United States President, Donald Trump, has served notice of getting his military stomp Nigeria, gun-a-blazing. By air strikes or raw land infantry invasion, the US military will test their established military efficiency in Nigeria. Mission? To stop the killing of Christians in the north by Boko Haram insurgents. He calls it ‘Christian genocide’. Many other persons have gone to town with the same label. Nicki Minaj, globally acknowledged music sensation, amplified the Nigerian ‘genocide’ situation when she openly supported Trump’s proposed intervention in Nigeria. “No group should ever be persecuted for practicing their religion. We don’t have to share the same beliefs in order for us to respect each other,” she wrote on her verified X handle. For that, a good 100,000 persons unfollowed her. But what’s that to her over 27 million followers. Folly is truly a prisoner. But I digress.
Back to Trump and his threat. Maybe no longer a threat. Defence Secretary (Secretary of War) Pete Hegseth is set. Trump is ready. The US marines and allied forces are all over the world, prepped and ready. America does not boast. Not even with Trump. History is a good teacher. When America faces you, they’ll get you. Ask Libya and followers of Muammar Ghaddafi. Ask Al-Qaeda and disciples of Osama bin Laden. America takes no prisoners. They also rarely care about the after-effects of their military action for as long as their target is taken down and out.
And get it, for those shouting sovereignty, America does not give a damn. The US policy does not recognise sovereignty when you are constituting a nuisance to global peace or even the peace in your country. A truly sovereign nation protects the lives and property of its citizens. A sovereign nation does not keep importing food, technology, manpower, goods and services without corresponding export of goods and services.
In the 21st century, sovereignty is no longer making independence speeches and hoisting your national flag when everything in your home, on your roads, offices, including food and drinks, are imported. You have healthy sand, silt, clay, alluvia and loamy soil, swathes of rainforests and savannah belt of possibilities for agriculture, yet you import toothpick, furniture, fabrics, all manner of food and drinks, and you still have the audacity to belch ‘sovereignty?’ Haba! Have some shame, my dear.
A sovereign nation is one capable of giving something in exchange for something, usually processed and finished products; not cheap raw materials it is not capable of processing. That cross-national economics existed in the past. The cold war era has bred an entirely new form of weaponry. Hunger is now a potent weapon. A nation that cannot feed its citizenry without importing food from another nation should not lay claim to sovereignty.
Again, this is not my worry. I worry about a nation that lies to itself, that prefers to live in self-denial of a clear and present existential danger chipping away its foundation. Nigeria is afflicted by a self-inflicted danger called Boko Haram. Members of Boko Haram are Muslims, Islamic extremists who insist that western education, western life and all it stands for including Christianity, is evil. In their early days, they made videos calling for conversion of all Nigerians to Islam. They bombed churches, killed Christians worshipping in churches. They overran communities in the north, especially in Benue and Plateau states, killing everyone in sight, mostly Christians. They still do. Plateau State cleric, Reverend Ezekiel Dachomo, has made countless videos showing how he has been conducting one mass burial after another. He is a broken man, grieving for his people. We pretend we don’t see his tears. We pretend the blood of the slaughtered does not matter. It does. Blood has a voice. Blood speaks. And its only cry is vengeance. How can hundreds of bloody demons move in a convoy of motorbikes, attack a community, kill, maim, steal and rape; and then escape unchallenged? How is it possible for Boko Haram extremists to kidnap university students, secondary school students in their dozens, scores and hundreds and escape into the forest, unrestrained? Is it not absurd and a thing of shame that the same Boko Haram murderers would in 2012 nominate Muhammadu Buhari as their negotiator at the peak of Nigerian government’s onslaught to blitz them out of existence? And even more absurd that the same Buhari would be installed as President of Nigeria three years later in 2015. President Goodluck Jonathan has confirmed this and many more behind-the-scene activities of some northern elite to pamper these killers at the expense of the lives of other Nigerians.
The likes of Sheikh Gumi and other northern elites are behind Boko Haram. Gumi who ought to be a bastion of morality became a self-appointed middleman between Boko Haram terrorists and the families of their victims. Gumi in May 2021 took his negotiation skills a notch higher when he advised Nigerian government to pay N100 million ransom demanded by Boko Haram abductors of students of Greenfield University, Kaduna through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Amid all this, the argument of some Nigerians is that killing is going on everywhere, from south to the north. Some even point to the activities of renegades in south east called IPOB (or ESN) to justify their defence of Boko Haram murderers and their extreme Islamist questing. Really? Truth is, nobody justifies the actions of IPOB or the Oduduwa separatists who even went as far as invading a radio station in clear act of mutiny or the militants of the south-south. These acts in the south have been roundly condemned and mitigated by agents of the state with cooperation of the people. But not so, Boko Haram.
The real killing fields remains the north. And the killers are Boko Haram extremists. Trump does not need further briefing on this. He knows. America knows. A country which on October 31, 2021 sent its Special Naval Forces (SEAL) to rescue a US citizen, Philip Walton, abducted by Boko Haram terrorists in Niger Republic and held captive in Nigeria when Trump was in office, knows everything we are hiding. America knows the truth we are passionately trying to suppress. Again, this is not my concern. My interest is that Trump should keep away because Nigeria is not ready to admit that it needs help. We are not ready, neither are we available for redemption. We have invoked the sovereignty voodoo and it is enough to stop the killings.
Go away Trump. The number you’re calling is not available. That’s our song and we meant it.
Credit: The Sun