Rude Boys in the Neighbourhood

ENGAGEMENTS By Chidi  Amuta

There are troubling skirmishes in Nigeria’s immediate neighbourhood. A coup attempt in next door Benin Republic was a rude poke in the nation’s eye. Nigeria quickly woke up and did the needful. When there is a fire in a neighbour’s hut next door, you need to rally to put it out before it consumes your palace. That is what Nigeria did about the coup attempt in Benin Republic last week. By helping to extinguish the coup through military intervention, we projected power and clearly indicated what we will not allow to happen must not happen around here.

There was no violation of anyone’s sovereignty. Nigeria was invited to help restore a democratically elected government in distress. Above all, Benin falls squarely within Nigeria’s sphere of influence, a concept that elementary foreign relations has always recognised.

The democratic government in Benin has been restored even if on stilts. Benin’s political leaders narrowly survived the revolt of the rude boys. They were almost thrown into the unemployment market or jail. But the collateral disturbances are  just about to begin for the region and perhaps for Nigeria.

For ordinary Nigerians troubled by viral insecurity, the effectiveness of the Nigerian military in the Benin operation has raised a conditional hope. It is our hope that the same level of proficiency will now be applied to end banditry, terrorism and insurgency on every inch of Nigeria. It took less than 48 hours to restore the democratic government in Benin. It has taken nearly 15 years to fight the insurgency and terrorism in parts of Nigeria. In this period, jihadism has morphed into viral terrorism, isolated terrorism has become general banditry and casual criminals have become industrial kidnappers and abductors. These are the more reasons to hope that the new impetus and efficiency of our military will soon relieve us of sleepless nights of fear and anxiety. We are entitled to this hope for the sake of  our country. In the meantime, the President, the new Defense Minister and the new Chief of Air Staff all deserve accolades on the Benin success.

There is another big blessing for Nigeria. It is a lesson in power and its strategic projection. If you are a regional big brother, power without responsibility is a farce. Pre-eminence without perceivable military teeth makes a regional power more of a eunuch. Regional political responsibility that cannot be felt by neighbors in times of need and existential emergency is a joke.

We had demonstrated this in Liberia and Sierra Leone under Babangida to end two unnecessary civil wars and later on in The Gambia under Buhari to oust the Jammeh kleptocracy. In the Babangida days,  we altered our street language by introducing the term ECOMOG! It stuck and came to mean influence backed by credible force and diplomatic gravitas backed by projectable power. We were exporting the value of order, not democracy since we had none then. We were then taken seriously and respected around the world.

In the Benin aftermath, ECOWAS has seen the danger in a rowdy neighbourhood with too many ambitious boys in uniform. It has declared an emergency. The object is to emplace a standing regional stabilization force to curb the increasing appetite for illegal occupation of the presidential palaces by ambitious boys in battle fatigue.

But there is indication that the five military juntas in the sub region are rattled. They are behaving like a  pack of frightened hens on sensing a hovering kite. A Nigerian Air Force cargo plane en route to Portugal made an emergency landing in Burkina Faso and was quickly held hostage, its crew of 11  politely restrained. No one knows when they will be released since they were not on a combat mission.

Consultations among the military leaderships of Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad plus now Guinea Bissau are unanimous in identifying their common adversary: Nigeria. Its stoppage of the Benin coup is to them ‘enemy action’.  Nigeria is perhaps the only ECOWAS state capable of such audacity. It needs to be blocked. That is the rude boys’ consensus.

ECOWAS is troubled and may break badly. Majority of its member states are French speaking and a sizable number are now audacious military dictatorships acting in concert on most issues. The rest are startled that the regional bloc may be badly dented. The idea of a joint military force may be destabilized by poverty and lack of tactical synergy among member states. Some of the states are either too tiny or have armed forces that look more like Boys Scouts. Nigeria, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire may end up bearing the burden of a regional stabilization force. The existing military dictatorships are not about to support a regional force that has them as its target. When autocracy has a vote, democracy can hardly achieve a majority.

In the meantime, Nigeria has been invited to station ground troops in Benin as a stabilizing presence. Tinubu already has the Ayes of his rubber stamp parliament. That is a clear indication of where things are headed.

On the whole, the rumbling in Benin has compelled Nigeria to assume a role it is hardly prepared for- that of defender of democracy in West Africa. Its own democratic credentials are thoroughly perforated. At best, what we have here is a crime scene democracy, a seasonal power grab fueled by big cash mostly corruption and bad business practices.

Ironically the power games Nigeria is about to play in West Africa can only attract global sympathy if cast as being in defense of democracy. Even a flawed democracy surrounded by ambitious authoritarian enclaves deserves international support and will get it either in words, cash or armaments. That logic will likely earn Tinubu’s rattlesnake government some interim respectability.

There is economics as well. Intra West African trade has benefited from the ECOWAS umbrella, leaky and tattered as it may be. Trade in grains, livestock, plastics, and other finished goods has been thriving for years. Of course the treaty on free movement of persons and goods has facilitated the movement of factors of production among the states. It has of course also facilitated the free movement of bad people and their wares- jihadists, terrorists and their weapons. Weapons of war from bad places in North Africa and the Middle East now find their way mostly on horse and donkey backs to ECOWAS states. But generally, the billboards of Nigerian telecommunications and banking giants give hope all over the sub-region.

Now the lines are about to be redrawn in West Africa. Beyond the colonial mostly cultural divide between Anglophone and Francophone states, we now have a widening divide between weak democracies and aggressive military dictatorships. In these divides, many others could mushroom: rich and poor states, strong and weak states etc. If ECOWAS splinters, the divisions will manifest and destroy the region in many ways.

In a world ruled by a new hemispheric scramble, there  is above all a fertile ground for global power play. America is hungry for rare earth minerals and is envious of China. China wants to protect its cheap African captive markets and  new friends made with cheap loans and dodgy infrastructure deals. Putin’s Russia has foothold in the authoritarian states on account of supply of cheap arms in exchange for mining contracts and a foothold in Africa. The shrinkage of French influence is welcome news to these other interlopers.

Emmanuel Macron carelessly let the imminent meltdown in West Africa happen. He sought to escape from the colonial burden of sustaining and defending France’s former colonies economically and militarily. He applied too much book keeping to his politics and has lost the colonial heritage that formed part of the cultural identity of his country. He couldn’t defend the cost in cash and military expense to a domestic audience that has lately been in trouble over immigration, unemployment and worsening insecurity.

Among the Francophone West African countries, pressure from jihadist insurgency from the Sahel to the north, armies in the former French colonies began questioning the financial arrangements under which France dictated their economic life and controlled their budgets from Paris. France withdrew defence and security support to compensate for lost financial control over the former colonies. Then the political meltdown and the viral coups came with a nasty avalanche of autocratic regimes.

France can ill afford to lose grips with Nigeria. Too many French companies are making good money in Nigeria. So, Macron has made some Nigeria friendly noises in the aftermath of the Benin episode. But that cannot absolve Nigeria of ultimate responsibility for security and political stability in West Africa. This region falls squarely within our sphere of influence. Ideally, the entire Gulf of Guinea stretch should come under Nigeria’s maritime and air surveillance in collaboration with Brazil and the United States from a geo strategic viewpoint. But Nigeria has been short in commitment and presence.

Nigeria’s geo strategic obligations and imperatives are beset with existential question marks.  How does a nation wracked by insecurity, disorderly economics , atrocious governance and filthy politics bear the burden of added international responsibility?

Moreover, it is almost the eve of the 2027 election campaigns. Mr. Tinubu and his totalitarian party are desirous to continue with their wagon of misrule. Can Tinubu avoid politicizing the new challenges in the West African region? It is a costly gamble. If he plays domestic Nigerian politics with it, it will earn him little or no votes. If he doesn’t, he will have a scanty basket of achievements.

Whatever Tinubu’s Nigeria does in West Africa will have tangential resonance in domestic Nigeria. The reason is obvious. Nigeria has never been a foreign policy nation except briefly under Murtala Muhammed and Babangida. Those leaders were not angling for votes to retain power. And Tinubu has failed to activate a foreign policy machinery. I am not aware that his administration has articulated a tangible foreign policy beyond numerous uncoordinated foreign trips by the President himself. He has maintained a festive foreign presence with over bloated delegations to even the most inconsequential international gatherings. Beyond this, there is hardly a foreign policy position.

As Tinubu struggles to deal with the new external challenges, we are once again faced with the difficulty of defining our national direction in the world. Our response to unfolding events in West Africa will highlight the unanswered questions about Nigeria’s relationship with the world. What is our mission in the international arena? What is our global agenda? What is our ambition in Africa, and the wider world? Questions…

Our present dilemma is captured by the words of the late musician, Sonny Okosun: “Which way Nigeria?”