Mariam Mariam
“When he was asked Nigeria’s position on the United States African Command (AFRICOM) during the prediential medial chat, President Umaru Yar’Adua struggled with the answer. He first attempted a lengthy explanation of the six US military commands and then he began to quibble over the u-turn Nigeria has made in accepting US proposals on AFRICOM. Before he squirmed too far in his answer, his interviewers mercifully cut in to save his embarrassment”. – THE NATION NEWSPAPER, SUNDAY TRUST, 2008
Against the backdrop of the legitimacy burden he has laboured under, since he was spectacularly rigged into power in April 2007, President Umaru Yar’Adua, finally got the opportunity to visit the United States of America on December 13, 2007. So mystified was our president (of a country of a very proud and confident people as Nigerians always have been), that he got a photo opportunity at the White House, with arguably the most reviled leader on the face of the earth today, George W. Bush; that he went on to commit what must rank as one of the most unpresidential faux-pas to date.
Yar’Adua described the visit as the greatest event of his life! That might not bother us too much (after all, a very provincial ‘boy’ might honestly be mystified by the aura of power in the White House!), but in saying openly that Nigeria had agreed to co-operate with the USA new colonial enterprise in Africa, the so-called AFRICOM, our dear president crossed the thin line of the patriotism expected of the leader of Africa’s most populous nation, into the murky waters of treasonable surrender of national sovereignty.
This issue must never be allowed to rest, because it is becoming clearer, that what has happened is that Yar’Adua, on whose head hangs the sword of illegitimacy directly issued by the manner of his election, wanted at all cost to be accepted by the leading imperialist country in the world, the United States of America. For that, he was willing to trade off the national, and in fact continental, consensus that has build against the America colonial enterprise, named as AFRICOM. What exactly has been signed away by Yar’Adua and his regime remains a secret; but it is the duty of the Nigerian people to insist on our right to know what the surrender to AFRICOM means for our national sovereignty. What was traded away by a regime which has a legitimacy challenge to get American endorsement? Was this made known to the National Assembly? Can a regime that does not have the sovereign endorsement of the Nigerian people have the right to endorse such an anti-African platform as AFRICOM?
It is equally significant, that THE NATION newspaper which we quoted at the head of this piece also reported Ojo Maduekwe, who is described as “the Zealous Minister of Foreign Affairs” as having explained Nigeria’s u-turn on AFRICOME. “He said”, reported THE NATION, “Nigeria had examined the US proposals suitability was arrived at, Ojo did not say!”. Ojo Maduekwe was then reported to have cautioned that “Nigeria should not maintain a cold war posture by exhibiting old communist anti-West stance”.
Lest we forget, Ojo Maduekwe is an unrepentantly unprincipled, right wing politician, who holds nothing sacred, except service to his stomach! To his stomach! At the height of the Nigerian people’s struggle against the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha, he was on the podium addressing the infamous one-million-man-march. It was designed as we all can recollect, at perpetuating Abacha in power, when Abacha died, he found his way into the PDP and as secretary of the party, was one of the strategists of the defeated Third Term Agenda of the disgraced despot, Olusegun Obasanjo. It will not come as a surprise that Maduekwe, with his right wing perspectives is now leading Nigeria’s disgraceful surrender to the imperialist platform called AFRICOM. Ojo Maduekwe cautioned against what he called “old communist anti-West stance”. But he must tell us if to insist on a patriotic anti-imperialism is “communist”! why on earth did generations of Nigerian people fight for national independence if the prize of a sovereign country will not be in the hands of an unprincipled right wing demagogue like Ojo Madukwe to trade off?
Nigeria’s mass democratic movement of the working class and patriotic youth should seek FULL DISCLOSURE of what Yar’Adua and Ojo Maduekwe have agreed to with United States imperialism. And just as we resisted the Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact of the Balewa regime of the 1960s, we should similarly reject the even more obnoxious AFRICOM, by the most vicious imperialist system in history, United States imperialism. If neither Yar’Adua nor his foreign affairs valet, Ojo Maduekwe does not know, they must be educated, that Nigeria and the United States do not have identical interest. While the USA is an imperialist country sworn to the hegemonic control of the world, especially a covetous ambition to take over the resources of nations including ours; Nigeria is an under-developed country that has for long been exploited by imperialist countries like the USA, using the instrument of control such as the right wing elements of the Ojo Maduekwe type. The best way to secure Nigeria, West Africa and Africa, is to build regional and continental security organizations to help unknot regional security problems. AFRICOM cannot provide this platform. AFRICOM is not in our national interest and neither Yar’Adua nor Ojo Maduekwe has the right to trade off our national sovereignty on the platter of AFRICOM just because they crave regime recognition and legitimacy!
AFRICCOM is a platform of imperialist ambition in Africa; it is a weapon which the USA wants to use to control the resources of African countries, such as the huge oil reserves of the Gulf of Guinea. It is also an attempt to seize that control to prevent the rampaging presence of China and India. The United States is similarly perfecting the doctrine of getting African armies to be trained to fight and die in American wars in Africa, the way the Ethiopian Army is presently killing and dying in Somalia. Already the Americans are training troops from West Africa, including Nigerian troops, in the Sahelian Region of West Africa, to fight the alleged AL-Qaeda infiltration of our region? This is the shameful scenario that Yar’Adua and Ojo Maduekwe are sucking Nigeria into, with the surrender to American imperialism’s AFRICOM! A groveling surrender for the sake of his stomach is in the nature of Ojo Maduekwe’s unprincipled political career so far, but neither he nor his principal represent our national interest by surrendering to the American imperialist contraption called AFRICOM!
THE AMOS ADMU SCHOOL OF MANIPULATION AND SPIN!
Amos Adamu: Director-General National Sports Commission; Executive Member FIFA; Executive Member CAF; President, WAFU; Alpha and Omega Nigerian Sports and Manipulator-in-Chief of the LOC of Nigeria 2009!!! Over the past several years, this over-ambitious individual has run the roost in Nigerian sports. He says with defiant arrogance that “Everybody in Nigerian Sports is my boy”! so powerful and stupendously rich is Admau, that he has been able to build a vast network of spin within the media and an almost unassailable influence regime within officialdom. It is as if Nigerian sports will die if Adamu is taken off the scene. Yet as he has entrenched himself, so has our sporting fortunes dwindled: table tennis, volley ball, basketball, name it, things are not the way they used to be. Yet this individual, reported to be one of the richest civil servants in Nigerian history craves ever more power. It has taken the current sports minister, Abdulrahman Hassan Gimba to rattle Amos Adamu
Gimba has refused to be entrapped by Amos Adamu, and he has a program to cleanse Nigerian sports, starting with the removal of Amos Adamu from the sports ministry. As a result, Amos Adamu is fighting back, and he is fighting really dirty, using his vast network within the media and in the National Assembly.
I honestly believe that Nigerian sports will not fight progress if Amos Adamu’s vast network of personal enrichment, influence peddling and anarchic sporting administration is not uprooted. I support Gimba’s effort to cleanse sports and the first thing is that Amos Adamu must be sacked! One individual and his personal interest to control everything to ensure continued personal enrichment and power cannot be in the national interest. The sports committees’ hearings in the National Assembly can even end up strengthening Amos Adamu’s hands if Nigerians are not careful. Surely, this nation’s sporting future cannot continue to be compromised just to keep Amos Adamu at the top of the roost! Amos Adamu MUST GO!!! Oh, a last line: Who is Mainasara Illo’s Vice Chairman at the LOC of Nigeria 2009?
