Israel And Morocco Support Biafra to Punish Buhari for meddling In Their Internal Affairs
President Muhammadu Buhari’s support for
an independent Palestinian State forced Israel
to formally recognize the agitation by the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB)
for the creation of an independent State of Biafra, an Arab diplomat has disclosed.
The diplomat told The AUTHORITY at the weekend that Buhari’s
pledge to help “our brothers and sisters in Palestine” attain independence greatly
angered the Israeli government.
Buhari had in a visit last year to Qatar,
promised the Emir (Head of State) Tamim Bin Hammad Al-Thani, that “we will
stand side by side with you, until our brothers and sisters in Palestine achieve their
desired objectives (independence).”
According to the diplomat, “Buhari’s meddling in the Israeli-Palestanian
crisis was largely unnecessary”. The envoy pointed out that “while Buhari keeps
addressing Palestinians as ‘our brothers and sisters,’ majority of Muslim
countries like Senegal
have since softpedaled on their support for Palestinians.”He continued: “It
was not for nothing that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to recognize
Biafra at a very important ceremony like the Holocaust memorial, last April.”
“At the memorial, Netanyahu chided the world for keeping
quiet and standing aside and did not prevent genocide or mass murder in Biafra, Cambodia,
Rwanda, Sudan and also in Syria.”
He observed, “Netanyahu is the first Head of State of a First
World country to describe the 1967-1970 war against Biafra as genocide.”
“The Israeli PM’s presence at the 51st ECOWAS summit in
Liberia, the first by any Israeli leader to Africa, and the first by any
non-African Head of State, coupled with the promise of a $1 billion solar power
project for the region, was tailored to teach Nigeria a bitter lesson,”
stressed the envoy. He noted that Nigeria’s absence at the “very
important” regional summit may have been orchestrated to avoid the
embarrassment the very large Israeli delegation would have caused the country.
The envoy said: “ECOWAS countries have a combined population
of about 350 million, of which Nigeria,
which suffers tremendous power deficit, has about 180 million or more than
half of the total population. Clearly, one would have expected such solar
power plant to be sited in Nigeria,
but Israel chose Liberia apparently to snub Nigeria.” He added that Israel’s bid for reinstatement as an observer in
the African Union (AU) would further injure Nigeria’s interests. “Perhaps Nigeria should pay greater attention to Netanyahu’s
forecast at the ECOWAS summit that ‘Israel
is coming to Africa and Africa is coming to Israel”, advised. The envoy.
He expressed fears that with Nigeria’s decision to withhold
funding of the ECOWAS may have come a whittling down of the country’s dominance
in the sub-region. “Nigeria’s
influence in ECOWAS is at its lowest ebb. The country used to be the biggest
financier of ECOWAS, but stopped funding the body the moment Buhari came into
power. Nigeria’s
indebtedness now hovers around $700,000. What did you expect? The other member
countries are now forced to look elsewhere, and don’t be surprised if non-African
countiries like Israel
come in handy,” opined the diplomat.
He cited the recent decision of Morocco, a northern African
country, to join ECOWAS as a pointer to the belief that certain countries can’t
wait to take over Nigeria’s leadership role in West Africa.
“I fear that like Israel,
Morocco may have a
diplomatic axe to grind with Nigeria
after your president (Buhari) openly declared support for the independence of
Western Sahara just a few months after hosting King Mohammed VI in Abuja”.
”I don’t know the shape of your country’s foreign policy.
Your president goes about canvassing support for people who seek self
determination in Israel and
Morocco,
yet rolls out the tanks on Nigerians who express the same sentiments.
New U.S Survey Says Biafrans Are Donald
Trump’s
Strongest Supporters In Africa
President Donald Trump is struggling to
convince Americans that he’s the right man for the job, enduring record low
popularity ratings during his first few months in office. The annual Pew Research
Center survey on global attitudes to
the U.S.
and its president, published on June 26, made for grim reading for Trump.
Across the 37 countries surveyed, a median of just 22 per cent had confidence
in Trump to do the right thing in international affairs.
Comparably, Trump’s predecessor Barack
Obama scored a median of 64 per cent towards the end of his second term.
But in a few countries, Trump seemed to
be at least as popular as his predecessor–if not more. One of those countries
was Nigeria,
the West African nation of 180 million people.
Of the six sub-Saharan African nations
surveyed by Pew, Nigeria was the most confident, at
58 per cent, that President Trump would do the right thing in world affairs.
This figure was actually the joint-second highest overall–level with Vietnam and behind the Philippines as 69 per cent–and Nigerians
expressed more faith in Trump than in Germany’s Angela Merkel, Chinese
President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. More than half of
Nigerians said relations between the two countries would improve under Trump,
while 55 per cent of Nigerian respondents thought of Trump as “caring about
ordinary people”–the highest among all the countries surveyed. By contrast, 23
per cent of Canadians expressed the same sentiment.
Nigeria is an extremely diverse country, home
to more than 200 ethnicities and a roughly equal split between Christians and
Muslims, so it is unlikely that the survey is representative of all Nigerians.
Some of the views varied according to their faith: around 70 per cent of
Christians in Nigeria
expressed confidence in Trump’s international leadership abilities, compared to
46 per cent of Nigerian Muslims.
But on the whole, Trump seems to be
viewed positively in Nigeria.
Why might that be?
Secessionists Believe Trump Backs Their
Cause
An anomaly in Nigeria’s favorable view of Trump is the
pro-Biafra movement, which campaigns for secession from Nigeria for a region known as Biafra.
The region, in southeast Nigeria,
was the subject of a three-year civil war from 1967-1970 after Biafrans
declared independence; more than 1 million people died in the conflict.
Pro-Biafran activists lauded Trump’s
election victory in November 2016; the wife of Nnamdi Kanu, a leading figure in
the secessionist movement, told Newsweek at the time that Trump would “uphold
the self-determination rights of the indigenous people of Biafra”.
In January, Nigerian police disrupted a rally after hundreds of pro-Biafra
activists gathered in southeast Nigeria
to celebrate Trump’s inauguration.
Nigerians Like a Strongman Leader
Trump’s regular use of executive orders and flagrant disregard for
international condemnation–exemplified in his decision to pull the U.S. out of
the Paris climate accords–has already evoked comparisons with archetypal
African leaders, including one by South African comic and Daily Show host
Trevor Noah.
Trump is Willing to Sell Nigeria
Weapons
Nigeria has been trying to buy attack
helicopters from the U.S.
since 2015 to expand its air capacity in the fight against Boko Haram. But
under Obama, Washington
demurred: The Nigerian military have a questionable human rights record and,
when a sale looked imminent in early 2017, the country’s air force mistakenly
bombed a refugee settlement in northeast Nigeria, killing more than 100
people.
President Buhari is one of the few
African leaders to have spoken by phone with Trump. During the conversation in
February, Trump “expressed support for the sale of aircraft from the United States to support Nigeria’s fight
against Boko Haram”. While there is no indication the sale has gone through
yet, the change in tone would have been welcomed in Abuja, Nigeria’s
capital.
Suddenly Morocco a North
African country decided to join Ecowas. Israel a Middle Eastern nation
attended Ecowas last summit. Nigeria
deliberately absented herself. You would be amazed to know why things went that
way.
