When Wada Nas first mentioned it, nobody took him serious. Perhaps, now we know.WEEKLY TRUST
Feb 23-March 1 2001
The re-colonisation of Nigeria
By Wada Nas
General Malu, the Chief of Army Staff, should be counting his days to join the rank of his fellow (rtd.) officers. I don’t see him remaining in that office beyond sooner than later.
One costly mistake he made was telling the Oputa Panel of his loyalty to his former Commander-in-Chief, General Sani Abacha. He said things that ought not be said by any key member of the Obasanjo administration. If he never knew what it means to express the kind of views he did before the panel, then by now he ought to have known from the media hirelings of the regime. Since what may be called his Oputa declaration, they have not ceased calling for his head for stating the meaning and essence of military loyalty. They have been recycling this call since then.
The General cannot also be unaware that it is a crime to speak anything remotely good about Abacha. You can only be a good guy if you have the exceptional capacity to dig Abacha out of his grave and burn him to ashes, instead of doing this. Malu took to the podium singing loyalty to his Commander-in-Chief when he knows that this is an unpardonable crime. As if this was not bad enough, he once more took his swagger stick and lectured us on what the American military are attempting to do to us. According to him, they are seeking to enter our armoury house to know the type of weapons we have and have free access to our military policy. Then he carelessly warned that so long as he remains there, he would never allow them have the keys to these military secrets of ours.
Here again, he missed the road. If we may recall, when the administration came, a kite was flown over the need to have foreign troops in the name of defence pact to patrol our democracy and keep adventurous military wolves from re-disrupting it. The kite flew low. The National Assembly cried blue murder. The citizens saw and smelt rat. Only a few hirelings bought the Greek gift. We thought the matter was rested. We were all wrong.
The National Assembly was sidelined as also the Constitution, and American soldiers were brought in through the back door of the law to supposedly teach our soldiers the rudiments of peace-keeping, a job they have been doing since the Congo in the 60s. For more than forty years they have been doing several peace-keeping jobs, yet someone up on the rocks felt that they don’t know the ABC of it and the Americans, who know more about invading countries than keeping the peace, were solely brought in to teach our soldiers what their teachers don’t know. If anyone is to teach others about peace-keeping, I believe Nigerian soldiers, with forty years behind them on the job are better placed to teach the Americans, who are pupils in this field. It is like an undergraduate of history teaching a professor of history.
Anyway, they were brought in by the force of constitutional violation and here they are in Sokoto, Borno and other places exploding bombs, and for reasons we do not know? The people of the Rock and Aso never bothered to explain to us why they are here, for we are not entitled to know.
We the citizens who put them there. Even our soldiers and their commanders are not entitled to know.
General Malu has alerted us of the serious dangers of their existence here seeking to know our secret rather than teaching what they know little about. And he knows better. There must be some pressure on him to comply before making it known that he would prefer to suffer defending the military secrecy of his fatherland than succumb to some imperialistic designs of foreign troops in collaboration with the custodians of our national faith. And the General knows the implications – retirement – for hirelings and some good boys to take over. He has a few days to start tidying up his office.
While the General was alerting us that foreign troops are around to re-colonise us, the National Assembly made us know how officers of the IMF, an America-controlled institution, have been looking into their books. It is as if their accountants are needed to teach ours how to do some simple auditing. Yes they are now our auditors, and chief accountants dictating to our own Auditor General and Accountant General of the Federation, respectively. In effect, they are the real ones in charge.
If we are in any doubt, we must remember that Mr. Rober Macnamara, the very American who brought out President Obasanjo on the board of their Project Democracy, a secret outfit of sorts, is now one of our chief advisers on foreign investments. And the good American was a former CIA boss who devised so many anti-African schemes. Today, he is one of the three foreigners and two Nigerians selected to advise our own sovereign president on foreign investments. What are the other two Nigerians doing on that committee? But is good they are there, for some reasons.
Both the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Finance Ministry have been doing foreign bidding in their operations. Privatization is one of such. Cutting down on capital budget is another. ThisDay was kind enough to let us know how our own went on his knees before the IMF boss in a letter, telling him something unpleasant about our sovereignty.
Now American chickens and others would be flooding our markets which would consequently push out our farmers. On the insistence of the America controlled IMF, no more subsidy on agriculture while the same Washington has been subsidising their own farm produce. They have compelled us to auction our assets to the lowest bidder in the name of privatization and the purchasers are they, not us.
Never in our history since independence has neo-colonialism being re-visited on us. Never have we been gradually moving towards becoming the 52nd state of America. Never have our wishes being ignored in favour of the desire of the mighty USA, courtesy of an administration that is more Washington than the United States. Soon, ours would become an American colony, guarded by their troops, with their own managing our resources to their own advantage. Colonialism knows only one thing milking colonial subjects to their dry bones.
The IMF is there doing it for them. They forced us to take a so-called stand by facilities, meaning postponing debts payments, but only to generate more interest later. In sum total we took a loan of only six billion dollars, paid 17 billion dollars on same and have 32 billion outstanding? Imagine that! And Obasanjo regime was the first to take a jumbo loan of one billion dollars in 1978, which has landed us where we are now. As if this never mattered, in spite of an oversized burden of 34 billion dollars over a loan facility of only six billion dollars, which grew wings to that sum, we have again agreed to add additional burden of one billion dollars, which in four years may grow into five billion, after perhaps paying two billion as accumulated interest. Show of friendship or slavery?
I hope we have no reason to believe what has been in the air for long, which is that ours are indeed their own, playing secret games against our collective interests. The chief media supporters let us know this before. They have not retracted themselves.
So we are entitled to conclude that because of the interest of a few, we are now facing the danger of becoming, again, colonial subjects. We are systematically being recolonised through the back door and we have every reason to worry. Time will tell.
But before then, let us warn very seriously that this administration is pulling and dragging us onto the slaughter slab of Western interest and in particular into the American colonial orbit. We see more of their interest predominating over us in such a manner as to make us slaves to their antics. Obasanjo’s rumoured cosy relationship with the Americans, if true, must not be used to undermine our own national interest in favour of the Americans. The presence of American troops is not in our national interest and we must therefore collectively demand for their pull-out. We don’t need them, until it has been sufficiently explained otherwise. Until then we are of the firm belief that even against Cameroon, we don’t want their presence. And certainly we don’t need it.
Printed and Published by Media Trust Nigeria Limited. Corporate Office: No. 6 Sullubawa Close, Off Katuru Road, Unguwan Sarki, G.R.A. Kaduna.
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Yara Wasa Bature
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