From Femi Mustapha, in Kaduna
The Northern Socio-Cultural Group, Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has applauded the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) for resolving not to allow foreign military bases in Nigeria.
Reacting to a statement by the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, the National Publicity Secretary of the Forum, Professor Tukur Muhammad Baba said t0he FGN must be appreciated for taking such a bold and reassuring stance.
“For ACF, the development represents a victory for all imminently patriotic Nigerians who signaled readiness to campaign against the “rumored” plans to host US and French military bases in Nigeria following their rejection in Republics of Burkina Faso and Niger.”
However, the Northern forum expressed its disappointment with an earlier statement credited to a supposedly non-governmental organization concerned with promoting human rights, the Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA), which supported the possible establishment of American (US) and French military bases in Nigeria.
“ACF finds such support patently shocking, shortsighted, and against everything Nigeria stands for at the moment.
“We are an independent, sovereign African country in uncompromising solidarity with all sister African, especially ECOWAS states in the struggles against all vestiges of the intolerable stranglehold of colonialism and neo-colonialism, that have for far too long held down Africa in conditions of underdevelopment.
“Enough is known of experiences of countries like Burkina Faso and Niger that have hosted foreign military bases for years. Such bases have to date served only the interests of the advanced countries.
“Wherever they are located, the foreign military outposts operate outside of the control and in utter disregard for the national laws of their hosts, respecting only their own convenient rules. That sister African countries will, based on their experience with the foreign military units, reject their presence is enough reason to dissuade Nigeria from even contemplating hosting them.
“There is just no sense that such bases as rejected by sister ECOWAS would be welcomed by any next-door neighbor.
“HURIWA ought to realize that the presence of the bases has undeniably failed to result in any demonstrable decline in the activities of terrorist and insurgent groups that have been wrecking political, economic, and social conditions in the sister countries.
“For Nigeria, it is inescapable that whatever is unhelpful and/or detrimental to the interests of African countries cannot be good for us, due to shared destinies in unbroken historical, socio-cultural, economic and political ties which predated and antedates the artificial Balkanisation of our societies under European colonial control.
“Africans will forever decry the imposition of ridiculous “international” boundaries, which often cut across the very heart of communities, as systematized at the infamous 1884/1885 Berlin Conference at which no African country participated.
“It is thus instructive that the desire to establish the military bases emanates, not from African countries, but from the foreign powers themselves, and it is as if the Berlin Conference is being updated and re-enacted now, in the 21st Century.
“HURIWA is being quixotic and perhaps delusional in thinking that military and civilian personnel in the bases will respect Nigeria’s sovereignty or help us fight terrorism and insurgency. It is to ask where (and why now) have the foreign forces been all the while with our body counts in thousands, and recorded disrupted livelihoods, internally displaced populations, etc.
“It is also disappointing that HURIWA would seek to trivialize the patriotic call against foreign military bases as emanating from some “Northern” leaders, as if HURIWA’S condemnation is itself, by equal measure, a “southern” Nigerian agenda!
“The terrorism and banditry problem in Nigeria has gone beyond the prism of “killer herdsmen” and Boko Haram, as HURIWA would have it, and looking at the problem from such a simplistic and reductionist perspective is unhelpful in the fight against terrorism.
“Our security forces know this only too well. No one should be lulled into complacency or think that anybody but ourselves can solve the problem. Nigeria should not be tempted by Trojan Horse promises from foreign interests that had until now at best remained benignly neglectful or uninterested in our insecurity woes.”
