Bisi Lawrence
23 August 2008
column
Lagos — I had never seen Mrs. Floretta Ita-Giwa look so sad, and I have seen her a number of times - usually cheerful, cute, and lively.
But last Thursday, she had a heavy trace of doom on her comely face. She might have been attending a funeral, from the way she appeared. The occasion was the wishing away of a part of Nigeria known as Bakasi, to Nigeria's sassy neighbour, Cameroon.
She is said to be an indigene of the area. She was thus called "Mama Bakasi" when the ownership of the area became a dispute between Cameroon and Nigeria. Being a senior official in the corridors of power at the peak of the dispute, I expected that her position would influence, to some extent, the final decision of the issue.
But she seemed to support, at least in principle, the position of President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was at that time the Head of State, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, and her principal.
However, last Thursday brought the moment of truth when the bride was actually handed over to the bridegroom, so to say, and with it came the doomsday look on the face of Mama Bakasi. I mean, she looked so sad and that made me wonder why she did not do anything to prevent the unpleasant event, or present her opposition or disenchantment openly.
She had appeared to have no serious objections to the deal all along.
One might make her situation a reference point to the host of objectors who emerged on the morning after the night of the deed. Learned barristers, knowledgeable academics, top-flight pundits who, you could have sworn, had heard very little about the issue all along.
I kept asking myself, where were they? Didn't they know that this Yar'Adua government would rather miss its supper rather than step over "the rule of law?" And that rule was there along, staring everybody in face, as decreed by the International Court of Justice to which we went for justice and got the law.
The hapless people of Bakasi, whom we all accept to be Nigerians like us, have not stopped wailing against their fate, and now the "patriots" also cry.
Such a hue and cry over spilled milk has seldom been splashed on the annals of our political life as a nation. Of course, there are those who are involved in this disgraceful episode of our international affairs, when we found it a matter of "legal" expediency to casually throw away a part of our country with some of our people.
Perhaps some of them who have just found their voices never believed that it would actually materialize in this stark form of reality, else they would have been louder and more persistent in their opposition to the proposal. But there were some people, some trusted people, who appeared to have known what the outcome would be. And yet they were involved in the legal drama of the whole deal.
One of them was quoted recently as averring that Bakasi never belonged to Nigeria, anyway. Then, we ask, why go through the charade of going to law? The learned gentleman was supposed to be one of our counselors, and he gave the impression that he was fighting for our cause. Now he says we didn't even have a prayer!
So, what are we to do? We are law-abiding. We are good boys, decent, gentlemanly, always as good as our word, no matter who gives it for us, or how. So, Bakasi has now injected another of those hollow catch-phrases into our vocabulary - you know, like "dividends of democracy", "rule of law" , sweet-sounding phrases that soon turn sour from ill-use, abuse, and misuse, until they fall into disuse. So, we are asked to accept that Bakasi is a done deal.
A country is, first and foremost, all about territory. As the poet said, "First is the land, and then came the people..." Of course, it is true that a country is more than a mere "geographical description" when it contains a nation whose peoples may belong to different origins and cultures, but have come together, or been forced together, to live together.
Nigeria still seems unsure about the extent of its willingness to live together as a nation, since "tongues and tribes" do indeed differ so glaringly and, in some areas, one might even say, abrasively. That is why several notable people have been making a case for what they call a "Sovereign National Conference" at which representatives of the various peoples (some even call them nations) may decide on the terms in which they would like to live together.
China would not allow any thought of such an arrangement in the case of Tibet, and the agitation for that breath of freedom and liberty will continue, if need be, into the next century. The Union of Soviet Republics of Russia was the same way until it broke into fifteen pieces.
Georgia, which now stands as a nation in her own right, was one of them. The country abuts on Russia, which was the core of the USSR, and stands as the rump of the former Union today. Russia is therefore naturally very sensitive to the diplomatic affiliations and domestic aspirations of her neighbour to the South.
She has found it politic to apply what may be more than necessary force, in the past fortnight, to curtail the enthusiasm of Georgia for dalliance with the Western powers - particularly, the United States.
And the world is aghast because it is apprehensive of what might follow..
But all that is par for the course. Every big nation exerts what it considers an adequate measure to protect its security as she sees fit. The political adventurism which led Soviet Union to install rocket missiles in Cuba, late in 1962, was sharply opposed by the Kennedy government, if you remember. It led the world to the brink of a possible nuclear engagement through a fortnight of global anxiety, until the Kremlin moved its rockets.
But it was not because Russia was a good boy, or a gentlemanly entity that would always keep its word. It was simply because the game was not on the board. The American bluff was simply too bold.
In fact, there was a law in place that Russia flouted in the Monroe Doctrine, promulgated in 1823 by President James Monroe, which prohibited intervention or colonization in the Americas, and that includes Cuba. That, in fact, was on what President John Kennedy based his obdurate opposition to that kind of Russian presence in Cuba.
The situation in Georgia is also now being diffused, but Russia maintains its dominance in dictating the pace and manner. Her tanks are being withdrawn having established who is in charge, and after showing that "to be prepared for peace is to be prepared for war."
Russia has succeeded in ruffling the feathers of the Western powers and, even if she has slipped rather badly in the pecking order of the Olympic Games in Beijing, she is still very much in control of her own backyard.
You see, that is what it is all about. It is a matter of caring enough, and having the political muscle, and the nationalistic zeal enough to assume one's rightful position in protecting your own backyard. It is not a matter of being a good boy, but a big boy, nor of stepping over "the rule of law" but around it.
You have probably been following the bother over the use of the international wing of the Murtala Mohamed Airport for domestic flights by Virgin Nigeria. It seems unreal.
The defence, which the Special Adviser on Communications to the President, Mr Olusegun Adeniyi, has rendered to the press, is hardly adequate. For one thing, it left any justification for the sledgehammer attack on the domestic lounge of the airline unaddressed.
Mr Adeniyi might have felt too urbane to touch such earthy issues. Of course he is in the class of people who refer glibly to what happens in other parts of the world. In no other place in the world, according to one of his supporters on television, does such an arrangement exist.
One does not personally know what happens in every part of the world, but there are hardly many nations in which a foreigner runs the national carrier because that particular country had dismally failed to manage its own airline.
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