On the demise of western hegemony: Can Emmanuel Macron be right?
…..Coalition between Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar and Rabi’u Kwankwaso: Has Tinubu been defeated? who will be junior partner?
…Can Nigeria still survive? the errors and hardships of bad governance are too deep
By
Dr. Orefo Nnamdi Onochie
Coming from the youthful and visceral current President of France, Emmanuel Macron, the very long expression of doubt and the clear statement that the hegemony of the West is threatened, broken, and dieing, is a deep and hard expression of political opinion that cannot go without indepth analysis and assessment. What is the concept of hegemony? How has the term been applied to international relations, global power politics and strategic studies and policies?
France has been at the epicenter of Europe, and French history and experience has very largely shaped interactions, experiences of Europe, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO. Were it not for the German invasion of France, on May 10, 1940, and the capitulation of that Republic during World War II, Britain was still well protected and conserved. Once France fell to Nazi Germany, the United States was compelled to totally rethink its place and participation in the war, and it turned into the highest degree of escalation.
Millions more were massacred, and in the end, when the embers of war died, NATO was born, and the actual concept of Western hegemony now took hold, and since 1945-1948, that hegemony has held the world, very skillfully directed and manipulated to the highest benefit and advantage of the white Caucasian race.
Thus the open global expression of fears by the current President of France, regarding the survival and preservation of that hegemony is of very high importance. Is it a clarion call and expression of fears of demise and disintegration of the order of the world that is the harbinger of a new situation that is to come, or is it a very early expression of fears that will assist those in danger to reassess themselves, and where they are situated in the current situation of their existence?
Is the West right now confronted by threats that are at the root of its survival, and existential threats? Is it that same kind of fear that overtook France before Nazi Germany invaded and captured France, and attacked Britain, thus changing the course of the war, and human history?
Turmoil, turmoil and turmoil around the world
These were repeated terms used by Emmanuel Macron, in addressing the issue of the demise of the hegemony of the West, to an august gathering of Western leaders, diplomats and opinion influencers. It was not a random group, rather it was a highly select congregation of personages whose contributions to Western predominance immediately captured the extent to which the addressor desired to emplace his comments, thoughts and the reactions and consequences he desired and ultimately elicited. When the French speak, Europe and the rest of the world listens!
What are the turmoil that Emmanuel Macron referred severally to in his concerns about the hegemony of the West? Certainly not about global finance alone, the civilization of the West is encapsulated, especially the aggregated physical value of the West, in the gamut of the infrastructures of all of Europe, the burgeoning growth of the civilization of the countries of Central, North and Western Europe, in addition to the countries of North America, the United States, and Canada, still to include Australia and NewZealand.
The gross of the GDP of the countries listed above, the huge and limitless financial resources of the countries, juxtaposed against the immediate competitors of the real and perceived countries that have the capacity or propensity, to challenge the power of the West, to control, direct or manipulate the rest of the world, in its total interest or benefit is highly limited and incomparable. It is in this context that we must interpret Macron’s statements using the terms TURMOIL.
Threat of Islam in Europe, the war of Russia in Ukraine, and the arm twisting of China in the Indochina Basin and South China seas
Certainly there has been turmoil emanating from Islam and the Middle East, that posed humongous threats to Western interests, that the combination of Sadam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, the Arab Israeli Conflict, and the exportation of radical Islamic violence into Central and Northern Europe, and the United States, by Alqueda, and ISIS, seemed unconquerable. When it appeared China could direct the geo political policies of North Korea, the effrontery and boldness of the leader of the country, stunned the West, in the persistence of the seeming acceptance of the nuclear threats posed by tests of long and medium range nuclear arsenals by North Korea, across South Korean and Japanese waters.
Even China’s aggressive installation of facilities and islands in the South China Sea, and the pervasive pursuit of economic policies to woe African governments, became part of the turmoil. When the brave and courageous female Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, declared that any new immigrants to the down under who planned of being a loud Islamic preacher was not welcome, it was addressing the same concerns and turmoil that Emmanuel Macron has now resurrected.
When Russia went into Crimea in 2014, it was a sign of the new future that was to come, and 7-years and a little more later, Russia began a full scale invasion of Ukraine, in spite of the condemnation of the West, the actual testimony to the turmoil that Emmanuel Macron has now expressed became very clear. The BRIC Summit in South Africa, just concluded, openly planning to replace Western economic preponderance with the economic combination of resources from Brazil, Russia, India China and South Africa, (with 6-new members now added, raising their number to 11), has been sufficient to instill a premonition in France,that this competition and confrontation is very real, and in time it could result in far greater challenges. Indeed, where are the rest of the world, against the West or in her support? The wealth of the world, how wide and far is it being distributed to usher and promote greater plain support and alliance with the West, or in direct challenge of the West, and support of those who wish to supplant her?
Wars in Islamic Sudan, military coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, ALQUEDA and ISIS in the sahel, Boko Haram, insurgencies and Nigeria’s inclusive 2023 presidential elections
How hard are the politics of power in the middle of the Eastern Horn of the African continent, of grave concern to the West? Can the ECOWAS become the actual force of the West in Niger Republic, or compel Russia and the Wagner Mercenaries to introduce more TURMOIL to the Sahel, and further even divide the Yorubas and Hausa-Fulani in Nigeria? What is the world to make of the eventual tragic demise or elimination of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Wagner Mercenaries, and his next in Command, and in this sudden context, who will replace Wagner as the doer of Russia’s dirty works in Africa and around the world?
Evacuation of highly needed minerals from Africa to Europe (uranium from Niger Republic, highly needed by France), and North America, have these been easy for the West? The tide of forced migrations from the Middle East, Asia, Africa and South America, are these compelling and sufficiently of very grave concern to the West?
The totality of these issues related to the West, and pertaining to the rest of the poor, impoverished and developing world, are part of the turmoil that matters to Emmanuel Macron. Unless, there are clear policies to mitigate the issues and questions raised above, these turmoil sooner than later will become the cause of the demise of western hegemony.
Lost planet earth
There is a new effort to race and implant human beings in the outer planets and galaxies, millions of miles away from shrinking and lost planet Earth. In spite of very high cost, the West may indeed be aiming to shut out the rest of Mankind and the elite of the West will escape in that direction, but even that is a more grave prospect. The West must begin to reassess its social and humanitarian policies, towards the rest of the world, and spend much more less on militarism, against the rising competition and power of China, and Russia, in order to avoid the fate of the demised Soviet Union, who became extinct competing in the arms race with the West, rather than improve on the quality of life and higher standard of living of its vast territories and population.
Conclusion
In terms of wealth and development, the hegemony of the West can hold, but there are several indices on the basis of which civilizations rise and fall. Racism, nationalisms and parochialism, still very fashionable with the West, cannot save the hegemony of the West. All that wealth in question were made on the back of oppressed peoples of Africa and Asia, including North and South America. The West must spread all that wealth fast back to them, or incur and risk more aggressive competitors and victims.
2. Coalition between Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar, Rabi’u Kwankwaso: Has Tinubu been defeated? who will be junior partner?
The complexion of the 2023 Presidential Election in Nigeria changed most drastically when Atiku Abubakar forced himself into running to be President again in 2022. Based on Article 7.2.c of the PDP, political power must be zoned, and rotated, between the South and North, predicated on fairness, justice and equity. The North produced Presidential Candidates in 2019 for the Party, and Southerners were picked for Vice Presidential positions. Thus, the rational action was for the North to become supportive of a Presidential person from the South, and for the Northerners to vie for the VP position in 2023. Atiku Abubakar relying on money bribes, overturned the situation and broke the PDP: at least , my humble self withdrew my 23-years of membership, even before Peter Obi and others left.
The other part of zoning, rotation, equity, justice and fairness, inherent in the PDP 1999 Constitution proviso , was that in the South, the Igbo speaking areas, would compete and only one Candidate would win and become the nominee. This fairness essentially eliminated persons of Yoruba extraction, who had been represented in complete 8-years tenure, by Olusegun Obasanjo, and even in the APC, by Yemi Osinbajo as VP, in another 8-year tenure, who would wisely and fraternally recluse themselves from the 2023 Presidential race. To complicate matters most drastically, the Yoruba determined that it would serve them better, to douce all the above rationalizations into silence, and pretend that fairness was for all the Southern ethnic group’s. In the PDP this deceit by the Yorubas was not as endemic as it was in the APC.
Indeed, since there was no constitutional provisos on zoning and rotation, the manifest dishonesty of the entire new APC political contraption, headed by the Fulanis, opted for further and fuller Fulanisation and Islamisation, by opting for another 2023 Northern Presidential Candidate preference, Ahmed Ibrahim Lawan, but they were thwarted and out-spent by Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who ultimately overwhelmed the entire Nigerian entity by bribing and buying up the INEC election Chairman and higher election officials; and despite apparent electoral inconclusive results, declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu winner, and compelled his ahistorical swearing in on May 29, 2023. The national political shock, the legal contests in Courts, and the tragic desperate and disparate new policies of Tinubu, coupled with all the illegalities following from his INEC application processes, and publicly revealed and stated fraud associated with his personal education data, is compelling a thinking that the judicial verdicts may result in a rerun Presidential election: it has sprung insinuations of a coalition between Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar and Rabi’u Kwankwaso.
Matters arising on this coalition
The less than 90-days of Tinubu running and ruining the Nigerian economy and polity has further divided Nigeria, and even the ECOWAS region by the sheer desperado policies, in the economic, social, foreign exchange, petrol pricing policy, nepotism and downright ethnic favoritism of Yorubas, that it has become apparent that Nigeria cannot move forward, be preserved or survive now, even as a Restructured political entity.
Following from the shock waves of Tinubu’s defeat in the Presidential election of February 28, 2023, in Lagos State, Tinubu’s political sheikhdom, Igbos in Lagos, and any who resembled Igbos, were totally forcefully disenfranchised from voting in subsequent last election of March 25, 2023. Can one continue to be a citizen in a country where that person cannot cast a vote? This is the new peril facing Nigeria.
In addition, any insinuations on reruns or coalition to succeed in defeating Tinubu has very hard questions to respond to:
a. Who will be the leading principal Presidential Candidate, Peter Obi, or who?
b. Will Atiku Abubakar now accept the reverse role and position of VP, will Rabui Kwankwaso accept same? Who will be the junior partner in the coalition, Atiku Abubakar, Rabui Kwankwaso, who? Clearly not Peter Obi!
c. Will Igbos, or those who resemble Igbos be permitted to vote, in Lagos State, and other parts of the South West Nigeria, in a 2023 Presidential rerun, where now they are even being denied residential accommodations or rentals? If denied electoral franchise again, what will the political consequences be?
d. What policies can now be applied to cure and heal Nigeria from the economic ruination policies of Tinubu and the renegade Cabinet now foisted on Nigeria, (new Ministerial public statements: get ready, more illegal structures will be demolished in Abuja, for how long has this policy been pursued and will it ever end, who is still approving or condoning the persistent illegal structures?: corn sellers are the cause of insecurity in Abuja, and they will not be permitted, how do roasted corn sellers contribute to Boko Haram, Unknown Gunmen, Bandits kidnappings?: palliatives on removal of subsidies will be shared by GPS, while Emefiele told Nigeria that N500 Billion Naira was released to the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, monthly, and the Madam Minister retorted that she visited and personally supervised the monthly disbursement of N500 Billion Naira, how many persons received the said payments, where are the records and how many times did she visit my Delta State in the total nearly 8-years she was a Minster?); hardships openly lamented in all corners of Nigeria, especially over petrol prices, general higher cost of foodstuffs, and cost of living and price skyrocketing?
e. Can Nigeria be healed from the disaster of the current Constitutional quagmire of the APC, in Nigeria, ever again?
f. Having placed ECOWAS on the brink of a regional war, entangling Yorubas in the South West, and Hausa-Fulanis in the North, how will this marsh be sorted out?
Solutions
Unless it is possible to provide heuristic answers to the questions above, there is still no platform to move Nigeria forward. In all events, I here forward the concise way out of the current debacle:
1. Ensure that justice prevails by stopping the 2023 political Presidential election charade of INEC, Buhari and Tinubu, and concluding the 2023 Presidential election through a rerun election of only two, highest voted candidates, who secured 25% votes in Abuja FCT, or the highest number of total votes cast, when the Presidential Election Tribunal or Supreme Court of Nigeria render their verdicts: a patriotic obligation in which they cannot fail.
2. Reducing the price of petrol in Nigeria to N75.00 per liter, and defending the policy, which I have long shown can be done, and which Tinubu’s knee jerk subsidy removal policy has proven that my prescription is the only remedy: current composition of NNPCL requires total revamping and the removal of the top echelon, same fate for INEC, which I prescribed since February 26, 2023.
3. Pegging the exchange rate of the Naira and US Dollar at N92.00 to $1.00 USD: eliminating all dollar expenses, save for unavailable raw materials; encouraging use of only Made in Nigeria goods or services, to stop the near permanent run on the Naira.Tinubu’s new CBN Governor’s monetary policies are worse than Emefiele’s, and sooner than later, the Naira will exchange for the dollar USD, at N1,000.00 for $1.00 USD.
4. Reduce the cost of all products and services in Nigeria by 32% in the first instance, through a Round Table of the OPS and Government: increasing Minimum Wage, in all or any events, will never stop the rising cost of living and inflation. Indeed, it will exacerbate it.
5. FREE EDUCATION, from kindergarten to the University, and FREE MEDICAL SERVICES, for all Nigerians. Re-prioritize government social welfare policies, including drastically reducing security and military expenses, and other miscellaneous facilities for government officials: N3.8 Billion for hotel bills of Tinubu’s new Ministers, and granting repayable education loans to Nigerian students. This government is not serious!
6. Building 7-new electricity generation plants in Nigeria, increasing generated electricity to 12,000 Megawatts in 24-months, paying upfront for the new generation plants; revamping transmission and distribution processes, by clamping down on corruption in the industry.
7. ZERO CORRUPTION and ZERO FOREIGN LOAN Policies: increase judicial Bench capacity and reduce trial periods to 3-7 months maximum; reduce annual Case loads and files of Judges and Magistrates to individual 300 cases maximum. Tinubu’s government is shaping up to be the most ubiquitous and corrupt.
If the solutions suggested above are not implemented now by Tinubu, or whosoever else leads Nigeria in the short and near term, the populace will suffer greater hardships, the instability in the polity will capsize the polity. Palliatives pronounced now by Government is cosmetic, and will worsen the situation by postponing the evil day when the capsizing will become unstoppable. Those who refuse or delay peaceful change, force inevitable and revolutionary change on themselves.
Save Nigeria now, and implement the SOLUTIONS suggested above!
3. Can Nigeria still survive? The errors and hardships of bad governance are too deep.
For more than 15- years, the agitations to Restructure Nigeria has raged, and essentially the North has objected to such a process. That refusal, has continued to add to the adamant, vehement and persuasively forceful propositions of the protagonists. The legislative arm of the US government had long predicted that Nigeria will be dismembered by 2015, about 101-years after the Amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria. It is important to retain the view that Nigeria was never an existential territorial or ethnically homogeneous entity or fact, but a political contraption set up by the British to enable a colonial empire that fostered Britain’s imperial stature in Europe, against other European States seeking imperial expansion, the French, Germans, the Dutch, Belgians, and Italians.
Whilst the race to expand their imperial power persisted, Europe went to war against itself, in World War I & II, first from July 28, 1914-November 11, 1918, a second time from September 1, 1939-September 2, 1945. At the end of the two wars, it became clear that racism, ethnicism, or domination of one group against another was generating wars. Britain therefore determined that it was best to decolonize, yet maintain vestiges of economic exploitation still linking the apron strings of the former colonies to themselves.
Thus British India was released and granted independence on August 15, 1947, because Pakistan gained independence one day earlier, and much later Ghana was also freed politically on March 6,1957, before Nigeria did on October 1, 1960. The merger of numerous Independent ethnic groups, in India and Africa , became clearly in-cohesive, leading to separation of Pakistan and Bangladesh from India, and even the Sarduana Province from Northern Nigeria to the Cameroun, and the division of Singapore from Malaysia. This dismemberment process was stalled in Nigeria between 1967-1970, when DOMINATION of one ethnic or religious group against another reared its head, which led to the war with Biafra.
Militarism and domination of the North and Muslims against the South in Nigeria
With the subsequent military coups in Nigeria, total of seven in number, and the myriad constitutional re-engineering processes, the imbalances in Nigeria has remained and indeed increased. The imbalance in the current Constitution of 1999, which has also been amended multiple times, are so glaring in favor of the North, against the South, that it has upbraided the entire political structure. Demands to remove the imbalances have given rise to several other malfeasances that the political structure is now under a close collapse. Ethnic and religious DOMINATION, the Hausa-Fulani, against the Igbos, the Yorubas against the Igbos, with the other ethnic minorities and ethnic groups, cruelly squashed in between these majors ethnic groups, the ruinous policy processes and official corruption in Nigeria, has widened and worsened abysmally. Public insecurity, kidnappings, ethnic pogroms orchestrated by Bandits, Unknown Gunmen, Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram, ISWAP, ISIS and irredentist new State agitators, including the newly revealed federal mercenaries of Asari Dokubo, who publicly and in Aso Villa, claimed that Tinubu will extend the contract that Buhari signed with him.
With the 2015 Presidential election of Muhammadu Buhari, a new more sinister dimension of Islamic DOMINATION became another real threat and fear, between Christian groups in the Middle Belt and generally in the South, who witnessed the invasion of their territories by nomadic and suspected imported Sahel Fulani, allegedly brought in to unsettle the government of Goodluck Jonathan, from about 2014-2015. Violent armed attacks and even Sunday morning bomb attacks against several Christian Churches, killing or driving off men in Middle Belt communities, and enslaving and converting vulnerable women and children to Islam, ransacking of farming communities, raping of rural women, increased national kidnapping tied to ethnic militias, sponsored by politicians, against their perceived foes or competitors, all has torn Nigeria asunder.
The government of Buhari sought to force acquisition of Southern community vast expanses of land, and turn these over to nomadic Fulanis, a policy with the appellation RUGA, further divided communities in the South, against the Northern core Fulani groups, accused of seeking the DOMINATION and Fulanizatipn of Christian communities by Muslim or ethnic Fulani groups.
Citizens of a country cannot vote during elections?
The 2023 Presidential election became another avenue towards this extreme political DOMINATION agenda. The addition of ethnicity in not respecting zoning and rotation of the Presidential position, in the PDP and APC, to balance the long held notion that there are those who believe that they only were born to rule Nigeria. The seeming conspiracy and connivance of the Hausa-Fulani, and the Yorubas, especially those of Islamic extraction, to financially overwhelm other ethnic groups, led to the declaration of Tinubu as President. To cap, Igbos in Lagos State were forced not to go out and vote, because the Yorubas saw that the voting lines were on both ethnic and non ethnic basis. Even persons perceived or who resembled Igbos were threatened, violently stopped from voting, and soon their trading wares, and properties were razed, ransacked and destroyed.
The divide in Nigeria in that period was clear and grave. In addition, the Lagos State House of Assembly very quickly put together a Law to deter non Yorubas, especially Igbos, from voting in elections: as well as concoction of government policies to profile certain properties and to demolish and destroy such properties or wares of the Igbos in different parts of Lagos. Even Northern Hausa-Fulani hoodlums, witnesses to all the maltreatments, raised gangs and throngs who matched out to break into the stores and warehouses of Igbo traders, to loot their wares and products, for export to parts of the North, or to re-sell in other markets in Lagos. In a Federal political system, without any individuals confronted by Police, arrested or prosecuted? Citizens cannot vote, their wares and properties vandalized, broken into, and the Police, Military and Governments all looking away.
Why remain a citizen of that polity?
Without statutory constitutional protection of the life and properties of Igbos, or other minority ethnic groups, it is very grave for such actions to be perpetrated by both State and non State actors. It is akin to being a naturalized citizen of a country. Your rights are limited and abridged, you can be Vice President, but not the President. Why remain and be loyal to preserve such a polity, where you have abridged or no Presidential capacity or ambition. You can be a servant, serf or slave, and not a King.
All these are issues and matters that confront Nigeria, as the country approaches the labyrinth of the 2023 Presidential Election Tribunal dateline of September 21, 2023, (180 days maximum adjudication process), when a verdict and ruling must be made by that Tribunal of the suits against Tinubu. Win or get defeated, Nigeria remains in perilous waters. Blackmail of anarchy was inserted in the final address of the Tinubu legal team, as it closed its defense. Without pretensions, youths of Nigeria who demand a change from the corrupt inept elite and governments of Nigeria, began a campaign, “All Eyes on the Judiciary”, and without proper intellectual or debated examination, the Tinubu minions in government tore down the billboards, and lit up another fire to the political horizon: again in any direction, the polity is in deep and dangerous waters.
Leadership ineptitude and bad governance
The ruin of Nigeria from the economic and insecurity hardships indices, has increased the sense of very imminent political collapse. How long can a society be visited with so much social policy ruin and that society will survive? When ineptitude and crass political leadership, enunciate government policies, especially economic ones, that do not solve social problems of the populace, how much longer can such citizens remain patriotic and cohesive? Will they not sooner than later scatter and seek to encourage and demand for other entities that can solve their daily problems of living and surviving?
The UK and high cost of living
For example, in the UK in 2022, merely for rising inflation of 14%, the government of Liz Truss was forced to resign and was replaced by the government of Rushi Sunak. Comparison: in Nigeria, current year-on inflation has risen by more than 800%, the exchange rate of the Naira against the US Dollar went from N490.00 before May 29, 2023, to N980.00 to $1.00 Dollar USD on August 7, 2023: per liter price of petrol went from N220.00 Naira on May 29, 2023, to N650.00 Naira, on July 18, 2023, with IPMAN Sector warnings of imminent N750.00 per liter by end of August 2023. The center in Nigeria is not holding for the peoples, things are uncontrollably falling apart……… what lies in stock for the country?
Arab and Islamic domination in the Sudan
The examples of Sudan is very apt. Domination and Islamisation led to more than 28 years of war and conflict, and finally the North accepted and South Sudan became a Republic, albeit with its own ethnic divisiveness. But even the North Islamic Republic has been in 4-months of ethnic rivalry and violence of Muslims, with no end in sight. Another British contraption!
Better still, Singapore and Malaysia settled early, dismembered early and both are better off, Singapore majestically ahead in social development and infrastructure orderliness, in a welfare governance system. Nearly the same between Nigeria and the Sarduana Province that broke away and moved into Cameroun in the plebiscite of 1961. A negotiated dismemberment agreement and settlement stares 2023 Nigeria in the face, amidst the huge differences of governance standards and expectations.
On August 7, 2023, at the House of Representatives in Abuja, a Member Motion called for the negotiated peaceful dismemberment of Nigeria. There was commotion, and viral video circulation of the situation on the House floor. All the signals and signs read red and bad. We must wait, and watch as the days evolve!
Can Nigeria still be saved?
Signed: Dr. Orefo Nnamdi Onochie
Chairman/Convener
NACOPPIN NIGERIA 2023
