Yesterday, I wrote an account of history, which was disputed by Nigeria’s former Foreign Minister and my esteemed elders, Alhaji Sule Lamido. However, when I provided indisputable data-based evidence to back up my accounts, the highly esteemed Alhaji Lamido, a former Governor of Jigawa, publicly admitted that my recollection of the events was accurate.
Thereafter, I received multiple calls from the dramatis personae, asking me to expand on the history class and expose more details of the event that had been hidden from the Nigerian public.
The recent breach of protocol by the Burkinabe President, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, in which he approached and met the newly sworn-in Ghanaian President, John Mahama, with a weapon once again demonstrates the difference between Nigeria and Ghana and vindicates Nigeria’s position as the regional superpower. Such a thing can never happen in Nigeria.
To buttress this, I will cite a joke told by the former and now late President of Ghana, Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, who recounted an incident during a Thursday, May 6, 1999, visit to Nigeria. Whether it happened in reality or was a joke, I cannot say. But it is recorded on video.
According to Mr. Rawlings, a Ghanaian had overstayed his visa in the United Kingdom and was flying home from Heathrow when an immigration officer asked him why.
As Rawlings told the story, the man began to shiver and begged for leniency.
While this was going on, a Nigerian man walked to the next booth, and the immigration officer there said, ‘Why have you overstayed your visa?’ To which the Nigerian man retorted, ‘My friend, will you stamp my passport and let me leave your useless country? Who gave you visas when you came to colonise Nigeria!’ And then he gave a long hiss.
I always thought President Rawlings was overly dramatic about the difference between Ghanaians and Southern Nigerians until a British government quango invited me to an event in Ghana. It was my first visit.
While there, various British speakers lectured the Ghanaians, who included the crème de la crème of Ghana, including elected politicians, leading entrepreneurs, top actors, ruling party officials, and civil activists.
And they all ate up the spiel from the Britons to my disgust. Senator Ben Murray-Bruce and I were the only Nigerians invited, and in a now-viral video, I lectured the British conference members back.
I told them that they should not tell us about any advantage that we have as members of the Commonwealth when, after forcing us to speak English in our countries, they refuse to give us visas unless we take very expensive examinations to prove that we can speak English.
I also said if the Chinese and other members of the BRICS bloc give us a better deal, Anglophone Africa should take it.
By the time I finished speaking, I got a standing ovation.
But these two events and the Traoré breach of protocol show that our Ghanaian brothers and sisters can sometimes be too anodyne to foreigners.
No less a person than Muammar Gaddafi tried that in Nigeria—twice during the Obasanjo administration. Both occasions, he was stopped and cut to size.
The first time was during the African Heads of Government Summit on Roll Back Malaria on Tuesday, April 25, 2000.
Colonel Gaddafi’s female bodyguards tried to enter the International Conference Center, Abuja, with their weapons but were stopped by President Obasanjo’s Chief Security Officer, who had an argument with them and disarmed them at gunpoint before they were allowed into the venue with Colonel Gaddafi to join other African leaders.
The second incident was more dramatic and was actually a set-up. It occurred during the Africa-South America Summit, which was held in November 2006 in Abuja.
Colonel Gaddafi had arrived on Tuesday, 28 November 2006, with about five huge planes that offloaded fifty cars or thereabouts. The problem is that these cars were loaded with weapons.
Colonel Gaddafi claimed they were for his guards. But for long, Mr. Gaddafi had always wanted Nigeria to divide along Muslim and Christian lines, so it was suspected that he would leave his weapons behind for his sleeper cells.
So, the Nigerian officials at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport told Mr. Gaddafi and his over 200 guards that they could not leave the airport either their weapons and would have put them back on their planes under the supervision of the Nigerian Army.
Colonel Gaddafi was incensed. Since he was not being allowed to leave the airport with his cars filled with weapons, he said he would walk into Abuja. At 64 years of age, he actually fulfilled his threat and began walking under the hot Abuja sun into town.
Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, whom President Obasanjo detailed to receive Colonel Gaddafi on his behalf, was concerned and called the President, who told him to tell Gaddafi he was on his way to the airport to resolve the issue.
By the time President Obasanjo got there, he played with Gaddafi, hugged him, and charmed him with kindness. He thereafter told Gaddafi he was on his way to Lagos but that his personal representative, Minister Fani-Kayode, would resolve the incident.
The President then took Mr. Fani-Kayode aside and whispered into his ear in Lukumi Yoruba, ‘You are in charge. Play with him. Be polite and diplomatic. But those weapons are not entering Abuja.’
President Obasanjo then hugged and kissed Gaddafi on both cheeks again, entered his plane, and went on his merry way to Lagos, leaving Chief Femi Fani-Kayode to argue back and forth with Colonel Gaddafi. Gaddafi then threatened to return to Libya, to which Chief Fani-Kayode said, “We would rather have you stay, but if you choose to go, we understand.”
This incensed Colonel Gaddafi’s Chief of Security, Mansour Dhao Ibrahim, who began to make threats, upon which the Nigerian soldiers at the VIP protocol wing threatened to have him physically removed from Nigeria.
When Gaddafi saw how resolute Chief Fani-Kayode was, he had to blink and fold, and they returned ALL their weapons to their planes under the supervision of the Nigerian Army.
That is how you show that you are a sovereign nation. Not by having a thirty-six-year-old unelected junta leader of Burkina Faso, who has turned his country into a client state of Russia, do to you in your own country what he would never, in a million years, do to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
By the way, when Colonel Gaddafi was allowed into Abuja, he was escorted to the guest house Nigeria had arranged for him. The first thing his guards did was to slaughter a ram and spill the blood in front of the door. Once that happened, Colonel Gaddafi stepped over the blood into the house (Defence House) and would not allow anyone else to enter after him, including the Nigerian officials who had given him the residence as a guest lodge.
Peoplesmind
