projects,” because of its expected impact on the Nigerian economy. “The plant would reduce Nigeria’s import dependency, its vulnerability to external pressure and also empower the country to begin to generate its own prosperity through the production and export of value-added goods rather than raw materials export,” says Iweriebor. “It means that Dangote refinery can supply refined oil to Nigeria and to parts of Africa. It will detach these regions from the dependency on Western suppliers for expensive and critical fuel supply.”

What should we expect from those whose refineries are going to shut down while the Dangote Refinery is revving into life? It would be naïve for us to expect them to do nothing. Oil is the life of the industrial societies of Europe and the Americas. In the aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the Arab oil producing countries started the oil embargo against the West which gave birth to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The United States and its allies threatened to take military action if the stalemate was not resolve. In the end, many Arab countries had to back down. Today, the United States has a very large military base in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam, and many other countries in the Middle-East. In the wake of the Israeli-Hamas conflict, there are thousands of American troops and sailors sent to the Middle-East.

Economic consideration has been a proper pretence for war. Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq believed that the tiny kingdom of Kuwait was sabotaging his country’s interest by refusing to cooperate with Iraq at OPEC meetings on the issue of oil production quota. He also accused Kuwait of slant drilling that allowed Kuwaiti oil drilling to have access to Iraqi oil. Then he decided to invade Kuwait and the job was accomplished within 72 hours. The Western world could not imagine Saddam to be in charge of the oil fields of Iraq and Kuwait at the same time. The result was the ultimatum issued to Saddam: withdraw or face war. In 1990, Saddam faced war instead and the consequences are still with us till today. By the time of the second Iraq War in 2003, Saddam was driven out of his luxurious presidential palace and was made to have a date with the hangman.

Nigeria had faced the same kind of crisis with international oil politics. On the eve of the Nigerian Civil War, the Western World was in a dilemma about which side to support. Most of the active oil fields were in the newly proclaimed Republic of Biafra under the leadership of Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. The Federal Government, under the leadership of General Yakubu Gowon, was in charge of a larger territory, mostly without oil. Gowon realised that crucial to the war efforts was the control of the oil fields. One night, Colonel Benjamin Adekunle led a flotilla of naval ships that took his troops to the rebel held island of Bonny. Thy arrived there around 5 a.m. and took the Biafran troops by surprise. After a firefight of more than one hour, Adekunle landed on Bonny, captured the oil fields and changed the tide of the war. The victorious troops formed the core of the new Third Marine Commando Division and its leader took the sobriquet, the Black Scorpion.
This time around in 2024, firefight would not solve the problem. The challenge of a Nigerian company sending European firms out of the market in Africa and Europe is not going to be taken with folded arms. The Tinubu Economic Team needs to draw up contingency plans for this eventuality. We have seen what is happening on the international air routes with the new muscles of Air Peace, the largest and most capable Nigerian Air Carrier. Suddenly, the foreign airlines who have resulted into a price-war, struggling to disrupt the emerging leadership of Air peace on the international routes. The dogfight in the sky promises to be interesting and messy.

The lesson is that we are capable of building our country. It is wrong for us to expect others to help us do the job even when we wrongly believe we can pay. The Soviet Union under Josef Stalin, helped Mao Zedong to power in the Chinese Civil War which ended with the victory of the communists on October 1, 1949. However, when the relationship between China and the USSR deteriorated, Soviet engineers removed the rail-tracks they had already laid across China in order to disrupt the Chinese economic programme. China responded with the campaign for self-reliance and built its own rail system, its cars, its air-craft and its aircraft carrier. Chinese built China. Let us build ours.

VICTIMS who narrate stories of genocide, do so because they survived. Millions perish, whose voices we may never hear again. There are even victims who did not have the chance of being born. Their lives were simply terminated as they grew in the womb.

Humanity witnessed this nightmare, 30 years ago in Rwanda. Genocide, as defined by the United Nations, UN, “is a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part”.

In 100 days from April 6 to July 15, 1994, over 850,000 persons were massacred in Rwanda. On that occasion, humanity rose in unison: “Never again!” Only to sit back and watch the on-going genocide in Gaza.

As in Rwanda, there are debates whether the Palestinian genocide going on before our very eyes, is genocide or a mere conflict by two sides. Powerful countries, especially those who supply arms or occupy permanent seats in the UN Security Council, racists and deluded ‘Men of God’ rule that what we are witnessing is a mere conflict in which one nation is teaching the other unforgettable lessons.

It took South Africa the wisdom, courage, humanism and sense of history to call genocide by its true name by getting the International Court of Justice to rule there is genocide in Palestine.

One of the witnesses to the Rwanda massacres, and the man who actually led the forces that put a stop to that genocide, is Paul Kagame. This Sunday which was exactly 30 years that the genocide began, he declared before an international audience, the basic truth: “…It was the international community which failed all of us, whether from contempt or cowardice.”

Indeed, when the Rwanda genocide was being planned, the UN which had its peacekeeping force, the United Nations Assistance Mission For Rwanda, UNAMIR, on ground, was aware. Its Commander, General Romeo on January 11, 1994 sent his “Genocide Fax” to the UN Headquarters reporting the genocide plans. He followed up with five more warnings and sought permission to intervene, but was ignored.

So, when the genocide began, UNAMIR was an indifferent force. Interventions came down to individual soldiers like Captain Mbaye Diagne, the Senegalese soldier who gave his life rescuing victims. I titled my October 3, 2020 tribute to this internationalist: “Saluting Captain Mbaye Diagne, the Soldier Who Covered UN’s Shame.”

I was not surprised by the revelations of Kagame this Sunday, that as he and people under his command raced through Rwanda to stop the genocide, France threatened to annihilate them militarily unless they stopped, and allowed the genocide to go on.

The Kagame story: “One night, in the latter days of the genocide, I received a surprise visit past midnight from General Dallaire. He brought a written message, of which I still have a copy, from the French General Commanding the force that France had just deployed in the western part of our country, Operation Turquoise.

“The message said that we would pay a heavy price if our forces dared to try to capture the town of Butare, in the southern part of our country…; he warned me that the French had attack helicopters, and every kind of heavy weapon you can imagine, and therefore were prepared to use them against us if we did not comply.

“I asked Dallaire whether French soldiers bleed the same way ours do; whether we have blood in our bodies. Then I thanked him, and told him he should just go and get some rest and sleep, after informing the French that our response would follow. And it did…We took Butare at dawn. Within weeks, the entire country had been secured, and we began rebuilding.”

But not all countries were bystanders as the Rwanda genocide was carried out. Kagame acknowledged the positive roles of countries like Uganda, Eritrea, Kenya, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Ethiopia and of course, South Africa which emerged a democratic country as the genocide was going on.

The Rwandan President, this Sunday, added an historical gratitude: “At the United Nations Security Council in 1994, moral clarity came from Nigeria, the Czech Republic, and even as far away as New Zealand. Their ambassadors had the courage to call the genocide by its rightful name, and resist political pressure from more powerful countries to hide the truth. Ambassador Ibrahim Gambari of Nigeria and Czech Ambassador Karel Kovanda are here with us today, and we applaud you.”

There are countries like Canada, which regretted their inaction. The Clinton administration in the United States long before the genocide, knew of a “final solution to eliminate all Tutsis”, but did not act decisively even when the genocide was on.

President Bill Clinton admitted that had his administration taken some action, at least 300,000 lives could have been saved: “If we’d gone in sooner, I believe we could have saved at least a third of the lives that were lost…it had an enduring impact on me.”

Six days into the genocide, Belgium, which had one of the largest contingents in the UNAMIR, announced it was withdrawing its troops. Other nations also did.

Following widespread condemnation of the role of France, the French Parliament enquired into the role of the country in the genocide. After several months, the president of the parliamentary mission, former Defence Minister Paul Quiles, declared in 1998 that France was “not guilty”.

However, an independent Rwandan Commission Report of August 5, 2008, concluded that France was not only aware of the preparations for the genocide, but also helped train the ethnic militias that carried out the genocide. It accused 33 senior French military and political officials of complicity in the genocide. It also reported that: “French soldiers themselves directly were involved in assassinations of Tutsis and Hutus accused of hiding Tutsis.”

The genocide in the Palestine is taking a similar shape. First, the perpetrators in order to have a rationale to slaughter their victims, classify them as non-human beings. In Rwanda, the victims were labelled “cockroaches”, while in Gaza, Israel refers to the Palestinians as “human animals”. Secondly, the UN Security Council, as in Rwanda, held long debates whether the on-going genocide is really a genocide. It is also unable to agree on a permanent ceasefire.

So, as the world marks 30 years of the Rwanda genocide, we have 1,410 Israelis slain, 33,098 Palestinians killed with over 70 per cent of them being women and children and 90 per cent of the victims being civilians. So, rather than the world shout “Never again!” it is witnessing genocide: “Yet again!” Some years down the line, the powerful who have rationalised the on-going genocide may be seeking justification, or making excuses for the role they are playing in refusing to recognise genocide.