By Festus Adedayo
He who finds favour of the world is without blemish in its eyes. “Eni ayé ńfé ò l’árùn kan l’ára”. That was a verdict given close to five decades ago by my musical idol, lord of Apala genre of Yoruba traditional music, Ayinla Omowura. This verdict of his came in one of his songs after a self-assessment of his personal existential uplift. The bard must have wondered at his transmutation from the rung of societal ladder to a place of reckoning in the commanding height of society, especially in Yoruba popular culture. Stardom replaced outlawry, wealth came in place of lack and celebration came for a man whose song was considered to be the preoccupation of dregs of society. General Christopher Musa, the new Minister of Defence, epitomizes that transformation. In less than three weeks of leaving the saddle as Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and being appointed as minister, adulation and commendations have gushed like a broken cistern for Musa and his appointor, President Bola Tinubu.
The aggregate of opinions on the street of Nigeria is that this was Tinubu’s best appointment thus far. But, what happened? How did a man who appointed, as minister of defence and minister of state for defence, two men perceived to be enablers “agbódegbà”(s) of bandits and terrorists suddenly meander into appointing another man who, by popular belief, is the best suited for the job, as minister of defence? What happened? How did that same appointor, whose judgment chose Musa, choose Mahmood Yakubu, who supervised his election, as ambassador-designate?
Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, a renowned fawner of the seat of power, provided an answer last week. At the swearing-in of Musa, when Sani Musa, senator representing Niger East, gave the sycophantic proposal that Musa be made to “bow and go”, Akpabio’s fury was unexampled. For the first time in his groveling senate presidency, Akpabio was so miffed that he stood up while wedging home his point. Not even when his senator colleague alleged sexual harassment did he show that level of anger. “Even Donald Trump is on our neck… and you stand up and say he should take a bow … with over 200 Nigerian children in the bush kidnapped and being tortured?” the senate president spat.
For Akpabio, even when a dog exhibits signs of malady, it dares not jump inside a scalding fire. Trump is watching. Not only did that senatorial outburst encapsulate the about-turn from the papering-over of insecurity that Nigerians have witnessed in the last 30 months of this administration, it explains the choice of Musa. So, there is indeed an innate walzing, dancing steps inside the cripple?
Permit me to digress a bit to explain this Trump phenomenon. If the grave indulges the sacrilege of flowing tears of dead patriots, decayed skulls of African anti-colonial ancestors must be shedding tears at the moment. Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde’s Amílcar Cabral. Guinea’s Ahmed Sékou Touré. Mozambique’s Samora Machel. Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda. Ethiopia’s Menelik II. Democratic Republic of Congo’s Patrice Lumumba. Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta. Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere. South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah. Nigeria’s Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. Kenya’s Mekatilili Wa Menza. Bibi Titi Mohamed of Tanzania. And many more. If you watched the December 4 peace meeting between DRC’s Felix Tshisekedi and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame at the newly renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace building in Washington, DC, with petulant American president, Donald Trump, making sophisticated jokes of these African countries’ buffoonery, you could not but notice the droplets of tears down the chins of these African ancestors.
Earlier, Donald Trump had picked on our brothers in Somalia. “I don’t want them in my country,” Trump had begun, in his no-smiling vile attack, “Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks.” In an earlier repeated obnoxious attacks on South Africa, ostensibly borne out of his impulsive bellicose character, Trump repeatedly maintained that there is a white “genocide” unfolding in Cyril Ramaphosa’s country. Following this same trope of Africa-denigration, in the last three weeks or so, Nigeria has been a berthing bay for Trump to moor his querulous boat. Early last month, in a video he posted on his Truth Social, he had promised to “do things to Nigeria that Nigeria is not going to be happy about” as he would “go into that now-disgraced country guns-a-blazing.”
In July, the grumpy Trump had invited select African leaders to a three-day summit in Washington DC. White House referred to the summit, which had presidents of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal, as an “incredible” commercial opportunity.” All the invited African leaders’ countries possess important minerals like gold, oil, manganese, gas, wood and zircon in the bellies of their earths. At a televised lunch meeting with the African leaders, each of them festooned Trump with obsequious praise-singing. While Mohamed Ould Ghazouani of Mauritania lauded him for his “peace-making” evangelism in Africa, Senegal’s Bassirou Diomaye Faye commended his golf skills.
In D.C. last week, as Tshisekedi and Kagame sat, while he bungled their names in a mis-pronunciation orgy, Trump cracked grisly jokes at them for “killing each other”. He was before a rancorous audience which ostensibly enjoyed how he made a fool of these presidents. “Some people may be surprised. I think they’ve spent a lot of time killing each other and now they’re going to spend a lot of time hugging, holding hands and taking advantage of the United States of America economically, like every other country does.” The takeaways were “killing each other”, “taking advantage of the United States of America economically”, and, “like every other country does”. Construct an image in your mind’s eye of a daddy holding his child’s teddy bear and urging the child to walk. Not satisfied with that seemingly harmless jab, Trump then said, smiling, in what was obviously a pun, “Look at them. Look at the way they love each other.”
Indeed, the two African leaders have made sport of killing each other. Embroiled in decades-long conflict which began in the 1990s, they have fought two major regional wars which took place in 1996 and 2003, leaving millions of their people dead. Preceded by the brutal Rwandan genocide of 1994, with no less than one million people killed, that event became a precursor for the 1996-1997 war between the two countries. In this war, which was kindled by a Laurent-Désiré Kabila-led Rwandan and Ugandan-backed rebel force which overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko’s, the casualty estimate was about 250,000 souls. In the second war, nicknamed “Africa’s World War,” this conflict grossed death toll of 5.4 million people who died mainly from preventable causes like disease and starvation. In this recent conflict said to have begun in 2003, persistent violence, which ravaged Eastern Congo, birthed the M23 rebels, backed by Rwanda and various armed groups. In total, about 5.4m people are estimated to have died in the conflict, earning it the unflattering cognomen of the deadliest conflict worldwide since World War II.
In March 2020, a few years before it fell into the hands of the M23 rebels, I was in Goma. By the way, Congo is reputed with huge reserves of cobalt, gold, gems, copper, timber, and uranium, the hugest in the world. Its most valuable resource is its large reserve of diamonds. Indeed, the Congo has world’s second-largest diamond reserves, at 150Mct, or 20.5% of the global total. Substantial diamond reserves can be found in Kasai Occidental and Kasai Oriental. Then known as the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908, it was the personal estate of Leopold II, who was the second King of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909. Leopold was known to have founded and was the sole owner of the Free State which he administered as a private estate, ran by a surrogate called Henry Morton Stanley. After the “peace meeting” facts emerged that America had made a go for DRC and Rwandan precious stones.
But, Frantz Fannon predicted all these. In his Black Skin, White Masks, (1952) a historical critique of the complex ways in which identity, particularly Blackness, impacts on the African and the way it is constructed and produced, Fannon dissected the feelings of dependency on white-skin persons, as well as our feeling of inadequacy in our black skin, what he called “psychopathology” of inferiority complex of the African.
So, there is no doubt that Donald Trump’s threat is strategically reshaping the minds of our leaders. And for good. Which is both lamentable and commendable. Lamentable as per the facts I stated overleaf but commendable because, though the Nigerian presidency, in answering the archetypal Frantz Fannon’s ‘Black Skin, White Mask’, has buckled up due to Trump’s bullying tirades. If we didn’t have that white-skin democratic demon, Trump, threatening to apply the Venezuelan treatment against our president, we would most likely continue to have dross as anti-insecurity leadership.
Last week, the 19 Northern governors also became the Black Skin, White Masks. Perceiving the Trump fire to have crept up the mountain, it suddenly occurred to these governors that they could not continue to breathe region and religion while their their own rebellious children who have morphed to become terrorists, bandits and kidnappers, kill in hundreds. A pledge to contribute N1b each monthly towards demonstrating to Trump that they are not chummy with terrorism is a huge elephant to swallow. Akpabio too also immediately became a Black Skin, White Mask. But for Trump, he would have continued in his boot-licking sycophancy. And the president would have continued to vicariously abet terrorists by being politically right in his choice of sensitive appointees, and failing to name and shame terrorism financiers.
If there is any public officer today no one must envy, General Musa is. One is that he carries a huge-monster responsibility on his head. When there is a unanimous adulation for you, the type the retired General has harvested across board in Nigeria in the last one week, any right-thinking person should be afraid. First is that the land he steps upon is very slippery. Though he partakes in the encomium of Musa’s discovery and identification, Musa’s appointment commendations expose the president as hitherto self-serving. How could the same pot that cooked Musa be the same that cooked Badaru and Matawalle? Why would the vine (creeping plant) that ties the calabash, be the one that ties the gourd and at the same time, the one that ties the ball-like seed of a vegetable called “elégédé”? Yoruba say this as “ìtàkùn t’ó so’gbà, ló s’agbè tó tún so elégédé”. This equivocation can only be possible if within the cooking pot is the capacity for evil and good in same proportion.
Musa’s appointment might have brought him on collision course with Robert Greene’s admonition in his 48 laws of power. The minister’s appointment has unwittingly made him to outshine the master. In the calculus of power, it is a lethal infraction. Trust politicians, by now, they are probably thinking he could be the right choice for the 2027 vice presidency. In which case, he would begin to harvest political enemies. This dais is different from the army where guns understand no politics.
General Musa (rtd) has found the favour of the world and in the world’s eyes, he is without blemish. But we must not forget that it was this same Musa, as Chief of Defence Staff, that the Canadian government denied entry visa to Canada in February of this year. It speaks to the institutional horror and complicity in the nourishment of terrorism that the Nigerian military is perceived to have been trapped. What should bother us is why and how that same Nigerian military, rated as one of the best in the world, has become a scum of the world. The answer is that it has been unequally yoked with political power and its rotten apples. Since 2009 when insurgency grew to become a hydra in Nigeria, military top-brasses have grown rotund cheeks and inflated tummies from fat defence budget. They purchase substandard armaments and sell equipment to insurgents. It is same with banditry which is fueled by illegal mining activities alleged to be the brainchild of retired generals. Unfortunately, it is the rank and file, and occasional big-epaulette like the late Brigadier-Gen Uba who Karma catches.
General Musa’s submission in the Senate last week coheres with mine on this page last week. The Nigerian military must never negotiate with terrorists, bandits or kidnappers. The state must be above those animals. Negotiating with them puts it at par with them. And lastly, to show that his political correctness in dealing with insurgency has ended, the president must sack Bello Matawalle. Either rightly or wrongly, the minister of state for defence carves the image of an ”agbódegbà ”. His successor, Dauda Lawal and many other testimonies, have argued this fact very convincingly. Now, the news of Musa coming into the Defence Ministry is the beginning of national excitement. That Trump is watching is also the precursor of wisdom. Can Matawalle’s exit then be the icing on the cake?
*Last week, in my piece with the title, “Can Tinubu, our Eddie Kwansa, now come home?” I mistakenly referred to the soap opera, Village Headmaster, as bearing the signature tune of the song, Eddie Kwansa. In reality, it was the New Masquerade soap. My apologies.
•Published in the Sunday Tribune.
