22052019 - F U L A N I S AT I O N A G E N D A : Obasanjo seeks to divide Nigeria in his old age —FG

Obasanjo’s ‘disappointment’,
Atiku’s planned ‘insurrection’
and Buhari administration
FORMER President, Olusegun
Obasanjo, has stirred the
hornet’s nest once again. The
redoubtable soldier, war hero, exruler,
farmer and two times
president claimed in a talk that he
gave at an Anglican Church in
Oleh, Isoko South Local
Government Area of Delta State,
that the entire purpose of the Boko
Haram insurgency is the
Fulanisation and Islamisation of
Nigeria. Which is saying that the
spate of kidnappings, sacking of
communities, armed robberies in
the form of cattle rustling and
above all, the imposition of the
Islamic legal and religious codes
in places under the control of Boko
Haram are well-orchestrated
plans aimed at making Fulani and
Muslims out of other Nigerians.
As is now the case with most of
his interventions, Obasanjo said
nothing new. Nothing that other
Nigerians have not said over and
over again. His remarks have,
however, elicited instant responses
from many quarters, highlighting
the fault lines in our peculiar
federation that has made the
country’s unity a project
perpetually in the future. While
some have condemned his
remarks as unbecoming of his
status, he has received enthusiastic
approbation from others. The
problem, again as usual with
Obasanjo, is not necessarily the
message but the messenger.
Obasanjo acknowledged the fact
that Boko Haram has been with
us for quite a while. But its
activities were viewed, he said, as
a revolt of the poor and
dispossessed. They were seen as an
economic issue that could be
resolved by tinkering with those
policies through which the
governing elite in the North have
kept most Northerners away from
the gains of our commonwealth.
Now Obasanjo thinks such reading
was essentially flawed and naïve
as it beggars the fact now at our
disposal, namely, that Boko
Haram had and has a far more
sinister agenda. This is to impose
Islam as well as Fulani rule on the
rest of Nigerians. All of this became
clear, according to Obasanjo,
from the concerted manner in
which Boko Haram has escalated
its activities while teaming up with
other murderous groups like the
Islamic State of West Africa
Province and Al Qaeda, among
others.
For quite a while, Nigerians
from the Southern and Middle belt
parts of the country have raised
fears about the possible
Islamisation of Nigeria. Those
fears have been accentuated since
Muhammadu Buhari took over as
president. Things were nowhere
helped by the fact that Buhari
himself exhibited a high degree of
revanchist provincialism in his
appointment of ministers and other
public officers. He displayed a
clear bias for Muslims from the
North of the country while quietly
ignoring the concerns of others like
the Igbo who did not vote for him
and have never supported his
presidency. His recent
reappointment of Godwin
Emefiele as Central Bank governor
is being seen as a mere sop that
would not do much to assuage the
feeling of alienation his
administration has engendered
among the Igbo.
Our greater concern,
however, should be to
ask what Buhari is
doing to erase the
perception that he
supports Fulani
domination and
Islamisation of
Nigeria
His weak response to herdsmen
attacks in many parts of the North,
seen as a lack of concern for other
Nigerians, makes his stance
appear like subtle endorsement of
the activities of the insurgents.
Buhari, like most of the elite from
the North, at some point adopted
a casual stance that suggested he
was satisfied with the activities of
Boko Haram. This was in the early
days of its activities when prompt
condemnation could have gone a
long way. Things remained this
way until a strange twist in the tale
would result in Boko Haram
hunting after prominent
Vanguard, WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2019—31
Northerners. Buhari was a target
of one such attack and only
escaped narrowly. Only then did
the scale fall from the eyes of the
Northern elite. And they began to
align with the rest of Nigerians to
reject the extremist ways of Boko
Haram. By this time, however,
matters had got to a head and the
group had become a monster with
a life of its own, answerable to
nobody.
That Abuja was, as at last week,
embroiled in an argument with
Afenifere and Ohanaeze Ndigbo
about the nature of its recognition
of and dealings with Miyetti Allah,
the Fulani cattle breeders
umbrella organisation, feeds into
the unsettled narrative that the
government is all hunky-dory with
the herdsmen and by extension,
cattle herders - a step from Boko
Haram. Activities of the herdsmen
and those of Boko Haram directly
or indirectly align with one
another.
It was under these circumstances
that a presidential aide, Lauretta
Onochie, issued a statement
suggesting that Atiku Abubakar,
Buhari’s opponent who has been
in court since the conclusion of the
2019 elections, is under
investigation for corruption at the
United Arab Emirates. Abubakar,
it should be said, has not been a
favourite of the Northern elite or
groups like Miyetti Allah that
opposed his candidacy in the 2019
presidential election. Atiku feels he
has been defamed by Onochie’s
claim and has instructed his
lawyers to demand compensation
running into billions of naira. It is
not surprising that Lauretta
Onochie would attack Atiku in the
manner she did. Her remarks were
in consonance with the position of
Abuja that Atiku is at the vanguard
of a conspiracy determined to
disrupt violently the Buhari
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government. What is, therefore,
surprising is that Abuja has not
thought it wise to arrest Atiku
considering the gravity of their
accusation, one that has been
repeated by other administration
officials, including the military
chiefs.
What is Abuja and Buhari up to
with their attack on Atiku? Why
have they continued with their
claim that he plans to disrupt
Buhari’s inauguration while
failing, against the norm, to act on
their accusation for which they say
they have ample evidence? Is theirs
a red herring to prepare the ground
for a clampdown on Atiku or a
move to undermine his challenge
of the Buhari Administration in the
courts? Is Obasanjo’s own remark
about the Fulanisation and
Islamisation of Nigeria an
expression of his disappointment
with the failings of the Buhari
administration as Sule Lamido
has alleged? Even if one could
criticise Obasanjo for gross
insensitivity and unbecoming
utterance given his position as a
former president and indeed, one
of Nigeria’s most respected (and
vilified?) leaders, would it be right
to assume that his remarks are so
much blather? Or could there be
some truth to his observation?
Nigerians, especially leaders,
should be careful not to say things
that could aggravate the tense
cloud that has pervaded our
country in the last few years. But
should that stop us from telling one
another some home truths? A
church might not be the most
appropriate place for Obasanjo to
highlight the objectives of Boko
Haram. Our greater concern,
however, should be to ask what
Buhari is doing to erase the
perception that he supports Fulani
domination and Islamisation of
Nigeria.
The myth of ‘debt trap' in China-Africa cooperation
By Charles Onunaiju
FORMER US Secretary of State, Mr. Rex
Tillerson sacked mid-air by his principal,
President Donald Trump while returning from
a visit to Africa last year, orchestrated the hype,
on a visit to the Africa Union headquarters in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He said that “Chinese
investment does have the potential to address
Africa’s infrastructure gap,” but added a
spurious claim of “an approach that has led to
mounting debt and, a few, if any job in most
countries.”
Last December, Mr. John Bolton, US
National Security Adviser made more
outlandish claims that “China uses bribes,
opaque agreements and the strategic of use of
debt to hold states in Africa captive to Beijing’s
wishes and demands.” To drive home the scare
at the alleged China’s debt trap, Mr. Bolton
claimed “the nation of Zambia for example, is
currently in debt to China to the tune of $6
billion to $10 billion. China is now poised to
take over Zambia’s national power and utility
company in order to collect on Zambia’s
financial obligation.” A few days later, the
Zambia government announced that the claim
of the US national security adviser was false
and that, of its total sovereign debt of
about US$9 billion, China’s share is only
about US$3 billion and none of its national
assets is under any form of threat of seizure.
China’s broad cooperation with Africa which
has provided huge support for the continent to
overcome the existential bottlenecks of funding
shortage, infrastructure deficit and inadequate
manpower and which has currently restored a
critical takeoff of sustainable and inclusive
economic growth is the object of vicious attack
from quarters that were unwilling to touch
Africa with a long spoon in regards to
investments, trade, loans and other such
activities that could boost the aggregate growth
of the economies in the region.
China herself is not a stranger to the use of
concessional loans as a funding mechanism
for her own economic modernisation. At the
outset of her modernisation programme, in
March, 1978 China announced an ambitious
ten-year plan that focused on 120 key
modernisation projects, including 30 electric
power stations, six trunk railroads, eight coal
mines, ten new steel plans, five habours, nine
non-ferrous metal complexes and ten new oil
and gas fields.
According to the account of Professor
Deborah Brautigan, a sober and keen China
watcher, “by the end of 1978, Chinese officials
have signed 74 contracts with Japan to finance
turn-key projects that would form the backbone
of China’s modernization. All would be repaid
in oil and coal.” China herself was a recipient
of Japan’s generous loans, though Beijing
viewed it as a mandatory reparations that
Tokyo must make for its atrocious war crime
against the Chinese, in the same manner, that
post-war Germany was obligated to make
reparations to the state of Israel on account of
the Nazi violence that targeted the Jews.
With the signing of the treaty of friendship
between China and Japan in 1978, Japan
agreed to provide large five-year loan
packages to China. The first yen loan package
(1978-1983) totaled 330 billion yen. The
second tranche of the yen loan package between
1984 and 1989 amounted to 470 billion yen,
with the third loan package between 1990 and
1995 totalling 800 billion yen. Yet for all
Japan’s loan assistance, the Chinese leadership
maintained unassailable prerogative on its
major policy decisions both domestic, foreign
and even defense policies.
For example, in 1995, long after China has
ended the nuclear monopoly of the former
Soviet Union and Americans by blasting its
first nuclear test in 1964, Beijing went ahead
with its 42 nd nuclear test, despite
evident misgivings by the Japanese Prime
Minister, Mr. Marayama Tomichi, who during
a visit to Beijing had asked Premier Li Peng for
a moratorium on nuclear test. Beijing has,
however, during her first blast of the nuclear
bomb made a commitment never to be first to
use a nuclear bomb but would maintain the
facility for deterrence.
Apart from loans, trade and investments
also between Beijing and Tokyo flourished in
the period which coincided with the time of
China’s intense modernisation drive that has
borne the fruits of the country’s contemporary
national aggregates and global preeminence.
In fact despite tension over domestic politics,
security policy and history, economic
interdependence between China and Japan
remained a powerful force. Total trade between
the two countries grew from $18.2 billion in
1990 to $66.2 billion in 1999, while Japanese
The strategy of scaremongering
African countries
with the hype of “Chinese
debt trap” is essentially to
prevent the rise of Africa
foreign direct investment into China rose from
$438 million in 1989 to $4.5 billion in 1995.
Against the foregoing, the hype about
Chinese loans, investments and trade
morphing to debt trap or surrender of
sovereignty of African countries is a hogwash
concocted and designed by its peddlers to
starve countries in the continent, the veritable
and indispensable financial oxygen that is
necessary to generate sustainable economic
growth and the wider socio-economic
development and even political stability.
What the leadership of the various countries
in Africa needs to do is to harness loan and
investment flows to critical and strategic
national priority, build integrated national
economic structures and work it up to the
global value chains.
The strategy of scare-mongering African
countries with the hype of “Chinese debt trap”
is essentially to prevent the rise of Africa, as
such efforts, though, of different type was
desperately deployed to prevent the rise of
China. From the earlier insinuations from the
same quarter that China is a “hollow” power
that has nothing tangible to offer to Africa
except rhetoric, the tune has changed that
China wants to compromise the sovereignty
of African countries through debt trap.
But if China was not entrapped by Tokyo
despite generous loans, investments and trade,
how is Africa destined to become a vassal of
Beijing because of loans, investment and trade,
except only on the assumptions that Africa,
her people and leadership are incapable of
securing her own interests? This, in itself,
reflects the unreformed bigotry of how Africa
is viewed from the West.
Despite the sustained hoopla about Chinese
loans and the alleged debt trap, the Londonbased
Economist magazine said that these
“investments funded by Chinese are not in
China” and that the best Beijing can do in
respect of government defaults on its loans is
to reduce the amount of money that debtors
have to pay, adding that “countries with longer
records of lending to poor countries often do
the same,” citing the example of the “Paris
Club of creditors formed in 1956 to devise ways
of reducing defaulters' debt loans.”
If the media high priest of Western liberal
order has the above to say about the “myth of
China’s debt trap,” there is little to add except
for Africa to shine her eyes, as it is used in local
parlance to commend someone to a sober
reflection.
•Onunaiju, director, Centre for China
Studies, wrote from Abuja.
C
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