General A. Tchiani, Face Your Woes By M K Ilyasu

General A. Tchiani, Face Your Woes
By
M K Ilyasu

What is of interest is the insistent whining of Nigerien Headman Tchiani who being accessory to recruiting, training and paying lawless bands of militias that pillaged our homes and laid waste our communities. That the paid militias have continued to torment and torture our population including kidnapping for ransom payments and also killings dozens in vendetta. They razed border villages and towns sowing more than a decade of hatred towards our citizens and the Nigerian government.

My concerns on the existing threat posed by Nigerien junta and her co-travelers is the destruction targeted to all of us as we sheepishly watch its reality. I would say, it is already what we are daily witnessing in places like Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Kaduna, etc.

Timing is crucial in politics, and never more so than when the institutional challenges are at stake. It’s completely unsatisfactory for anyone to toe the Nigerien line of argument that suggest for Nigeria to ostracize France or any of her allies because the military junta says so. Must it be told before it is too late to drop the revolutionary garb and face the real developmental issues. Why was the junta so insistent that Nigeria should down grade its relation or even boycott France?🇫🇷

Virtually the entire framing of our constitutional prescription to relationships with all nations including France evades the structural mendacity that was present in the present Nigerien Foreign policy thrust and internal political dynamics. Why should Nigeria be blamed? We are who we are and woe onto those who think we should be like Nigerien.

What importance be given to General Abdourahamane Tchiani?

Tchiani should know that when diplomatic relation is broken and normalised, it has its casualties who are routinely viewed as victims without victimisers. Perhaps no more aggrieved than people suffering its consequences. That’s the situation Tchiani is putting Niger right now.

What Nigerien junta policymakers call mistakes and errors in her relations with France are not bound of creating for us any disharmony and cruelty. Attributing the French colonial wars and undue influence on the Sahel to faulty judgment, profitable aggression and premeditation presupposes the use of better judgement.

It can safely be assumed other than challenging the prerogative of France to favor Nigeria, such decision rests entirely on reciprocity. France was instrumental to siting PAN in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria as the central point of meeting demands from Cameroon, Tchad, Niger, Benin and other francophone sub Saharan African states. I dare say, France has more viable investments in Nigeria than in any of the francophone country in the sub-region.

Nigerien Military propaganda can only reinforce our resolve to stand firm to the tenets of democracy. The belief that the forces that have dragged Nigeria into an array of military coups still retain enormous sway over foreign and military affairs is no longer tenable. For those forces have over time, shifted their allegiance which remain essential to democratic governance, peace and stability.

The fact is that, strategies and forms of intervention are evolving most conspicuously in the direction of further reliance on increased bilateral engagement with France than shifting alliances. PBAT foreign policy must remain Nigeria first, primordially in favour of the Nigerians.

The only questions are these: How do we weather this storm? How much of what we cherish will remain?

That we live in one interdependent world is no longer debatable. Illusions about France’s exceptionalism have been conclusively refuted by the global movement on democracy along with the ever-present and worsening dangers of military coups. This presents a challenge to take a fresh look at ongoing regional militancy and insist that the actual consequences should be exposed in human terms. Make no mistake that there will be many losses.

It should be our promise to our children, even in the darkest times, to never betray our conscience. We must remain steadfast in our resolve for good governance, to inspire our communities by igniting their fashion to a common good.

We have no other way to survive the coming attacks from Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso or Guinea, rather, we should be ready to take any African government that threatens everything we have tried to build for a better world we all envision.

The idea of the military take over in other sub-Saharan African countries is not only a matter of moral repugnance. It is an abomination.

Our country is also in jeopardy. In a planet so circular in so many ways, we fear the adage of what goes around comes around. We have had enough of military coups in this country, the issues presently is being largely dodged by dominant media and political leaders.
Enough for the wise.

29th December 2024.