By Owei Lakemfa
The world is in turmoil. Various peoples are planning, strategising and re-strategising. The Middle East is meeting, especially as war is being brought to its doorsteps. The Americans want their November elections quickly out of the way so they can focus on their domination the world, irrespective of who wins the elections.
Their European first cousins are quite busy with the same agenda, but also how to handle their domineering first cousin in the North. Some ask: should Europeans not abandon the unwinnable war in Ukraine just as Benjamin Netanyahu has abandoned the Israeli hostages in Gaza and, let President Zelensky fool himself around the world with his stupid “Victory Plan?”
Russia and China are fairly focused even as South America and the Caribbean are uniting to find solutions to their problems.
All are busy strategising, except Africa bogged down with an African Union, AU, which has impaired vision and a poor leadership at its Commission whose chair, Moussa Faki Muhammad, is beholden to a fumbling France. As the rest of the world prepares for a possible international conflagration, African leaders are busy hopping from one foreign capital to the other attending ‘summits’.
When African leaders fly to Washington attending US-Africa Summit, Beijing for China-Africa FOCAC, Tokyo for Japan-Africa TICAD, Moscow for Russia-Africa Summit, Istanbul for Turkey-Africa Summit, Seoul for South-Korea- Africa Summit, Brussels for EU-Africa ‘Partnership’ and is summoned by a confused Zelensky for an Ukraine-Africa Summit, what time would they have to govern? Are there no costs to the African countries for these travels with retinue of officials who must be paid Estacode? The 55 African countries are behaving like cows led by a foreign herder or his under-aged child, armed with nothing more than a stick.
While we wait for the next African leaders’ summit, perhaps called by Kosovo, it is time we start thinking. For a start, why can’t African leaders have a common position at these endless summits rather than allow the host to pull individual African leaders into a side room for so called bilateral talks?
Africa is suffering from such low esteem that after October 4, 2024 when the European Court of Justice, ECJ, ruled that European countries must stop stealing the fisheries and agricultural products of Western Sahara and, the European Union arrogantly vowed to continue, no African country raised a voice! Yet the Europeans are supposed to be our partners who for centuries have been lecturing the world about separation of powers and obeying court judgements. So, why don’t we have the courage to tell them to obey the final judgement of their own court?
A fundamental thing Africa lacks is leadership, and you do not need to be an elected or appointed leader of the AU, to provide that leadership. One of the most trying periods in Africa was in 1975-76 when the US insisted that the pro-people MPLA party in Angola, must be stopped from governing the new country. Rather, it instructed Africa to choose one of its two puppets: Holden Roberto of the FNLA or Jonas Savimbi of UNITA.
When this was resisted, the US cobbled a force composed of the FNLA, UNITA, American mercenaries and Apartheid South Africa’s military to overrun Angola. When this was not working well, it sent its Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, on a trip through Africa directly warning African countries not to recognise the MPLA government. But at the January 11, 1976, OAU, now AU, Summit in Addis Ababa, then Nigeria Head of State, General Murtala Muhammed, stood up to denounce the US. He declared that: “Africa has come of age. It’s no longer under the orbit of any extra continental power. It should no longer take orders from any country, however powerful.”
Nigeria was not holding any position in the continental organisation when it took that principled stand that swayed the continent and, led to the recognition of the MPLA government.
Today, 48 years later, Nigeria needs to once again, step out to lead Africa out of a quagmire. First, let me alert the African people that the joint statement by the EU President von der Leyen and High Representative/Vice-President Josep Borrell that Europeans will not obey the European Court ruling on resources being stolen from Western Sahara, is not so much about a wilful and pointed rejection of a decision of their own court. It is more a plan to ensure a type of unending Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Africa. The Palestinian conflict has its roots in the November 2, 1917 colonial Britain gift of Palestinian lands to European Jews and adherents of Judaism. Britain gave the lands it did not own, to other peoples.
This is what the United States also did in Africa. On December 4, 2022, it issued its infamous ‘Proclamation on Recognizing The Sovereignty Of The Kingdom Of Morocco Over The Western Sahara.’ It read in part: “I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim that, the United States recognizes that the entire Western Sahara territory is part of the Kingdom of Morocco.”
So, the US purports to give the Western Sahara lands it does not own, to Morocco. What the European Union is doing, is simply to implement the US proclamation which will ensure an unending conflict on the African continent.
Nigeria needs to step in and lead Africa out of this Euro-American trap. What we need to do is first to tell the EU it cannot be lawless in Africa. Two, that Europeans must obey their own court by stopping the theft of Western Sahara wealth. Three, drag the EU to the International Court of Justice, ICJ, over the matter just as South Africa, dragged Israel over the massacre in Gaza. Four, take the EU and its leadership before the United Nations. Five, demand that Morocco obeys the outstanding judgments of the ICJ, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the European Court. Six, get the AU to sanction Morocco for its occupation of a member country, and assist the Saharawi to live in peace within secured borders.
To effect these, the Tinubu administration should immediately stop any trade with Morocco on products like phosphate and fisheries looted from Western Sahara. It should ban all sardines from Morocco unless the latter can prove that they are not from Western Sahara waters. Also, it should stop the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline passing through Western Sahara unless it gets the endorsement of the POLISARIO government.
Generally, Nigeria should help get Africa to reset so it is no longer played around like ball on the world field.
