BY TONY ERHA
A fuzzy analyst on a social media platform called it the “roar of a cat-king that frightens the land-animals of the jungle”. Another onlooker also likened it to a rattlesnake that meander the market place, while in a full gathering, causing intense stampede. Yet, another called it “fire on the mountain top”. What a-gwan? – An American street jargon for “what is going on? – would question.
Behold, a stormy returnee-president of the Yankee’s nation, the United States of America (USA), Donald J. Trump, has scattered ‘the table’, an sobriquet by Nigerians for an angry man’s disruption of a wrong setup. In a premeditated recourse to action, Trump, the most powerful president from the God’s own country, had declared Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and one of its principal allies on the continent, a ‘Country of Particular Concern (CPC)’. The tempestuous man vowed to deploy American military forces to smoke out Muslim Jihads and other terrorists from the country’s north, if his confirmed-genocide on Christians wasn’t stopped.
CPC is a similar acronym for the Congress for Progressive Change, a political party once formed by Mohammadu Buhari, the country’s immediate-past president, who is mainly responsible for the lapses that earned Nigeria the CPC’s designation. ‘Country of Particular Concern’ (CPC), is a classification of the US Secretary of State on a country that causes severe violations of religious freedom, under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, as amended in 1999. America is said to be given the right by the UN to expedite disciplinary actions about the CPC.
The news of the CPC derisive classification and Trump’s razor-edge assertion of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Nigeria as a ‘disgraced country’, had spread fast like the Harmattan’s bushfires or the tinder wintry fires that roasts American country sides all-year-round. It is only a sane person who would be disturbed that the fire he set on a portion of the bush, in the flammable season, is the same that had spread far and wide, causing tangible destructions, in the shoddy manner Abuja had mismanaged its security.
China had threatened brimstones, thus encouraging Muslim extremists, who proclaim that Trump dare not undermine Nigeria’s sovereignty, with his ‘threat to invade’ the country. Isn’t it the same Asia country that Senator Adams Oshiomhole recently accused on the floor of the Senate, as instigating illegal mining operations in the country, backing by armed bandits that carry out kidnapping, ethnic and religious persecution, against the people? The Russians, not minding its bitterest war against its Ukraine neighbour, also warned Trump. Nevertheless, a Conservative Caucus and lawmaking body of Canada supported Trump’s decision.
Ezekiel Dachomo, the intrepid clergy from Plateau State, whose relentless advocacy puts his life on the terrorists’ cliff, with other activists, was the one who attracted Ted Cruz, a Republican Senator and a coterie of foreign humanists on the genocide matter, had chided the Christians Association of Nigeria (CAN) and Nigerian government, as playing the poker that resulted in the deaths, maiming, arsons and railroading of millions of Nigerians into IDP exiles. But Pastor Enoch Adeboye, leader of the mega Redeem Christian Church of God, had yanked aside his cassocks to advise an unsettled President Tinubu to play it soft, and not to be hoodwinked that China, Russia and the United Kingdom would come to his aid, should Trump make good his threat.
Adeboye pleaded for 90 days of grace, for Tinubu to flush out the multitudes of Boko Haram, ISIS, ISWAP and the Fulani militants that have laid a deadly siege for over a decade.
Although notable clergies from the mosque and church, alike; had towed the line of peace as Pastor Adeboye, a headstrong Ahmad Abubakar Gumi and the Deputy Senate President, Barau Jubrin, in a ‘bravado of guilt’, had told Trump to do his worst. Gumi is the outspoken bearer of Abyssinian long beard, who’s frequently accused of ‘a hand in the gloves’ with known terrorists and was allegedly repatriated from Saudi Arabia on terrorism claims.
And in what pundits regarded as shocking and an un-presidential, a former Head of State, Abdulsalami Abubakar, who is acclaimed to be an Ambassador of Peace, bluntly scolded that “Trump is trying to disintegrate Nigeria, with his comments that threaten our hard-won unity”. One would have thought that he and his fellow ex-head of state, Ibrahim Badamasi Banbagida (IBB), who couldn’t rescue their Niger State, from the terrorists’ stranglehold, are glad that Trump’s intervention would eventually rid their people of the menace. Obviously, General Abubakar would be in the swelling league of those who accuse Trump of persecuting the Muslim faith.
Why the claims of attempted violation of Nigeria’s sovereignty by Trump, , when the same country is complicit of the genocide on tens of thousands of souls; children, women, able-bodies and the aged that are butchered in cold blood? Does it truly merit to be called a sovereign state? Which sovereignty where a large section of its security outfit hobnob those who massacre the same ordinary people they sworn to protect? Can there be autonomy in a country where terrorists rule over some of the country’s un-governed spaces?
Yet, numerous organizations and credible voices across the northern religion and its political divides are united that President Trump couldn’t be faulted that Nigeria’s current president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu had been disinterested at stopping the excessive killings. Trump had reminded all that Tinubu and his associates in APC, once visited him in the White House in 2014, accusing the then government of President Goodluck Jonathan of committing same genocide against Christians, for which they sought his cooperation to remove Jonathan from office. Trump asserted that that visit was what prompted the CPC designation.
The “US strikes will make sense if they are directed at terrorist groups like Boko Haram, ISIS, and ISWAP, who have been killing both Muslims and Christians. Trump and the US will be hailed if this is the objective”. Intoned, Prof. Ishaq Akintola, Executive Director of the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) He chided CAN as having betrayed President Tinubu for failing to water down the Trump’s influence, he urged Muslim youths not to do anti-America and anti-Trump’s protests, as they used to do.
But, there is a growing concern and propaganda that Trump’s America is not to be trusted on their dealing with Nigeria on the CPC issue. They say Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Iraq are evident, where the US claimed to have gone in to root out those terrorists who caused troubles in there. They say the terrorists, instead, were empowered to take over power therein, fearing that Nigeria could be next. They narrate further that the defeat or humiliation of Nigeria by President Trump would spell doom for Africa, while regard Nigeria as the continent’s moral and diplomatic compass.
Believe it or not, the Trump’s encounter must’ve spurred President Tinubu and the security establishments into frenzy, where the terrorists and their backers are running for cover, not only for the renewed onslaughts against them by the Nigerian forces, but for a Donald Trump’s hostility.
