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Why France Backs Boko Haram By Muhammad Hassan-Tom
If you are a regular media consumer, there is at least one news story every day that should send shivers down your spine or demoralize your spirit or simply sadden the sunshine out of your life. The tragedy is that the sheer numbers and scale of such stories have benumbed most of us. Now, even the most alarming reports are quickly discussed in small groups and swept under the rug in preparation for the next serving. One story that could only be brushed off at Nigeria’s peril was captioned “Don Raises Alarm over France’s Plan to invade Nigeria” published in the Vanguard of 15th February 2014. The report quoted Professor Olaghere, President of the United African Diaspora States (UADS) saying, “I want to use this platform to let Nigerians know that France is ready to come and invade Africa and Nigeria is the target. They are right now training Cameroon. France is fighting you and it is going to throw you out of your home and it is your duty to defend Nigeria at all costs.” Professor Olaghere who gave the warning at a public lecture held at the National Women Centre, Abuja, further accused France of providing finance, equipment and training to the Boko Haram sect in a bid to continue with its destabilization plot against Nigeria and Africa in general. According to him, “France has already deployed 60,000 troops to Africa, preparatory to invade the whole continent of Africa.” This figure would include soldiers stationed in all the Francophone countries for decades and the thousands added during the recent surge achieved by engineering brand new crises in Mali, Libya and the now balkanized Central African Republic. In 2006, the French completed their takeover of Chad when their troops saved the neck of President Idris Deby after ferociously armed militia completely surrounded him inside the country’s capital in over 400 Hilux trucks mounted to the teeth. The mindless insurgency in Nigeria is of course being directly fuelled through the Algerian-Libyan-Malian-Nigerien terror trail, as the following news story will reveal. The report entitled “Boko Haram’s anti-aircraft training camp uncovered in Niger” in the Punch of 19th February disclosed that 20 insurgents were arrested at a camp located in Diffa, just across the Nigerian border which specialized in training for the use of long-range anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. According to the report, “Security personnel believe new arms were being acquired with ransom money.” It recalled that France paid a huge amount of money to secure the release of a French missionary, Father Georges Vandenbeusch abducted by Boko Haram near Nigeria’s border with Cameroun on 13th November 2013. However, spokesman of the French Embassy in Niger Georges Vanin would not comment on the report that France had been paying ransom to secure release of its citizens. Last year, a French family of tourists was similarly captured at a game reserve inside Cameroun and released after undisclosed ransom was promptly paid. This seems such a foolproof way to funnel funding to terrorists but no art can ever launder blood-money. It is simply unbelievable that one of the longest running and most intense intelligence service in the world is being outwitted by the ragtag followers of a murdered Muhammad Yusuf who started gathering them around 2002 to the point of terrorising their citizens! Why couldn’t Boko Haram kidnap any of the more friendly and rambunctious Americans? But even that could be arranged though. A most fundamental question is: Since France failed to break-up Nigeria by supporting the Biafra rebels during the 1967-1970 civil war, how could it hope to succeed so many years after independence and generations of intermingling? The answer is that it comes well prepared and has been operating with silence and cynical diplomacy as strategy. Is it a mere coincidence that the systematic massacre of estimated 10,000 lives so far lost to thousands of bomb and gun attacks attributed to the Al-Qaida-clone started soon after Nigeria and France updated their relationship when President Jacques Chirac became the first foreign leader to visit Nigeria following the return of civil rule in 1999? President Umaru Yar’Adua visited France in 2008 and signed a Memorandum of Understanding for a ‘strategic partnership’ between the two countries. Purportedly on the strength of this partnership, Prime Minister Francois Fillon visited Nigeria in 2009 the same year Boko Haram declared its bombing war. One of the entries on this visit on the official website of the Embassy of France in Nigeria was that “At a time when the militants of MEND threatened to attack helicopters, the Prime Minister used this means of conveyance to visit some petroleum infrastructure in the vicinity of Port-Harcourt.” He clearly did not use the same means to commiserate with hundreds of communities whose ancestral lands for farming and fishing are daily drenched in petrochemical poisons. If he had visited with the millions of impoverished, diseased and ill-educated youth literally railroaded into creeks by conscienceless leaders to resort to assassination, arson, cultism, kidnapping, fraud and militancy, it would have made sensible strategic partnership. In a curiously similar scenario, on November 11 and 12 of the same year, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Alain Juppe, visited Nigeria. The main entry on Juppe’s junket was that “In a bid to show France’s support against violence of terrorism, the minister went to Kano, where he met local authorities and dialogued with students.” The Minister also announced during that visit that “We are ready to share our information. We are ready to coordinate our intelligence services. We are ready to give our help in training operation. I will like again to express our complete determination to fight with the countries of the region especially Nigeria and also in the ECOWAS borders to decrease these threats against the populations and the countries.” Three months later almost to the day, Kano City recorded its single highest terrorism casualty of nearly 200 souls slain in a single day. What magic shield against MEND and Boko Haram terrorists were Fillon and Juppe displaying with these visits? Why is Nigeria not buying into the deal even if it is a fabricated one or does it all dovetail into some sectarian interest of President Goodluck Jonathan as seriously alleged in a letter by former President Olusegun Obasanjo? As the Hausa proverb puts it, the monkey looks like man; terrorism in the Niger Delta is enabling the President’s people to steal their own oil while the one in the north is conveniently dealing with his perceived political opponents. The red alert from all these, however, is that France’s Boko Haram bogeyman is as America’s Al-Qaida operating in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and lately Syria or the non-existent weapons of mass destruction that resulted in the occupation and ongoing dismemberment of Iraq. Both A-Qaida and Boko Haram are intelligence operations run by American and French secret agencies respectively to destabilize target countries and recreate colonialism all over again – if it had ever gone away. This time, however, there is a need to divide the big nations into more controllable units hence the contrived cataclysmic conflicts right down Africa from Cairo to Cape Town. This fact explains the un-Islamic modus operandi of the supposedly Muslim militants who kill and maim indiscriminately including inside churches and mosques in order to provoke or stoke sectarian animosities and maximize intra and interreligious antagonism. It also clarifies how the erstwhile motorbike-riding Boko Haramists suddenly have better intelligence, transport, arms, ammunitions, secure internet and even higher morale than the Nigerian Armed Forces that have toppled even sitting dictators such as Liberia’s Charles Taylor in the recent past. There is also a slight reconfiguration of the pecking order and hunting ground. With the US and its over 500,000 troops permanently stationed abroad too preoccupied with its de facto occupation of the Middle East and the South China Sea while Russia and China struggle to maintain their hegemony over their former communist cohorts in Eastern Europe and Latin America, Africa is the richest available colony albeit with too large a population. Britain and France being the remaining two superpowers are expected to contest for control of the continent. However, the British are now so empire-weary that they would not even join the European Union and are even allowing the Scots to vote out of the United Kingdom. The islanders who once ruled a territorial domain on which the sun never sets have learnt their lessons about the toil of global hegemony. Unfortunately, they are increasingly becoming the choirboys and lapdogs of the USA in a bid to pick the crumbs from America’s bloody wars for domination of the conflict-soaked but resource-rich Middle East. This leaves the African stage almost exclusively for France hence its rapid generation and inflammation of conflicts and troop surges across the continent. Tellingly, the French have simultaneously set the most ambitious economic goals on record. On a recent visit to Nigeria, Ms Nicole Bricq, France’s Minister of Foreign Trade attended the signing of a Strategic Agreement between Schneider Electric and Mikano International Limited. Schneider is the leading French company in the field of electricity and renewable energy in Nigeria with a turnover of $100 million per annum. She announced that there are 1800 French firms exporting finished goods to Nigeria and France has set a target to gain a 50 per cent increase. The reason, she ominously stated, was that “If you are not in Nigeria, you are not in Africa.” Yet, from 1902 when the Compagnie Francaise de l’Afrique Occidentale (CFAO) was established in Nigeria, there are now over 100 French companies “in” the country mainly engaged in exploitation of hydrocarbons, agricultural resources and communication facilities. Famous French brands include Total, Peugeot, Lafarge as well as Alcatel and Sagem which were instrumental in the setting up of GSM telephony and the National Identity Card. Others such as Michelin in Port-Harcourt produces unprocessed rubber from its rubber plantations and exports tires at exorbitant costs. Over this past century, the balance of trade remains heavily tilted in favour of France. In 2006, French companies exported $3.2 billion worth of goods to Nigeria but imported just $1.9 billion of the country’s petroleum products and $49 million of raw materials such as rubber and cocoa. Similarly, about 4500 French firms supply the basic needs of all Francophone African countries from apparels to confectioneries and even currency notes. While the French desperation to corner more of Africa’s abundant resources at the cost of lives and livelihoods is attaining new heights, the callous, racist and selfish trend is not new or unexpected. For instance, a 2008 paper titled Conflict and Cooperation in the Global Arena: A Historical Perspective of Nigeria-France Relations, 1905-1985 by O. Ekanade published by African Journals Online concluded that “The historical landmarks in their diplomatic ties are suggestive of the iron laws that govern international relations. These laws favour the strong and sanction the weak. France’s pre-eminent status in the international arena during this period, 1905-1985 dwarfed Nigeria’s voice and actions and ensured that Nigeria pandered to the whims and caprices of France.” The PhD thesis titled Franco-Nigerian Business Relations: The Emergence of International Social and Commercial Configurations, Exchange, Uncertainty and Identity Strategy submitted to the University of Paris-Diderot by Marjolaine Paris provides greater details about the negative nature of French interaction with Nigerians over the past century. In it, Ms Paris established among other things that, “Inequality in the extension of privileges, social benefits, official treatments at the level of French expatriates, on the one hand, and their Nigerian counterparts, on the other, is another problem. It is at this level of where an expatriate comes from (ethnic factor), status of the expatriate, superiority/inferiority questions that breed untold animosities among Franco-Nigerian economic operators.” According to her, the problem is that the French businesses, like many others, are only interested in money making but not much in the welfare or solving the domestic problems of the host community. This is an issue that Government is yet to meaningfully address in its economic calculations. This is also why there has been frequent tension between the petroleum-producing communities and oil giants in Nigeria. The oil companies are yet to reckon with the need to factor social development of their host communities as part of their business objectives. She therefore posited that “It is no longer sufficient to reckon with the obligations created by business contracts signed. In fact, future business contracts should specifically provide for social development of host communities.” The Nigerian government and indeed all African countries under the aegis of the African Union (AU) can and must checkmate France’s current insidious influence in the country and on the continent. The first step is Nigeria should demand the immediate cessation of French backing for Boko Haram, MEND and all other insurgents working in or against the country and an undertaking that France will pay compensation for every life and limb lost to their terrorists, restore the tens of thousands of homes and social facilities destroyed and provide scholarships for all school-age out-of-school children in the frontline states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. Secondly, the AU should pass an immediate resolution to send away all the 60,000 so-called French peacekeepers and other military personnel since African troops in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere have proved capable of doing a sincere job at a fraction of the cost. This is the only way to eliminate the current high tension in African-French relations in the long run and also engender accommodation and mutual respect between the two parties.
The third step is for Nigeria and Africa as a whole to review all existing economic agreements with France and French firms to enable rapid industrialization and sorely needed employment generation in the world’s poorest but most endowed continent. Under the revised rules of engagement, these companies and other multinationals should no longer be permitted to exploit and export raw materials but to create a value-chain by fully processing these resources to end-products in industries in Nigeria or elsewhere in Africa. Finally, failing any of these, Nigeria should break off relations with France. In 1961, when Nigeria broke off relations with the country over its devastating atomic weapons tests in the Sahara desert in neighboring Niger Republic, it not only ended such crimes against humanity on African soil but inspired the whole continent. The incumbent President Francois Hollande of France is going ahead with the machinations in spite of the disclosures but he would have to compromise a whole lot more Nigerians than the diminishing drug-driven maniacal death squad codenamed Boko Haram. Too, following Professor Olaghere’s public revelations, Hollande and his horde including our own French connections may expect the tens of thousands murdered, orphaned, widowed, maimed, bereaved, displaced, dispossessed or even those just distressed by the news from afar to ask the Almighty God for justice. Worse still, they are putting their beautiful country and its mostly kind-hearted and poetic people at risk of meeting a fate more humiliating than Nazi Germany suffered in 1945. Weakened by excessive wining, dining and hedonism the aging French population cannot even hope to recover as fast and as superbly as the Germans did over the past 55 years. However, if the international community fails to impede and bring them to justice here and now, they will pay Hereafter. The conclusion for Nigeria is also not too good as at now. The Nigerian tragedy is that if we keep careless, compromised and compromising leaders rather than courageous, fair and just ones, the French conspiracy against our country and the entire continent is halfway achieved. In fact, this is not even an era for the clueless, incompetent or inexperienced hands at any level of government. As Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State recently said after his second but last meeting with President Jonathan: “This is war!” |