The first is the Sunni – Shiite spat between Saudi Arabia, the world Sunni Islam champion and Iran, the leading Shiite Islam nation of the world over the execution of a Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia at the beginning of the year and the obvious implication of that for world peace. Especially after protesters burnt the Saudi embassy in Teheran on that score and Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic relations with Iran in retaliation. The second is the assertion by US President Barak Obama that the most influential gun lobby in the US, the National Rifles Association – NRA – is misleading Americans over his proposed amendments to get more information of gun owners. In return the NRA called Obama’s proposals mere public relations stunts and the Speaker of the US House of Representatives dismissed them as a distraction.
How a sitting US president, already tagged a security risk by Donald Trump, the front runner presidential candidate of the GOP, can be treated with such disdain, scorn or levity by stakeholders in the fight against global terrorism and insurgency in his own domain; and by serious stakeholders too in the security apparatus of his own nation, speaks volumes of how much of a lame duck president he has become on the last hurdle of his controversial presidency in 2016.
I go back to my hard comments on IMF and Nigeria’s economic woes for which I hold the IMF responsible. This is because Lagarde was reported to have said that poverty, unemployment, inequality were too high in Nigeria. Who should know but her and her infamous and hated institution that imposed anti social and inhuman IMF conditionalities on, not only Nigeria but the entire developing world. This in turn led to increase in inequalities, poverty and massive unemployment. IMF conditionalities were imposed on developing nations to cut deficits, raise taxes and interest rates and retrench their workers all of which led to economic recession, stagnation, political unrest and social turmoil. Especially during military regimes which had feet of clay in terms of legitimacy and were fair play for IMF officials who literally put a gun to their heads to accept IMF conditionalities hook, line and sinker to get much needed loans for their nations and to pay endless debts to US and Western corporate institutions .Unfortunately even the loans never got used for purposes they were given but ended up in the pockets of Nigerian leaders. A situation which reached a crescendo in the last administration whose mess the host to the IMF boss is now clearing up at great risk to his personal security and that of the nation. So who needs an IMF boss on a visit to Nigeria especially at the beginning of a new year when we say happy new year?. Definitely nobody as undertakers cannot be welcome where people have hope that a better day is in sight. As we see in the new Buhari Administration grappling with the fall out of the IMF Conditionalities which bred poverty and inequalities and even a debilitating insurgency that has strained our resources and resolve as a nation maximally. Surely Lagarde’s visit was one too many and a repeat should not be encouraged.
On Shiite / Sunni rancour I see sovereignty being treated without respect and it is even more interesting that what happened in Zaria when Shiite Muslims ambushed and almost killed the Nigerian Chief of Army staff is a good analogy in this regard. The much loved cleric killed in Saudi Arabia was a Saudi citizen who had been sentenced for terrorism sometime ago and the sentence was carried out by the Saudi authorities on new year’s day. Iran condemned the execution and the Supreme Ayatollah in Teheran invoked that Divine Vengeance would be visited on the Saudi authorities . But that cannot be an excuse for Iran to close its eyes as it were for unruly Iranians to burn the Saudi embassy which is a sovereign territory in Teheran, Iran’s capital. That is a violation of international law and that is why the Wiki Leaks editor was able to stay in a foreign embassy in London till today while the British authorities are waiting outside the embassy without going in, in respect of international law. Iran must respect international law and cannot be allowed to get away with a repeat of the US Embassy hostage crisis in Teheran in 1979 when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power in Iran and the embassy crisis resulted in making incumbent US President Jimmy Carter to lose his reelection bid to Republican Ronald Reagan.
Unfortunately and rather ominously the 2016 US Presidential Election is about to be influenced in the way and manner that it made incumbent President Jimmy Carter lose his reelection bid. Carter lost because he mishandled theTeheran crisis and bungled a rescue operation to free the hostages. At the presidential debate Ronald Reagan had been briefed to tease the normally smiling Billy Carter known famously then for his wide toothy smiles. Carter had campaigned that Reagan was a war monger and would take the US to the third world war. But when Carter raised that point at the presidential debate Reagan just smiled and retorted with the phrase – there you go again – making Carter look like the aggressor on stage. Carter’s famous smile dissolved into a frown and a rage and the rest is history.
Again I see an ominous connection in the skirmish between those who condemn Donald Trump’s ban on Muslims entering the US and the retort of the US president that the NRA is misleading Americans on gun laws. I see an answer to their concern in the famous Ronald Reagan phrase – there you go again. It is my belief that that phrase answers their fears adequately and in their context of perception.
Donald Trump has said the issue of the ban rested on the grounds of security and it is difficult to fault that no matter how you hate the man. ISIS or IS, is an Islamic insurgency and militancy rattling the security of the civilized world including the US and even majority moderate Muslims who hate the organization admit as much. The NRA‘s seeming arrogance in dismissing the claim of a US president as too much sound and fury signifying nothing as Shakespeare would have said, is steeped in the common American perspective and belief that the right to bear arms is a constitutional one and no one can take that or their guns away. It is their way of life and no crying president can be allowed to take that away and really I think President Obama should understand that. All he needs to do is to find out how most Africans feel when high sounding US diplomats lecture them on gay rights by comparing such rights to civil rights, for which the likes of Martin Luther King Jr fought for so bravely and hazardously in their time and left indelible footprints in the sands of time in so doing.
Once again, long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
TheNation
END
Be the first to comment