WAKE UP: War in Ukraine, issue between Russia and USA, needs no Nigerian taking side
By BASHIR ADEFAKA
“If Nigeria’s refineries did not collapse due to design of the West, how would Nigeria import refined petroleum products from Europe, for example Belgium, and how would Nigeria now fall into the hands of evil-marketers who take fuel subsidy and still subject fellow citizens to hardship accessing the products? Those refineries were built by the sitting President, Muhammadu Buhari as Federal Commissioner for Petroleum Resources in military uniform, the man Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) went to report to America was killing Christians in Nigeria.”
The nation of Ukraine woke up to the reality of war on Wednesday 23 February, 2022, as former Soviet Union power, Russia, commenced its much publicized military operations, hitting the neighbouring country from all sides, striking through the land, sea and air. The West, mainly United States of America, have gotten their media to report to the rest of us in the world that Ukraine, which has been fully supported with all kinds of war equipment, is winning the war having purportedly killed, at first report, 4,300 Russian soldiers while Ukraine lost no single soldier, destroying 126 tanks and 126 military helicopters of Russian troops. Another report came to say 9,000 Russian soldiers had again been killed. Only that is affected on the side of Ukraine are children, women and vulnerable, according to the western media, a strategy, those with open eyes say, out to incite the world against Moscow.
With these reports, at least, the world needed not to worry about anything because the America’s side of the front is winning the war. Alas! the cries have continued to grow against Russia despite Ukraine is winning. It then makes a probing mind to wonder how a war champion with access to using much international heat like unprecedented sanctions against Russia could still be crying. They went to UN General Assembly, they got 141 of about 193 votes in favour of call on Russia to stop the war. Expectedly North Korea among five others voted against stoppage of the war, while China and over 30 others absented from voting. Russia, India, Brazil, United Arab Emirate (UAE), Syria, Iran and North Korea have pretended not about their support for Russia. They have consistently refused to condemn the war but ask both sides to give peace a chance.
It is therefore clear that propaganda deployed by America in this Ukraine war have not only exposed the truth the war is issue between Russia and United States but also, that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy allowed himself to be pushed into it thereby endangering the lives of his people. The propaganda by the West now, clearly, does not work, as Russian troops have not only taken control of Ukraine’s key port city of Kerson but also they have gone ahead run down Kharkiv and have taken control of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility in the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar, which is the Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. The Russia’s troops have also gone a step further to now bring Kyiv, in the path of a Russian armoured column that has been stalled outside the Ukrainian capital for days, under renewed assault, with explosions audible from the city centre. That is in addition to the Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant that had been seized. The South Eastern port city of Mariupol – a key prize for the Russian forces – has been encircled and shelled as at Friday night. There is no water, heat or electricity and the place is running out of food after five days under attack, according to Mayor Vadym Boychenko. “We are simply being destroyed,” he said. This is the state of things in Ukraine currently as this time of Saturday that this article is being submitted for publication.
I will allude to a question by 60-year-old Professor Patrick Loch Otieno Lumunbar, Kenyan by national and former Director of Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (September 2010 to August 2011) and Director of The Kenya School of Law since 2014. He was brought to address Nigeria’s newly elected lawmakers sometimes in the past and he asked them as guest speaker of the retreat: “The question ‘iiis’, are you ‘Hhhonourable’ Members or Horrible Members?” I do not need to mention the group of people to whom the professor threw the question he asked repeatedly – note my dragged words: “is” and “Honourable”.
To fit that profoundly asked question into the matter at hand, the question is, with the current reality in Ukraine, is United States of America still the World Number One Power or just American Power and power to countries where he cast create some scares and they shiver? From that scenario, American Power, yes, but World Power, no. Currently reality has shown clearly that America is no longer the number one world power that it has been much touted to be, any more. On this I will take us back to the Coronavirus 2019 era, and the decision of the world, to explain. Russia and some other nations of the world including China, North Korea, Iran, and so on, not unmindful of the Saudi Arabia’s alliance with the US, made it clearly a bold statement that “the world has moved from America”.
My curiosity led me to asking, “to where” and it was not far-fetched to be told, “China”. The talk was mainly that there had long been the need for change in the world order and China was seriously considered the next on the cadre. The truth is, the world, in all honesty, has since moved from America to China but America and its loyalist countries and beneficiary individuals are refusing to agree or let this reality stick with them; to whose peril?
That explains the reason the so-called theory of China as creator of Coronavirus, as experienced from late 2019 into the whole of 2020, suddenly emerged. But because the world order is natural and insistent on its new decision – it mattered not how much negative propaganda by the United States and those who believed and still believe it – reality proved the new power destination when all, including America and Europe, found themselves at the mercy of China as far as solution and support for fighting the dangerous pandemic was concerned.
The then US President Donald Trump did not help the situation when he began to invest in destroying China instead of facing the problem at hand that is the global crisis of virus for which America, under his government, was more pointedly responsible. To America under Trump, the virus was made by Beijing. But many American scientists, among them close COVID-19 advisers to the cabinet in Washington, not only countered the President over his “wrongful accusation of China” but also they stood behind President Xi Jinping on the matter. This and many more will take us to how America got to the point that it now has self-made enemies all over the world, for itself. Russia is one of them. North Korea is clearly ready at all times once it starts, it starts. If America is this greatly for the good of humanity and the democracy it champions truly about the good of human race, how come this huge and heavy enmity? It calls for question.
No thanks, however, to the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) here in far away Africa’s most populous nation and the likes of some religious leaders like Chris Oyakhilomeh, David Oyedepo, who took up the Trump’s anti-China campaign too far to the ground of their own country, when they told the world that the Coronavirus, which had seen the entire global communities including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia locked down helplessly, was caused by China’s 5G technology. That coming from a supposed House of God? Not really. It came from the Houses that believed in Donald Trump’s America as their lord and saviour and not of the true God of all creatures. But they did it so well that CAN particularly wrote letters to Trump to say the lockdown was persecution of the church and killing of Christians by Muslims in control of power in Nigeria. And trump believed them, asking President Muhammadu Buhari, “Why are you killing Christians in Nigeria?” That shows how CAN and some Christians in Nigeria became part of America’s downfall. Because even the Bible believes that any structure mounted on falsehood is bound to collapse.
Trump publicly uttered in his many unguarded utterances the truth of what happened. He believed that if there is any nation to take over as next World Power after America, it is China. He even said he knew that the idea of Coronavirus was China to make him, as Republican President, lose the October 20, 2020 elections in the US so that it could install “the next American President of Democrat”. Trump did not hide these as he was always blunt. Many videos, verified, emerged where he proudly boasted that it would not and would never happen that, that would come to reality. So, throughout the four years of Trump in White House, it was all crisis based on hate for China and any country that has alliance with it, for example Nigeria. Sadly, those who joined America in that voyage were largely people from no other place but Nigeria, except Government and other citizens of the Africa’s most populous country, who are patriots.
The Patriots had x-rayed things to note that for the long period of time America had been partner of Nigeria, achievements had been no more than IMF Loans deliberately granted to leaders, who corruptly mismanaged, embezzled the money, stacked it away back into loan givers’ economies and they (the loan givers) still provided security for the loots. It became a situation that Nigeria – as a country was the one taking the loan and expected to be the one to pay back, while individuals who diverted the funds into their private pockets had the loots provided security for by those foreign bodies, who opened Nigeria’s eyes to IMF loan and impressed on it to take it for development, knowing full well that they were not sincere with the country so advising. It is so bad then that even when a non-corrupt government of President Buhari came, it took it a lot of energy and countless diplomatic engagements, to get some of the looted money repatriated back to Nigeria.
The Patriots also knew, further, that all achievements of Nigeria, under Nigerian-American partnership in terms of industrial economy, all collapsed. Nigeria’s refineries, which were built from its God-given resources to make its natural resources of petroleum products easily available and affordably accessible to its people, collapsed. If Nigeria’s refineries did not collapse due to design of the West, how would Nigeria import refined petroleum products from Europe, for example Belgium, and how would Nigeria now fall into the hands of evil-marketers who take fuel subsidy and still subject fellow citizens to hardship accessing the products? Those refineries were built by the sitting President, Muhammadu Buhari as Federal Commissioner for Petroleum Resources in military uniform, the man Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) went to report to America was killing Christians in Nigeria. We would be talking of developing our country, some so called religious people in our country would be dragging us backward by selling us all the times to the imperialists who do not want us for good at anytime claiming to be doing religious activism.
Ajaokuta that should be processing plant for making Nigeria’s mines and steel deposits more useful was never allowed to work, despite its many promising potentials. That Ajaokuta was built by late former President Usman Aliyu Shehu Shagari. Unfortunately, some Nigeria, while they were dragging the country backward because of their hate for Hausa-Fulani Northerners as their number enemies, records show that the majority of development that Nigeria has had since independence in 1960 was by leaders from that part of the country. Buhari built Nigeria’s only four petroleum refineries in the history of the country. Shagari built Ajaokuta. Gowon discovered oil and nationalized it for national GDP. But for Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who brought the first television station in Africa to Western Nigeria, there would be no other pointer outside the North because groundnut pyramids, railways built for the movement of cottons and for Cotton-Textile-Garment value chain were all happening by the North. Under Nigerian-American partnership, all of those value systems collapsed and the country turned to now always be at the mercy of Washington and its dollar even those things Nigerian importers import are not necessarily produced by America.
They forced Nigeria to seeing being in debt as one of the factors that aid development and so the country, whose currency, which I once witnessed as a growing lad in the late 1970s and early 80s to be higher than the dollar in value, was made to fall, distantly, against dollar. America’s influence imposed IMF loan on Nigeria and today, despite former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s settlement of old debts through an arrangement for debt forgiveness, the country continues to service IMF debts whereas, America that pushed Nigeria to it and which has continued to dominate the conscience and mentality of some Nigerians (definitely not of Northerners) also takes IMF loans but never pays and thinks not to ever have to pay. It is the biggest debtor in the world record but it shows not fear but can always push Nigeria to fear and some Nigerians will for their self stomachs go there and take its dollars in form of foreign aids to wage war against the country, without which they have no other.
That is how far destructive and enslaving America has become by its role and foreign policy that set it against the rest of the world including the African continent. Sadly it never asked, “Why do they so much hate me?” It continues to collapse governments of sovereign countries and install its own stooges therein. It was the same America, which wages war against military government that supported military takeover of democratically elected government of Egypt and saw how the General that became the Military Head of State later became the civillian President up till the present. That is over eight years now. But any Nigerian President that has barely spent four years in office, the thinking of Washington is to decide whether to replace him or not. Same in Sudan. It went and divided Sudan in main Sudan and Southern Sudan. It has never for once taken responsibility for how Southern Sudan has never known peace since it divided them against their main co-habitat North.
During the time of General Sani Alhaji Abacha, America was clearly asked to stay on its own hand and that remained for as long as the General was in power alive. Foreign exchange was pegged at dual rates of N20 to N22 to $1, stabilized and it remained so, for the over five years he spent in power. Abacha made Nigeria’s telecommunications system work, deregulated the sector by freeing the masses from the grip of NITEL and exposed the thieves in the banks through his banking sector reforms and the rest of that. But all of that stopped when the country returned to democracy and Obasanjo took the Nigeria back to America. From 1999, therefore, until 2015 when President Muhammadu Buhari came to power as Civillian President, what was left of Nigeria’s growth and development namely the textile industry, Dunlop, Michelin, Nigerian Airways, NEPA, even refineries had been sold out to people whose intention was not for the general good but to buy collapse the industries to enable them grow their own businesses that would now subject Nigeria to dependence on America and its allies in Europe and now UK. Thus, Nigeria’s electricity system became moribund while generator business booms. No thanks to America, at all.
When Buhari came, he pollarised and proliferated the foreign partnership and policy of Nigeria and so took the country to China. President Muhammadu Buhari saw that most of the goods imported to Nigeria in the name of dollar were actually produced and imported from China. He then went and struck a development partnership plan with with Beijing and that plan included that Nigeria would no longer have to get to America before approaching China’s market and, instead, for instance to buy a handset phone at the exchange rate of N165 that time and N403 or N575 now to $1, Nigeria’s importer would only need a N54 to ¥1 to do so and, by that arrangement, an Android phone sold for N37,000 was projected to crash to N10,000 locally. By the support of some Nigerians in business and politics, they have been frustrating this great move by the Muhammadu Buhari’s Administration and so the Naira-Yuan forex policy is yet to materialise.
Buhari also made China Nigeria’s partner in terms of infrastructure development, which collapsed when the nation had it with with Europe, e.g. Germany with Julius berger as its major construction company. Today, under China, morribund railways system and road infrastructure are now back alive which could not be under America partnership. But one thing was great under Nigerian-American partnership, “human rights activism” that sought to destroy value system among the populace thrived and grew because, what is called foreign aids was granted and to those activists in dollars and they utilised it well by getting deeply rooted and established to always oppose development system under the disguise of criticising established authorities. For that reason, United States under Triump had attempted to rubbish Nigeria under President Buhari. It became, however, all effort in futility because Nigeria, more than America, is God’s own country that would never be allowed to fall to the plot of weather local or international conspiracies.
Also there was and still the biting issue of WMD, Weapons of Mass Destruction case America championed against Iraq during which over 1.5 million children were killed in the use of chemical weapons by America and subsequently killing of Saddam Hussein. UK Prime Minister has continued to regret following America’s George W. Bush to that war in Iraq, which turned out to be based on false allegation of President Hussein. Since that time, Iraq has not been itself, properly speaking. Islam is the only religion that has system for government, economy, politics, social and others. America has always seen that Islamic system as a big challenge to its democracy just like it sees the communist and socialist systems, respectively, of China and Mammar Gaddafi’s Libya and has always made effort to cause trouble for those countries of the Muslim World and Asia.
America even went ahead to fund and build his own scholars among the Muslim scholars, which he never achieved in Asia – you will never see a Chinese go against the decision of China, who speak to destroy the Islamic system as regards government and economy. I was washing a video and one Imam-like dressed person was talking about how some people using Islam as a government system against guiding system. He said, “Islam, like Christianity, like Judaism, all religions, come with one mission and that is to guide human beings not to rule over the human beings. Political Islam comes from the problem that some scholars in Islam – and they are in the majority – that Islam can be used as a tool to govern human beings. This is the problem. Islam is not a constitution that one can use in a government and this is why all the Islamic governments are failing.” This was a submission by one Imam Muhammad Tawhidi in his reflection of “Islam and Muslims” and, because he is one of the America’s specially made Islamic scholars, his interviewer in that video could attribute him to any certain Islamic establishment. That is how far America has gone in causing conflicts and disunity in the land of the world and it is how it set itself against the rest of the world, particularly the Asia, Africa and Middle East, even some European countries. It is the reason some European countries saw China as savior during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. This has justified why the world has decided to move from America to China.
But Washington DC still pretends not to know about this new world order yet, the reality continues to steer it in the face daily. During the COVID-19 experience, China, which was recording the early casualties and number of victims with thousand deaths, not only quickly got to know where its problem was coming from and tackled it headlong but also went out of its way to help even America, some European nations including Italy and Germany and then United Kingdom overcome their pandemic challenges. Alas! When such Chinese support cane to Nigeria, some American stooges in the country, who believe that America is God’s own country and headquarters of their religion, started releasing junks in terms of fake theories to the Nigerian press to pollute the minds of citizens against accepting the help from Beinjing. But that there was and is still a government in the country, which refused to let the mischief have its way, Nigeria would become a mess, totally, of itself.
To me, the development in Ukraine, which started eight years ago, is part of the show of the new world order as it is now clearly seen as issue squarely between Russia and United States and them alone. That is why, despite warning by Washington that Moscow should not cross a particular red line and Putin has cross it, there is nothing Biden has been able to do than to watch with awe and screaming of condemnation. European countries’ sanctions? To what extent can that go with Russia where Moscow is not alone in this?
And my message to them who think Joe Biden is weak for not responding violently to Russia over this Ukraine invasion, which China refused to agree is an ‘invasion’ and Moscow, Russian capital described as needful military operations against Kyiv, Ukrainian capital, whose government supervised the genocide in East Ukraine, is to let them stick to the fact that United States could not have been able to do anything than it is doing. Not even NATO all together will be able to do anything because they know Russia too well for them to mess up with it. They also should not forget that it was even difficult for America to do it against Iran because they know Iran is never alone. What they have, it has. Same thing North Korea. So, the world has really moved and we have just gotten to accepting the modern day reality and nothing else.
Another thing is that, Putin did not mince his word and he was not joking when he warned that any international interference, in this matter of Ukraine or anyone who tries to stop him, will have to face the consequences. I believe him and that in the end, Russia is the champion in this and I do not see that Moscow is pursuing the ambition of re-asserting itself as world’s number one power. It only just does not want the power to remain with America, that is all.
