President Barack Obama’s foreign policy in African has turned into an all-out ill wind that is blowing carnage and destruction across the continent. This is particularly acute in Nigeria where a highly-orchestrated decimation of the Christian population by Moslems is in progress as I write. The US President has chosen to remain silent while his hand-picked candidate in the last presidential election in Nigeria, Mr. Muhammad Buhari, a blood-thirsty dictator, is arming and supporting Moslem Hausa-Fulani terrorists, masquerading as cattle-herders, to unleash blood-cuddling carnage on Christian towns and villages in Southern Nigeria!
On New Year’s Day, I published an essay, after a brief visit to Nigeria last November, where I warned of a coming pogrom in Southern Nigeria by forces loyal to Mr. Buhari. In that essay I made it clear that President Obama should accept responsibility for this coming carnage because of his tacit support for this dictator; and more so by the way the US President has ignored sensitive political and policy priorities in the West African nation.
The world has been expecting President Barack Obama to use his position as the leader of the free world to address the systematic genocide going on in Nigeria since the election of Mr. Muhammadu Buhari to the presidency of Nigeria. Thousands of Nigerians have either been killed, maimed, or displaced in repeated waves of massacres since Mr. Buhari came to power less than a year ago. Properties worth millions of dollars have been destroyed in the Christian South by rampaging militia and state-sponsored actors loyal to Mr. Buhari. State-enabled terrorists, posing as Hausa-Fulani cattle herders, are brandishing sophisticated weapons and herding their cattle through farmlands, church grounds, sacred worship places, and other hallowed grounds in Southern Nigeria.
The latest chapter in this outright provocation and attendant carnage is the massacre of hundreds of men, women, and children by Hausa-Fulani terrorists in the pristine, university town of Nsukka and surrounding areas in Southeastern Nigeria. For those who do not know much about Nigeria, Nsukka is home to the premier institution of higher learning in Nigeria, the University of Nigeria. This town has served as the country home of the first black Governor General of Nigeria, Hon. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, and home to the master of African literature, Professor Chinua Achebe, and other celebrated deep thinkers on the continent. It is this pristine town that has now been invaded and sacked by Buhari-inspired terrorists masquerading as cattle herders, armed with semi-automatic weapons, which they blatantly unleashed on the civilized people of this rare African town.
People are in shock and are now beginning to speculate that President Obama’s silence on the wholesale slaughter of Christians and burning of churches and other places of worship in Southern Nigeria suggests a level of dog whistle to Mr. Buhari, whom he supported during the last presidential election in Nigeria.
President Obama’s United Nations envoy, Ms. Samantha Power, on a recent visit to Nigeria has been explaining that the reason the White House did not support former President Jonathan’s re-election bid was because of the White House’s concern about corruption in Jonathan’s government. Feel free to read her accusations against former President Jonathan and the reactions of intelligent Nigerians to her statements. This lack of support from America hampered Jonathan’s effort to locate the missing Chibok girls, and forced Jonathan to go begging for arms from President Putin of Russia, and mercenaries from President Zuma of South Africa. Despite the lack of US support, the Russian and South African-backed offensive yielded impressive results as Boko Haram terrorists were driven off from most of the territories they had gained in Nigeria. Then came the election, which was masterminded by foreign campaign organizers including President Obama’s confidant, Mr. David Axelrod, who was so well-paid for his connections in high places that he pulled all conceivable strings to line up Western media houses and think tanks behind Mr. Buhari. You can read more about how Mr. Axelrod struck gold in Nigeria here.
In what would go down as the most calamitous show of shame by a candidate for the presidency of Nigeria, Mr. Buhari who adamantly refused to produce his first-school leaving certificate; and who cowardly absconded from all calls to debate his political opponents in the run-up to the election, had to be flown to England to read an image-laundering speech at the Chatham House in London.
President Obama will soon learn to his dismay that the man he helped put in power in Nigeria has only one goal: to turn Nigeria into a theocratic caliphate! His recent trip to Saudi Arabia where he was hosted inside the inner chambers of the Kaaba is no coincidence.
President Obama cannot claim ignorance of the fact that Buhari is not interested in wiping out Boko Haram terrorists. This is the most embarrassing aspect of President Obama’s intervention in Nigeria’s political process. The fact that 200 girls were abducted from a boarding school in Nigeria, during his term as the leader of the free world, and were never found, speaks volume about his priorities, or lack thereof, in Africa. This is a grand foreign policy failure on a continental scale! Imagine what President Obama would do if 50 school girls were abducted in the middle of the night from a British boarding house by terrorists!
Last week, in a last ditch effort to save face and record a paltry single foreign policy achievement in Africa in his two-term presidency, President Obama sent Ms. Samantha Power to Nigeria to discuss modalities to exterminate the Boko Haram group. But Mr. Buhari will never undertake such a campaign. The reason is simple: Boko Haram is President Buhari’s insurance policy for his re-election in 2019. It was Mr. Buhari who vowed to make Nigeria ungovernable if he lost the last election. That loud dog whistle woke the Boko Haram group from their slumber, and gave them the impetus to begin the infernal march to make Nigeria ungovernable, and in turn create the basis for the election of their benefactor, Mr. Buhari. There is no way Mr. Buhari will take a serious fight to the Boko Haram terrorists because he has deep and abiding sympathy for them, and they in turn worship him as a god!
President Obama cannot claim ignorance of the fact that Mr. Buhari’s claim as an anti-corruption crusader is the joke of the century. If not, how did Mr. Buhari present the most corrupt national budget in the history of Nigeria to the parliament? The amount he penned down for his feeding allowance would be enough to feed every family in Lagos mainland for an entire year! The amount he requested for his private clinic in Aso Rock was more than the budget of the entire tertiary care centers in Nigeria. How did he raise the millions of dollars he paid to Mr. Axelrod and other consultants that laundered his despotic image before the world? You can read more about Mr. Buhari’s anti-corruption sham operation here.
President Barack Obama cannot claim to be unaware of the unlawful detention and imprisonment of Nigerians in various gulags operated by Buhari’s minions. There is the case of one Dr. Danfulani, a university lecturer in Northern Nigeria, who was imprisoned for exercising the audacity to criticize Mr. Buhari’s policies while living in Northern Nigeria, the center of Mr. Buhari’s political universe! It is unclear what Spanish-style inquisition ordeal he was subjected to behind bars, but he has now been released after recanting his words. President Obama should also be aware of the continued illegal detention and imprisonment of the leader of Independent People of Biafra, Mr. Nnamdi Kanu, long after the courts in Nigeria had given repeated orders for him to be released on bail. If President Obama is truly interested in the rights and self-determination of minority groups, why is he not eager to advise the man he and Mr. David Axelrod helped put in Aso Rock to respect the rule of law in Nigeria? There is no space in this essay to catalog Mr. Buhari’s litany of corrupt tendencies, and the extravagant lifestyle of his family members, but the thrust of this essay is that the leader of the free world should begin to address the urgent issue of a pogrom that is brewing in Nigeria.
As happened in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when another US President claimed not to be aware of events leading up to that grand human catastrophe in Africa, President Obama has the rare opportunity to stop this whole scale pogrom of Christians in Nigeria by calling his minion in Nigeria to order. History will most likely remember President Obama as the first black president of the United States who lacked a coherent foreign policy agenda for the African continent and left it in a worse state than he found it. This slaughter of defenseless Christians in Nigeria should receive immediate attention from the leader of the free world before countervailing currents push Nigeria to a reenactment of the Rwandan genocide 1994.
Benjamin U. Nwosu