Former Military President retired General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, who returned from Guinea yesterday, said the military coup in the West African country is timely and patriotic.
Babangida,who was in Guinea as an envoy of President Umaru Yar'adua, told the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) that the military intervention has saved the country from another theatre of human and material waste. He said the country was already polarised and tensed before the armed forces came up to save the situation.
The former military president explained that the tenure of the Guinean parliament had expired two years ago but no elections were held to renew its mandate. He said the slated 2008 elections failed to hold before the death of former President Lansana Conte.
"For God's sake they were patriotic to make sure that the country remains intact. From what we could see upon arrival at the country the people are on the side of the coupists, and it would be unfair to say they have come to power to stay.
"I think we as outsiders should put our acts together to help the new leadership of Guinea to get the country back to its feet as that is about the most important thing they need from all and not criticism," he said.
Foreign Affairs Minister Ojo Madueke had said on Monday that Nigeria will not recognise the coupists. He said Nigeria was monitoring the events in Guinea and would convene an extra ordinary session of the ECOWAS on January 10 where it will come down hard on the coup plotters.
Reacting to this, Baba-ngida said, "The minister has no clue of what the situation really is on ground in Guinea. But aside that I'm only acting on the matching order of the president, therefore he is on his own."
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Ambassador Bagudu Hirse, who was on Babangida's entourage, said the Guinean military leadership deserve the sympathy of African countries.
He said the new Guinea rulers made it clear to the Nigerian delegation that they were not in power for material gains but to make sure that the country returns to democracy as soon as possible.
Captain Moussa Camara took over power in Guinea after the death of President Conte last month.
Camara, 44, was until recently a little-known captain in the supply corps. He studied at the Gamal Abdel Nasser University in the capital Conakry from where he obtained a diploma in Econ-omy and Finance.
He attended a military training course in Germany after 2004 and is believed to speak German. He has been greeted as a hero by crowds in Conakry. Even opposition parties have cautiously welcomed the military coup, but have called for elections to be held this year.
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For once, I would agree with Babangida on this. Military coups in West Africa are often caused by the excesses of the Politicians' unbridled greed and lack of unity to work proactively on behalf of the electorates they promised to serve. I dont see how ECOWAS should deny recognition for this junta if it promised to put in place, within a reasonable time, a game plan to educate the public and the politicians about their respective roles and limitations b4 campaign for elections begin so the people have enough information to make a wise choice. Democracy in name alone does not necessarily guarantee freedom - case in point, Nigeria, under Emperor yarAdua.
As for Nigeria's Foreign Minister, Emperor yar probably needs to send Ojo back to Kuru School of Diplomacy to learn how to speak diplomatically - he was quoted saying "this Guinea thing" - how condescending!!! FYI, Mr. Foreign Minister, Guinea is not a "thing" but an independent sovereign country with human beings. A thing is an object. The good, peace-loving people of Guinea are neither objects nor subjects of Nigeria. So, please get a grip b4 you open your frigging mouth again to embarrass us any further.
THE RIDICULING OF DIPLOMACY. I am not (and nobody should be) surprise to see IBB endorsing a coup anyway. What else would one expect from him? I am rather concerned about the ignorance or disregard of diplomacy. The person to blame for this poverty of foreign diplomatic moves is first of all the man at the helm who chose a notorious Capone of coup plotting to go as an envoy of democracy. In the first place it is a ridiculing of our type of democracy. It is a caricature of image building. The chaos that IBB represents is hard to be ignored in any consideration of our foreign image. What are we telling the rest of the world by the appointment of IBB as emisary of democracy? This is Nigeria's big joke. But no body except us is fooled. IBB is a manifest emisary of rift. Come to think of it too, if IBB understood and or respect diplomacy, if he has respect for the government and the ministry under whose portfolio he traveled, his utterance that "the minister is on his own" should have been clothed with cultured-coat and civility. How could IBB utter such a mispeak that the Minister of foreign affairs is on his own. Under which ministry, if I may ask, should an envoy be sent to represent a country? And who apart from the president receives the briefing if not the minister of foreign affairs, on behalf of the president? There is an indication from his comments that this minister was not even briefed directly or indirectly by the "Team-Babangida" which included a junior minister in the same ministry. Were he to have been briefed, it is uncalled for to address him as "one on his own" by IBB in his speech to the press. We may further ask: which government is speaking through Ojo Maduekwe and how different is that government from the one IBB said he represented. Is there no way of harmonisation of messages even when divergence seem to have occurred? IBB's speech showed not only his utter neglect if not disrespect of such office but also the uncoordinatedness and the incoherency in Nigeria's foriegn affairs' image making, where both ministers sharing the same portfolio sent two irreconcilable messages. Only in Nigeria can such take place, where the uncoordinated (un)diplomatic voices arise in the name of diplomacy. That apart. Lets look at other issues. For Babangida and his supporters, things only work by the jungle style of the juntas. That is his message back from the "tea break" in Conakry. But that we have always known long ago from him. One does not expect him to be of another mind, unless he has recently received the OBJ-like "baptism of fire" (with the bible in hand from prison during the 1999 bid to return to power). These men!! Treat them with caution!! Well the last puzzle I would like to leave us battling with is actually: who truly sent Babangida? Nigeria or Britain? The answer cannot be easily reached through popular response. More like it: Where is the Thatcher-man and his men who plotted the first coup in Guinea but fate cut up with them? If they have been released by the juntas in Conakry then we must probe further to know who is playing the tune that we are dancing. Finally, we ought to look twice at issues and ask: which 'stolen goods' from Nigeria by Nigerians are being protected by these so called "mission to Guinea"? Whose investment is been guarded? And just one last comment about the international basket mouth called BBC. It not surprising how BBC grew cold in its reporting about Guinea-issue. Were it to be a coup plot against Mugabe, then the guess isn't anybody's about what BBC will do. Well, for you my and our Guinea accept my sympathy. Yours is like the fate of most cases in Africa: the song of a defeated man. These Men!! They are playing chess on your chest as you lie on bare earth. It happened to us before, it may still happen again but God forbid.
Hear the forces of backwardness, re-emerge from nowhere. Babangida is an epitome what went wrong with post-independence Africa. After he got helping others make coups he made his own.
Nigeria has moved on. Hmmm, let's see, between an envoy and a foreign minister, who carries real clout ? Yes, no doubt, ofcourse the latter.
Besides Camara is supposed to, through a democratic rpocess, to hand Guinea back to civilian rulers.
As much as I abhor Babangida and all that he stands for, we cannot absolve the Nigerian politicians' greed and lack of vision as justification for the resulting coups. We are witnessing another one of those civilian politicians in action. There is always a causal relationship with outcomes. If you dont want military coups, then civilian politicians should govern wisely with the public opinion serving as barometer of their performance. Emperor Yar rulership is even worse than some military juntas we've had. I applaud Babangida for his reasonable comment on Guinea. As for the envoy versus diplomat thing, I stand by my assertion that Ojo Maduekwe needs more diplomatic training. I wonder what Maduakwe's academic and professional background was b4 he became FM but he reminds me of the round-pegs in square-holes that dot Emperor Yar's choice of Ministers - Agronomist serving as Defense Minister, or a Pharmacist serving as Minister of Information amongst many others under-utilized or miss-utilized skills. No wonder we are not making any progress.
I prefer substance over styled superficiliaties, nicities and platitudes of diplomancy which are always suspect. Look at what Mbeki's vaunted experience in quiet diplomacy has done to Zimbabwe's election debacle ?
Experience is over-rated and is always advanced by losers or frustrated careerists stuck in a career rut.
Besides I would rather listen to new and substantive political views than flowery tales from monsters of the past.
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