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Nigeria: In Guns They Trust
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Vanguard (Lagos)
COLUMN
7 March 2008
Posted to the web 7 March 2008
Owei Lakemfa
Lagos
Anybody who takes our sleek, smooth-talking Foreign Affairs Minister, Ojo Madueke seriously, is in for a big surprise.
So when Maduekwe told Nigerians that we are in far greater danger rejecting the American military base, the African Command (AFRICOM) than accepting it, I asked myself who is beating the drum he is dancing to?
Maduekwe has been re-cycled in the last nine years as Transport Minister, Special Adviser to then President Olusegun Obasanjo, Secretary of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and today as Foreign Affairs Minister.
Yet to understand him and his sophistry, we need to go back to the dark days of military dictatorship especially to those of General Sani Abacha. In those nightmarish days arose a potent organisation; the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) which set out to fight dictatorship and return the country to the path of democratic rule.
Maduekwe was sent to the United States as a NADECO ambassador along with principled men like Ralph Obiora.
There, he campaigned not for the restoration of democracy or actualization of June 12, but for Abacha! When he returned to the country, he became one of the apostles of Abacha's transformation into a life civilian president.
So when Maduekwe along with some intelligence chiefs tell us that AFRICOM is the elixir for our democratic and national survival, we must be cautious.
What these men are doing is to present AFRICOM as an inevitable rape in which the victim is advised not to resist so as not to worsen her ordeal. Our forebears in the 1960s resisted such rape in the name of the Anglo-Nigeria Pact, so who says we cannot resist today?
With AFRICOM, the Americans are embarking on the physical re-colonization of Africa and we are being pressured to accept servitude, loss of dignity and national sovereignty for a project that is as nebulous as Maduekwe's "Citizen Diplomacy".
Contrary to the impression the Americans gave our House Committee on Defense on January 1, 2008, AFRICOM is not a new project, it already exists! The intervention force has its base in Stuttgart, Germany and what the Bush people plan to do is relocate it to Nigeria where their soldiers will occupy our motherland.
Let us examine the arguments for AFRICOM by the Americans and their Nigerian collaborators. The first is that it will promote and protect democracy. False! The US promotes free trade and the religion of market forces, not democracy. If anything, the history of the US shows that when it serves its national interest, it overthrows democratically elected governments.
Guatemalans democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz in 1951 and the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) overthrew him and imposed a Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas on the people. Mohammed Mussadeq was elected Prime Minister of Iran on April 27, 1951. He moved against the anti-Iranian policies of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The CIA got him ousted.
In Chile, Americans openly campaigned against the candidacy of Salvador Allende in the October 1970 general elections. Despite this Allende won but was overthrown in September 1973 in a coup hatched by ITT's Harold Geneer and CIA's Richard Helms. The human butcher, General Augusto Pinochet was then imposed on Chileans.
In the Democratic Repubic of Congo, the Pan-Africanist Patrice Lumumba won the pre-independence elections and became Prime Minister in June 1960. Within three months, Belgium and the CIA organized a "revolt" which was actually the coup that brought to power the tragic clown, General Joseph Mobutu Seseseko. Today, 48 years after, Congo remains on the boil.
A second argument is that AFRICOM will ensure national security. How? The same AFRICOM that will serve Cameroon and Chad?
Thirdly, that AFRICOM will train our military. Do we need American troops to occupy our barracks, airports and land in the name of training? A training our armed forces have had since colonial times?
Fourthly, that AFRICOM will fight HIV/AIDS. With guns? When did HIV/AIDS become a physical target to be shelled or bombed by F16s?
The experiences of countries like Philippines show that American soldiers do not obey national or international laws, and like in the case of Guatanamo Bay in Cuba, they refuse to vacate any country they occupy.
The American military is obviously well equipped but it is not invincible. It was militarily defeated in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam and forced out of Lebanon and Somalia. After fifty five years, it is still unable to win the war in Korea as it is unable to defeat the Iraqi and Afghan insurgents.
The Americans have their sights set on the oil in the Niger Delta. The Niger Delta question is a political one, so we do not need the Iraq-like images of homes torched, women raped, citizens detained, leaders hanged and bombs going off, to be transferred to our country.
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The American ruling elite puts its trust in the dollar and the gun, we must not allow such a religion to grow in our country.
To whom it may concern,
The American federal government has no legal authority in Africa. It can not legally expand it's operations to any other nation. Empire is not a legally authorized action for the American government. The lack of legality will not stop the American government, hopefully your nation can.
Should this come to pass, I apologize on behalf of America. Our government is not our nation, and unfortunately it is well beyond our control.
- An American Patriot
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