Trump’s humiliation of some African presidents
by Jide Osuntokun
Some opponents of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Nigeria had been jubilating that President Donald John Trump of the United States of America snubbed Nigeria by not inviting him along with the presidents of Gabon, Guinea – Bissau, Senegal, Mauritania and Liberia even before they knew the subject of the discussion.
Thank God Nigeria was not invited because if we had been invited and talked down the insulting way these presidents were treated, our president would not have been able to return home either with honour or dishonour. Nigerians would have been so upset by such a humiliation meted to these presidents that our claim to sovereign nationhood would have meant nothing and the honour of an independent sovereignty that our fathers fought for would have been seen to have been dragged in the mud and stepped upon by somebody who feels black people were nothing but hewers of wood and drawers of water.
When I saw those black leaders standing before Trump in the White House as specimens of inferiority, I remember what Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana used to say to Africans in my youth that it was better to be kings in our African independent countries which critics of African countries said were being poorly run, than being slaves in the paradise of colonial tutelage of white-ruled African countries which were presented as heaven on earth. It has now transpired that the American administration is looking for land for dumping immigrants rejected from America. In the case of Nigeria, we had apparently been approached to take Venezuelans described by Trump as murderers, rapists, robbers and rogues. The man must love us and wish us so well that these are the types of exports America thinks we deserve. As respectfully and diplomatically as it was possible, Nigeria had told the Americans that we have our own problems at home and would not like to add to them. The five countries of Gabon, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, and Mauritania must have told the Americans that they were prepared to help America solve its domestic problems of getting rid of its unwanted immigrant population which had become a population bomb in the USA.
Perhaps if we had been represented at the highest level of having an ambassador in the USA, the Americans would have been told that Nigeria would not accept any of the immigrants Trump was looking for a place to dump and that Nigeria was not that type of a country that would accept rejects from another country and that Nigeria was poor but not poorly insane.
I don’t know why after two years, President Tinubu has found it inconvenient to send ambassadors to all countries that Nigeria has accreditation. This kind of subject would have been discussed at official ambassadorial levels and sorted out and would not have been elevated to presidential level. I plead with our president to fill all ambassadorial positions not only for the purpose of adequate representation and raising the flag, but for the traditional role of ambassadors in the promotion of trade and political relations. The real fact is that Nigeria is not a strategic country to the United States. We had chance to be strategic to the United States but the old-fashioned diplomats who surrounded Aso Rock between 1999 and 2015 blew the chance when the USA approached us with locating the African command in Nigeria and we said a flat “No” when we could have answered in the affirmative but attached conditions to it such as helping us to develop Nigeria‘s navy and air force comparable with that of Egypt and promoting considerable American investment in our military and industrial complex. If we had been in a strategic position as we were when in the 1970s and 1980s when we supplied the USA with considerable amount of petroleum and gas, they would not have insulted us with asking us to take immigrants from Latin America.
Trump is used to humiliating African countries. Recently he brought the presidents of Rwanda and the Congo DR and virtually locked them in the White House and gleefully announced to the journalists assembled in the White House lawn that he has two African presidents who had been fighting for about two decades and who had listened to nobody about peace but to him to settle their problems and had listened to him, a global peace maker and were making peace at his instance. Then later, he produced the grinning African leaders who claimed they were ready to sign a peace agreement. The following day, the Congo president said he was ready to alienate vast amount of land to American companies to prospect for all kinds of strategic minerals. It is this kind of freehand in Africa that led him to decide which African countries he would invite to be shown to the world grovelling before him and ending by nominating him for the Nobel peace prize which any reasonable person knows would be a kiss of death for the Nobel organization at least in the peace category.
Looking at the weak African countries invited, one can identify commonalities among them. They are all small countries population-wise. Gabon is just about one million and Guinea-Bissau is even less. Senegal, Liberia and Mauritania are in the region of between 15 and 20 million and these figures are by world and African standards, relatively small and they are all by economic standards, poor countries. Some people have suggested that they constitute countries from where immigrants flood the United States. That is not true. Gabon and Guinea-Bissau do not fit that picture. Senegal and Liberia have large diaspora communities in the USA and there are historical ties between Liberia and United States because the founding of Liberia in 1847 was by liberated African slaves. As for Mauritania, there are very few people from Mauritania in the USA. The only reason why Mauritania was included was to elevate Mauritania to the level of the Arab states that have established diplomatic ties with Israel. Bringing the dirt-poor Mauritania into the American orbit serves as a link with those Arab countries establishing ties with Israel.
The other foreign dimension for us in Nigeria is that four of the five countries are members of ECOWAS – namely Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Mauritania. The most surprising one of these countries is Senegal which has just elected a left wing government and had just closed down French military base in the country or perhaps they are looking for replacement for France because of the economic implications of the closure of the French military base. Gabon on the other hand has natural resources and is rich in oil, timber and other minerals and has a small population which if well run, should be a viable and stable country.
Nigeria needs to interrogate why countries in ECOWAS would take humiliating steps that could embarrass them and the region and Africa without first discussing it at the regional level and intimating Nigeria that had invested human and material resources in their stability. These are difficult questions to ask ourselves about non-diplomatic representation even at regional level if not at the global level. If we have had full functioning embassies with relevant intelligence officers, information would have reached our government about what the United States was going to be asking African states to do; we would have been in a position to influence the reaction of other African states at least those in our region because when an African state is embarrassed, we are all humiliated a little even if not directly but at least vicariously.
