It is not usual for citizens of a country to wish that it's armed forces are not as powerful or as effective as the nation can reasonably afford. I have chosen to speak on behalf of the oppressed people's of the old Eastern Nigeria, who are suddenly faced with such a dilemma.
On the eve of the first Gulf War after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, there was understandable trepidation in the Western World and among Iraq's immediate Arab neighbours about the scope of Sadam Hussein's possible response to pressure from the outside world. Iraq had a couple of SCUD missiles and perhaps a number of French made Exocets. Would Sadam Hussain create an environmental catastrophy in the Gulf? He could sink a couple of crude supertankers in that most important waterway. Or perhaps obliterate Jeddah and/or Mecca? When the "false" information hit the headlines about Sadam Hussein's WMDs, the Western World, led by the US, promptly decided to err on the side of caution. Allison Gray, the long time CEO of Intel is often quoted as saying that "Only the Paranoid Survive." The rest get eaten. We therefore urge the government of the United States of America to toe the path of extreme caution in the understandable urge to help Nigeria. Ndigbo are paranoid and rightly so.
Having followed the resurgent peaceful agitation from the territories formerly known as Eastern Nigeria, referred to once again as BIAFRA by the now well-known group Indigenous People Of Biafra, IPOB, we are constrained to step in and oppose this arms sale. The current president of Nigeria has openly declared himself a sworn enemy of the Igbo people of the South-East of Nigeria, simply for being Ndigbo and lately for voting massively for his opponent in the last 2015 presidential election. These together with the peoples of the Niger Delta are the so called outsiders who gave him only 5% of his vote. Against all standards of behaviour and diplomacy, our president declared his fellow citizens personae non grata and enemies to the hearing of the foreign press. He has not been able or willing to walk back that faux pas.
It is on record that President Buhari has pursued a scorched earth policy toward all nonviolent dissent expressed by Ndigbo citizens of the South-Eastern part of Nigeria and their immediate neighbours in the Niger Delta. The recent unprovoked massacre of unarmed IPOB members in several locations in Igboland, now a subject of an extensive Amnesty International investigation and Report, coming on the heels of a similar outrage in Zaria, North-Central Nigeria are all clear indicators that President Buhari, as Commander in-Chief, should not be trusted with sophisticated weaponry. He has a very dangerous mindset that does not recognize that the 30 month long Civil War between Biafra and Nigeria ended fifty years ago. President Buhari is emotionally still in the trenches. He needs to be liberated from it and the oppressed citizens of Igboland too.
Most Nigerians of every persuasion appreciate the strains on the fabric of Nigerian society traceable to the unrelenting Boko-Haram "muslim" insurgency in Nigeria's North-East. The jury is still out regarding the professional dedication and performance of the Nigerian Armed Forces in that theatre of operations. While individual officers may be the best in the world, our people do not put much trust in the command structure under the present Nigerian administration of President Buhari. All observers are still at a loss regarding the serial bombing of refugee camps housing displaced Nigerian citizens in the North-East. Whether they were deliberate acts or as a result of incompetence, just like in Syria, the dead are dead. The official explanations never added up. We are worried that when a Nigerian administration, so patently hostile to Ndigbo, and indifferent to the very refugees of the same ethnic stock as its predident, turns it's guns fully on Ndigbo, as its patrons have routinely threatened, it would be one huge genocide, the peamble of which we are now witnessing.
Therefore we have no choice but to oppose this sale of Embraer A29 Super Tucano attack aircraft to the Nigerian military. We do not trust the ultimate finger on the trigger, the Commander-in-Chief President Muhammadu Buhari. It is as simple as that.
Yes, it is a matter of trust.
Yes, it is a matter of trust.
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