
WE CAME, WE SAW, HE DIED
Goodluck Jonathan, Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, Mohammad Ghadaffi and Idris Deby were all connected to the escalation of the Boko Haram sect. Goodluck Jonathan was President of Nigeria for a period of 6 years, he witnessed empire politics first-hand. His name rise was a glimmer of hope for the battered nation. He had no shoes and his narrative bit deeply into the average Nigerian mind. He is the first and only President of the country from a minority group in the country’s South-South region. His rule was embattled but with memories still fresh in my mind.
His wife still provokes laughter as she made the most seriously hilarious comments ever made by the first lady (she spoke rather bad English). His aides were conspicuous looters and mercilessly corrupt, he bounced off the LGBT bill to the general approval of many Nigerians, it was the time Nigeria was being ridiculed by South Africa, and Boko Haram profited from his lack of firm grip on the army too. In fact, when he was acting President, Taure Yaradua (the wife of late President Yaradua) and Yaradua’s Honourable Aid-de-Camp deployed the military on the streets of Abuja and he didn’t know about it.
It took so long before Jonathan could declare an all-out war on the terrorists who by then had taken over a more-than-tiny chunk of the northeastern part of the country in a style that even Osama Bin Laden would only dream about. It united Nigerians again behind their Commander-in-Chief. Soldiers who had never seen action or had only seen it in peacekeeping operations were happy. The oblivious population later became aware of reality -the Nigerian military did not have the weapons to fight effectively as we all expected. The Nigerian Army had been through decades of chronic underdevelopment and looting. So, President Jonathan went to his colleague in the White House, Barack Obama. He was refused help.
With time running out and an increase in the casualty, the President turned to the black market. He paid for it. Nigeria was embarrassed internationally. Obama was happy and Hillary Clinton was too. Instability in Nigeria was profitable to them. It was time to pay the country back for refusing its false liberalism. Meanwhile, scores of thousands were falling dead in the conflict. Just a few months before, Mohammed Gaddafi had been murdered by his own people. Gaddafi was a brutal dictator, no doubt but if we will pay attention to the words of the preacher “there is time for everything”. At a time when terrorism was spreading like wildfire and Islamic fundamentalism was dividing the world into two spheres of influence, it will be wise to identify the structures that could be supported to check the spread of the idea. The Islamic State threat was there, the Arab Spring was reeling from side to side. There was only a choice to make and that choice was between tyranny or anarchy.
NATO forces bombed the Libyan Airforce to shreds and the Army was weakened. In the end, despite pleading for his life, Gaddafi was murdered gruesomely by the angry people. Nigeria and other nations stood by watching, probably at the instance of the United States and NATO. Were they right to have murdered Gaddafi that way and even put the video online? Well considering the fact that the people there were just angry and not organized or rational, one might misjudge. In whatever manner, the ordinary mind thinks Gaddafi paid for the decades of brutal suppression. What we do not realize is that the time and season that saw the fall of the dictator was the time when a leader of his stature and influence was needed to check the influence of terrorism in the places where they were previously not influential.
Two names stand out in the game -Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. One would expect these two grandmasters to be wiser, especially after the Iraq War. Gadaffi was bridle to the likes of Idris Deby, the President of Chad and other West African warlords and ambitious leaders. Gadaffi simply didn’t want any destabilising agencies with pro-West tendencies in the region. His death removed the leash. Deby and his cronies have been having a free day since the ouster of Gadaffi. A Presidential panel, Wikileaks and Premium Times revealed that a regional club of sponsors of Boko Haram was based in Abeche in the Republic of Chad. Dr Richard Davis, the Australian negotiator, who was contracted to negotiate the release of the Chibok Girls fingered Lieutenant-General Azubuike Ihejirika, the former Chief-of-Army Staff and Ali Modu Sherrif, the former Governor of Bornu State and currently the campaign manager of Nigeria’s current President.
Not much was heard about Ihejirika’s connection with the funding role but further investigations pointed in the direction of Ali Modu Sherrif. He was reported to have been a constant visitor to Abeche where Boko Haram members are trained. Deby and Ali Modu Sherrif are the major names that constantly prop up in the mystery. Why will these regional players go rogue and what for? The Chad Basin, a geographic definition that includes the Niger Republic, Chad, Cameroon and Nigeria is rich in oil. An American agency -US Geological Survey in 2010 stated that the region had about 2.32 billion barrels of oil, 14.65 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 391 million barrels of natural gas liquids. Nigeria spent much more than 200 million dollars on oil prospecting in the Lake Chad Basin as of 2013.
In fact, 3 blocks were identified. So a regional destabilisation is a profitable venture for Idris Deby who, according to Dr Peregrino Brimah has been siphoning Nigeria’s oil through a 3D oil drilling technique which gives you access to other oil fields outside your territorial borders. Nigeria has badly squeezed Boko Haram but the sect remains quite dangerous and is still dreaded. In a nutshell, Nigeria has not started exploration in that region due to security threats. But Chad is. The region’s strongest nation has been battered by the accompanying death of men, women and children.
Conclusion When Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were the clear leading candidates for the Democratic Party nomination, I was still hopeful. Sanders was my favourite, Donald Trump looked more warlike but Hillary Clinton was not my option. Her remarks and policies were definitely going to bring America to war again. The wrong wars. When Sanders left the race by the iron fist of the system, I thought we had our end already. She had made us think the death of Gadaffi would bring freedom to Libya. She was almost promising paradise in the statements she made during her visits to Libya in the midst of the chaos that would change the future of Libya as we know it.
She was especially excited to hear the news of Gadaffi’s capture as if her intelligence was such that could predict the effect of the incalculable risk of removing a vital tyrant. He was replaced with an anarchical system featuring the abandoned slave trade (black people are being sold in Libya). She, unaware of the future she had confidently promised the Libyan rebel leaders, happily replied to a reporter after the ouster “we came, we saw, he died”. Ojo Aderemi lives in Ibadan, Nigeria.
He can be reached on Facebook -Ojo Aderemi or via his email -ojderemi@gmail.com.
This article was published on platinumderemi.com on November 19, 2018.
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