A former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi has called on the Nigerian government to act decisively on the worsening insecurity in the country before it spreads beyond control. Akinyemi urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to take seriously the recent advice by Pastor Enoch Adeboye, General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), that Nigeria should engage in dialogue with President Donald Trump of the United States of America regarding the reported plan to intervene militarily against terrorists and bandits accused of committing genocide against Christians in the country. The former minister, a professor of international relations, made the remarks during an interview on Arise Television, which was monitored by INIOBONG IWOK. Excerpts:
What can you say about the threat of invasion of Nigeria by President Donald Trump?
Let us not adopt a legal angle to this issue of genocide. If you come to Lagos State and kill 1,000 people, people may not call it genocide because there are millions of people in the state. But if you come to my village and kill 1,000 people, then there might just be about five people left and that may be genocide. We should adopt a common-sense definition in dealing with the matter.
If you stay in the Middle Belt and you say there is no genocide, it means you don’t know what you are talking about. People who say there is no genocide in the middle belt, I will suggest that he or she should go and live there for 100 days and the person should come and tell me his or her experience later.
People who say that Muslims are not being killed should go to Sokoto or Zamfara and see what is happening there. When I served on a government committee on the issue of Boko Haram, I knew why someone would leave his village and go and leave in an IDP Camp because we visited some of the camps.
With the lack of hygiene there, you would prefer to send your enemy to the prison than to send him or her to an IDP Camp. Why would a Nigerian go and leave in an IDP Camp if the person is not running for his or her life? Why would a Nigerian leave his farm, which is the main stay of sustaining his family if he is not afraid that he would be attacked and he would be killed if he goes to the farm? Let us pardon Donald Trump for the bombastic language he used. But you know Trump, he is used to that, but the basic question we need to ask ourselves is that are Nigerians getting killed in Nigeria or not and the answer is ‘yes.’ Let us not get into religious civil war. It’s not a question of whether Christians or Muslims are getting killed; Christians are getting killed by Muslims, and not be fellow Christians.
Muslims are getting killed, not by Christians, but by fellow Muslims. The basic thing is that the killings should stop. To me, the most sensitive statement made on the issue by those who have been commenting is the one by the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christians Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye, who said that President Bola Tinubu should approach President Donald Trump and tell him what he is going to do and ask for 100 days to prove that he can tackle the situation that is at hand. Do not let us deceive ourselves, after how many years, the Nigerian government, and not just the President Bola Tinubu administration, even right from the tenure of former president Goodluck Jonathan, has not shown the capability to deal with the situation. I fully support the idea of Pastor Adeboye that our government should approach the American government, not in a confrontational position. If you decide to take on the most powerful man in the world, you will suffer the consequences, which we don’t want. We don’t want the American troops on the ground.
Someone recently said that the Nigerian government hasn’t done enough on insecurity in 15 years that this started, what do you think we should do in terms of the threat by Donald Trump that the military would come to help Nigeria; how do you see the support of Russia and China playing out?
Don’t let us get ourselves onto the wrong track, European Union, China and Russia would support you verbally. But from our experience of what Ukraine has been going through, confronting America with verbal support would not do us any good. What we should be asking now is what should the administration of President Bola Tinubu be doing?
They should now use security agents who have the willingness, determination and the ability to confront these people and defeat them. I have heard it said on your programme that if we could do well in the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), we should be able to deal with these people because it seems they are not united in the forces. That unity must be provided among the military by the President Bola Tinubu administration.
The administration must give directives to the troops and they must obey the directives. He must make sure that none of them leaking information to Boko Haram or ISWAP. Under the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, the American troops came in and in collaboration with the Nigerian Army, they discovered the camp of the Boko Haram members and they said that they would throw gas into the camp, when they are sleeping so that they could take out the girls.
But when they went there with their aircraft, they discovered that the Boko Haram members were putting on masks, and the Americans pulled out. They said that they would not subject their men to danger. So, we must get out from the Nigerian troops those that are sympathetic to Boko Haram members. If we don’t want President Trump to carry out his threat, the Nigerian troops must be ready to clean this out themselves.
Let us now agree that Nigerians are being killed. For the first time, we got a world power that said he would help us to clean them out. President Trump didn’t say he is coming to invade or occupy Nigeria, he said he was coming to help us clean out the mess that we have not been able to clean over the years.
You made a very valid point, one of the issues that has divided Nigerians is the invasion by Americans, one school of thought said that we need this support, but is saying has America been able to help any country, and that what is the cost to Nigeria on international diplomacy?
If you look at the involvement of United States of America in other parts of the world, the situation is not the same. We must make an assessment of our own needs and what we need to do to achieve peace and stability in Nigeria. If we say Americans coming in would lead to what happened in Libya, Syria and other places, we should know that the situation is not the same. On the other hand, if we don’t get any assistance and we don’t have the capacity to deal with these people, if you ask me what would be the next thing, these people would go to the South West and that would be the price we will pay and that would be total devastation of our nation.
To me, what we are facing is not pleasant and we have to do risk assessment of the price we would pay if the Americans come in and the price we would pay if we don’t accept American assistance; we would continue to play games with attacks on our people whereas the attack has taken a religious connotation.
The attack on the Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State involved people that were worshipping, has anybody done anything about that? Former president Muhammadu Buhari did not go there then. So, let us call a spade a spade; we want the killings to stop. We want President Bola Tinubu to stop it.
I want to reiterate what Pastor Adeboye said that we should tell President Donald Trump to give us time.
