Ayomide
Editors of Nigerian newspapers celebrated the Eid-il-fitr holidays of November 2003, at the Otta farm home of President Olusegun Obasanjo. Before we ploughed through the different plates of food served that an interactive, interview session with Obasanjo, touching on several aspects of national and international development. The question I had asked that day was on the controversy about the signing of the American Servicemen Protection Act (ASPA), by Obasanjo. In tune with America’s imperialist ambitions, it projects troops into different parts of the world, intervening in countries, illegally invading them or coveting the natural resources of vast regions of the world. A corollary of America imperialism is the systematic buildup of atrocities by its troops in different theatres of war, from Abu Ghraib in Iraq, in Afghanistan, to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. There were earlier atrocities in Korea, Vietnam and several other parts of the world. So, the Americans dread the scenario of having their troops, commanders and political leaders facing justice in the international criminal court system. They have therefore been pressurizing countries around the world to sign the American Servicemen Protection Act. It obliges the signatory not to hand over American troops to face justice, no matter the atrocities they might have committed. All around the world, self-respecting countries and leaders have resisted the frankly immoral pressure of the United States to oust the jurisdiction of the international criminal court, and thus placing its crimes above the law. So it was that South Africa resisted the American pressure. But largely, the different ‘Banana republics’ around the world, have fallen upon themselves to do the biddings of Uncle Sam. Unfortunately for Nigeria, Obasanjo enlisted our country amongst the dependent, non-self-respecting countries that signed that ASPA. He secretly signed, without informing our National Assembly in one of his numerous acts of unconstitutional impunities. So, in answer to my question that November evening at Otta, Obasanjo answered me coolly that ‘I have signed the Act’! I followed up by saying that he did not consult the National Assembly and without batting an eyelid, literally, he retorted that ‘I did not’!! I have recalled this encounter today, to provide a peg for an analysis of aspects of the Malu story that Sunday Sun of July 31, 2005, carried. A wide-ranging exposition on different issues, there is no doubt that General Victor Malu former Chief of Army Staff, sacked by Obasanjo, shoots straight from the hip. But what struck me, was what he had to say about the relationship which the Obasanjo administration has forged with the Americans in the period since 1999. The American incursion into Nigeria’s security was premised upon the fact that the Americans would teach our troops about peace keeping. Malu was unambiguous in his rejection of this laughable excuse. “The Nigerian Army should teach the Americans on peace keeping. Peace keeping is not nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. That’s the job for an infantry man who walks on his feet carrying his ammunitions, rifles, you maneuver to get to the point using fire. That’s what American don’t do”, according to General Victor Malu. “The Americans would first bomb the place before going in. If you survive you survive, but you can’t do peace keeping that way”. It seemed clear that the excuse of teaching the Nigerian Army peace keeping hid a more sinister intention. “If you remember the five years of Abacha we had completely severed from (the) western (countries). All our officers who were in the various institutions abroad were sent back. We were not going on course. America was curious to know how a third world country with all the sanctions, the Nigerian Army could achieve the feat we achieved in Liberia. And then they came and found a willing person in the name of Obasanjo. They got everything they wanted”. But the situation only got even worse. General Malu continued that “an interesting thing happened in Sokoto. The Americans insisted on staying in the barracks with our soldiers. I said over my dead body. I asked General Danjuma who was my GOC before he became chief of army staff ‘would you, during your tenure have allowed these foreign troops to come stay in the barracks with your soldiers? He said no”. “At a stage, we agreed that the Americans would give us some support in terms of equipment required for peace keeping operations….That was the only time we agreed that if they are giving out equipment, they should not give us what we already have in our ordinance….We were waiting for them…..We woke up one day and found many American instructors. Where is the equipment? No equipment. So, what are you going to give us? They said they were to start training us on peace keeping”. “So this kept on going on but the dangerous part of it was that as at that time we were in Bakassi nose to nose with the Cameroonians. The same Americans that were claiming to be training us for peace keeping were training and equipping the Cameroonian army. I was the one that captured that place and I know that we suffered”. This extensive quotation from General Victor Malu underscores several issues. In the first place, it re-in forces the imperialist content of American designs in different parts of the world. Nigerian strategic interests are not similar to the American. To open up our strategic interest to American domination, is to commit an unpardonable and unpatriotic act. Unfortunately, this is the path that Obasanjo has chosen since he came to power in 1999. It is within that context, that his signing of the American Servicemen Protection Act (ASPA) must be understood. But what Obasanjo has done in the field of the armed forces and security, he has also done in our economic life. At a petty level, there is the influence which Americans like Andrew Young and Carl Masters wield at Aso Rock. They get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars annually working as lobbyists for the Obasanjo regime in America. And at least one of them, Carl Masters, has played a prominent role in the dubious Obasanjo presidential library project. So bold have they become and so pervasive their influence, that master’s would boast that they would never allow the Nigerian government to take over the Obasanjo library. He apparently did not know that Obasanjo took over similarly corruptly built edifices from the Abacha. It was part of the influence they wield here, that Carl Masters’ marriage reception was organized in our country’s presidential villa, hosted by a President Obasanjo, who has surrendered our country’s sovereignty in many ways, to Americans! The economic platform of privatization of our national assets, the devaluation of our national currency, the regime of hike of fuel prices, triumph of the market and the whole baggage of dismantling of the trappings of national economic sovereignty and the institution of suffering and poverty in the land, belong in the arsenal that Obasanjo has unleashed and presided over in the six years that he has ruled our country. There is therefore a crisis of what constitutes patriotism today in the land. Those around Obasanjo who thought out his economic program, have been trained by imperialism and are convinced that there is no alternative to their recipe for development. Capitalism at this historical conjuncture is globalized, imperialism has become thoroughly triumphant, so the only way for a developing country is to become an appendage of this worldwide process that is driven by the economic power of transnational corporations and the missiles, guns and Apache helicopters of the imperialist armies of the United States, Great Britain, Italy and Australia. The contemporary scenario led to a paradigm shift in our country. In the past, especially during the 1970s even neo-colonial regimes will not employ experts that are openly identified with imperialism, such as the members of Obasanjo’s economic team. But now those doing the biddings of imperialism strut around, carrying themselves as the representatives of the last word in received orthodoxy-the orthodoxy of neo-liberal capitalism, capitalism without human a face. Today the anti-imperialist platform has suffered setbacks of an almost terminal order. Otherwise, these characters would have been so routed decisively at least at the level of theoretical disputation that they would have fled with their tails between their legs! But the truth is that even day-to-day reality defeats them, because their economic platform is not working for the Nigeria people. This is partly why there is apprehension about what may happen when Obasanjo ends his tenure in 2007. They are scared stiff that the imperialist project might face reversals, if a patriotic government comes to power and it chooses to side with the Nigeria people, against their own platform of surrender to the International Financial Institutions and the United States. They will be out of a job, and who knows, they might even be tried along with Obasanjo for the crimes they have committed against this land. What will be an amazing turnaround especially in respect of the security deals done against our best national interest, is to have General Victor Malu, heading the panel to probe the activities of Obasanjo: his signing of the American Servicemen Protection Act; the American take over in our security concerns and related questions. The slopes of patriotism can be very slippery indeed. Regimes come to power believing that their concerns represent the best definition for patriotic endeavor’s. Dictatorships are most guilty of this assumption. But an elected government with strong dictatorial proclivities, such as the Obasanjo administration, can suffer the same lacuna. This is one of the greatest afflictions of the last six years in Nigeria. We have gone through a phase of our national life, during which a ‘know-it-all’ president has systematically run the country, most of the time, with a great disdain for the constitutional order that underline a democratic set up. Those who have a pro-people definition for patriotism must therefore work together to ensure that the Obasanjo era of unconstitutional impunities and unpatriotic surrender to imperialism do not return to our country, after 2007.
