Bola Tinubu And State Capture

 By Obi Nwakanma

I have made this point at various points in this column, that for a nation to claim “independence,” or legitimacy, it must have sovereign control of its state institutions.

*Tinubu

It should never be a transactional or “contract state.” Is Nigeria a sovereign state? I do not think so, because, currently, Nigeria does not seem in control of its sovereign institutions. As a nation, Nigeria is not governed by her leaders. It is under state capture. Those who parade themselves now as the leaders of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, are in fact, not answerable to the citizens of this republic.

They act like agents of foreign governments and other foreign interests, economic and cultural, whose critical aim has been to reduce Nigeria to an ineffective minion state on the African continent, and contain its ability to truly direct and impact the political and economic destiny of Africa in an evolving global macro-system.

These interests have gone about this by importing and inseminating very strategic “Economic Assassins,” over  the years, who have supervised the diminution of Nigeria as an effective African powerhouse.

They have organized to dismantle Nigeria, sell-off her inheritance in bits, accumulate profit from it, warehouse their profit out of Nigeria, and turn Nigeria into a Mud Republic under the direct control and supervision of their transnational partners. The brilliance of this strategy is that these economic assassins are no longer wearing the face of the “white man,” but are now indigenous colonial agents – native informants- doing the work of the old colonizer, and benefiting from this advanced form of “indirect rule.”

They look like us. They sound like us. They act like us. They are of us. But they are not of us. They are Balaam, riding us like the donkey.

Many of these are individuals who have never believed in the possibility of a Nigerian republic, as a powerful African nation, which can proffer a buffer in the ensuing possibility of recolonization, which is the critical challenge of this continent in the 21st century.

These people despise the logic that they inhabit the multiethnic state called Nigeria with other people from indigenous cultures they both fear and despise.

They have never imagined liberty, freedom, and shared prosperity for all.

They love to eat the hams and throw the hambones to their dogs – who are generally, the Nigerian people.

Their goal in ascending to power in Nigeria is not to serve, but to “control” and in exerting both fiducial and political control of Nigeria, reduce it to a minion state, on behalf of their international sponsors, whose own goals with Nigeria is to maintain its extraction and perpetuate its impotence. These are not the leaders of Nigeria.

These are prison guards supervising the panopticon established over highly quarantined Nigerians. Nigeria is no longer that hopeful nation.

There was a country, as the inimitable Chinua Achebe, Africa’s greatest writer of the 20th century asserted. Then there was not.

Nigeria, to all intents and purpose, is now a garrisoned concentration camp.

The many Internally Displacement Camps north of the Niger and the Benue witness it! The over fifty military checkpoints on that short road between Owerri and Port-Harcourt witness it.

But Nigerians must now awaken to the fact that they are no longer citizens, but victims of a captured and traumatized nation, that can no longer protect them from foreign mercenaries, or bandits, or economic assassins.

Nigeria in its current status can no longer secure their liberties, guarantee the safety of their lives and property; ensure their dignity among the comity of nations, or create the possibility of advancement and security for their descendants.

Even among nations in Africa, the once great elephant of African nations, Nigeria, has become a great laughing stock.

Burkina Faso is regarded more highly among the nations of Africa today because it is, obviously, taking itself out of the morass of colonial bondage.

Its leadership is in open display of autonomy and purpose.

Recently, the President of South Africa was invited to the White House, and received in audience by the US President, Mr. Donald J. Trump.

Not that we should put a lot of store on the White House’s scorecard on African nations, but the fact is, South Africa matters in international politics.

America thinks so. Russia thinks so. China thinks so. India thinks so. Brazil thinks so. It is a key foundational member and signatory to the BRIC partnership. But Nigeria does not count.

It is a subject state, which sometimes acts like a protectorate, rather than a sovereign republic. You can feel the heft of a country in the weight of its Foreign Service and its Foreign Policy, as well as the boldness of its domestic policy.

How do other nations perceive and receive Nigeria today? As at today, Nigeria is increasingly inconsequential even among African nations. No one squirms when Nigeria haws and hems.

Tinubu’s foreign policy missteps and the flap with Niger Republic and Mali, not only dealt a heavy blow on Nigeria’s current standing on the African continent, but it exposed Nigeria’s national security underbelly and the extent of its structural rot.

Today, Nigeria is ravaged by the threat of an external force, Boko Haram, created, sponsored, and clearly supplied by some of the “big powers” who want to keep Nigeria in line and restless. It is a shame that Nigeria cannot contain it. Governor Zulum of Borno State only recently made two important claims about the insurgency: One, he named names of the sponsors of Boko Haram, and, two, in naming them, revealed that Boko Haram has informants among top Nigerian politicians and members of the Armed Forces.

That in fact should not surprise Nigerians. The national security situation is a con game.

It is the milking cow in the cowshed.

There are both strategic foreign as well as local sponsors of the Boko Haram insurgency and the devastating, and malignant banditry in Nigeria.

As I hinted in this column recently, the Nigerian government might not be innocent in this after all.

It was former Presdent Buhari’s policy not to prosecute, but absorb “repentant” Boko Haram insurgents into the Nigerian Armed Forces and the national security system. It was no innocent policy act.

It was a deliberate subversion of Nigeria for political expediency. Muhammadu Buhari, very clearly, was a satrap of the higher forces that have captured Nigeria, and are intent on reducing it to a handful of dust, so that it does not present as a threat against the recolonization of Africa.

Buhari ought to be investigated, stripped of his immunity, and if probable cause is established, prosecuted.

But no such thing will happen because, one, the Nigerian National Assembly – the source of the sovereign mandate – is itself compromised.

Two, the Nigerian police, the statutory force constitutionally authorized to provide domestic security for Nigeria, was long compromised, weakened, and deliberately rendered ineffective. Neither the Nigerian police, nor the Nigerian Armed Forces have the tools, either doctrinally or materially, to defend and secure Nigeria. 

The question is why? Why, after so much money has been voted and spent on procurement and training? Why? Why are Nigerians killed and displaced daily by insurgent forces sponsored by all kinds of strange and complicated interests involving people even at the highest echelons of government? When President Goodluck Jonathan went shopping for arms to combat the Boko Haram threat, he was blocked from arms procurement.

Even the South Africans came under threat of sanctions by a great power, should they sell arms to Nigeria to fight Boko Haram. Nigerians should go back and look at the list of those who raised a voice against selling arms to Nigeria to eliminate Boko Haram.

They are the ones who govern Nigeria today.

I still have this vivid picture in 2016 of Buhari, ambitious and weak, and possibly sick, presented to Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, in a circus of ring kissing in London. Nigerians should go and look at the pictures of those standing with him, among whom is the current president of Nigeria, who went on that ring kissing mission with Buhari. Thereafter, Buhari spent half his eight-year tenure resident in London, on a permanent health watch.

Today, Bola Tinubu spends 60% of his time in France, under the care of French doctors. These are simple facts, and very direct evidence, that these men do not owe allegiance to Nigeria.

Whoever keeps you alive is your lord and master.

Two weeks ago, the entire cabinet of Nigeria went on a circus show in London. The objective? To highlight the achievements of Bola Tinubu’s administration!

In London?

But who was his audience?

A Nigerian community or a British public who has no real electoral value in Nigeria? Sane folks do not ignore the head, to place the carrying pad on the butts!

But that is exactly what the Tinubu administration just did.

He sent his circus dogs, led by two key ministers, to the road.

He could ignore Nigerians at home because Nigerians at home do not matter.

They can be easily dealt with.

This is Tinubu’s reading of Nigerians: they do not matter! This is why he is blackmailing some governors and ex-governors to join the APC. Why? Because they will influence voters.

In Tinubu’s mind, the real people do not count. They have no minds of their own. They have no agency. But to free

Nigeria, Nigerians themselves reckoning with these facts, must organize against these people who see them as mere numbers, and not as human beings. It is either Nigerians want to survive as a free and prosperous people, or lowball Nigeria to new colonial submission, led by plutocrats and recidivists.

*Nwakanma is a US-based academic