European and American businesses are relocating to China. Most goods today are produced in or around China. It is dirty politics to say we should ignore such a big player in the international business world. Two: China is one of Nigeria’s biggest trading partners – and the potential is there that, very soon, it could even become our biggest trading partner buying not only crude oil but also agricultural and other products.
Three: China, with a population of over a trillion people, is a vast market; if we want to diversify our economy from its decades of over-reliance on crude oil export and seek other windows of opportunities, we cannot but look in the direction of China. China is also a country awash with surplus cash to invest and is actually investing everywhere, including in the United States. According to some statistics, that country is the current highest investor in Africa. Four: China is a military super-power; one able to hold in check the self-acclaimed “policeman of the world” i.e. the United States of America.
It is a nuclear weapons-bearing country and a permanent member of the Security Council of the United Nations. If Nigeria is serious with its campaign to join the ivy league of permanent members of the UN Security Council, it must have warm relations with all the current members of the exclusive club. A veto from one of the five members of the club will put an end to our ambition in that respect. What is more, recent reports have it that there are 400 Nigerians languishing in jail-houses in China. Reports also say that 80 percent of the crimes committed by Africans in China are committed by Nigerians and that 80 percent of the crimes so committed by Nigerians are drug-related. These are damning statistics. Before the Chinese authorities think of slamming a UK-like £3000 bond on visa-seeking Nigerians to China, I think it makes sense for a high-powered delegation from our country to visit China to sort out things. I expect the president’s trip to be able to bring reprieve to some of our folks languishing in prisons in China. It is possible that not all of them are guilty. I expect the president to meet the Nigerian community in China and implore them to respect the laws of their host country.
I expect the Nigerian delegation to also return home to plug some of the loop-holes which desperate
Nigerians exploit at our departure points at home to bring the country to ridicule abroad. I expect Jonathan to return from China sobered by the failure of successive Nigerian governments, his own inclusive, to provide enabling environment for Nigerians to stay and thrive at home and reverse the desperation to escape abroad, which has cast a slur on, and blighted on our image virtually everywhere. Before returning home, I also expect the president to attend to the complaints of our envoy in China that the embassy is often hamstrung to help Nigerians who need help in China. And, pray, what is the use of an embassy that cannot provide minimum help to citizens abroad? Of what value is a country that abandons its citizens to their best devices in a foreign land? Regrettably, the story is the same with our embassies all over. Abandoned, disillusioned, disoriented and assailed on all fronts, Nigerians abroad are often pushed to commit crimes, even if they were not so minded in the beginning. If Jonathan’s trip to China satisfactorily addresses these issues, I will consider it a success.
Jonathan, to my mind, started on a right footing in China; his reported address at a breakfast meeting he had with African envoys to China was well crafted. The Nigeria leader was quoted by his Special Adviser on
Media and Propaganda, sorry, Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati, as saying, “President Jonathan reaffirmed his conviction that African countries needed to strengthen their institutions of democratic governance to guarantee political stability and sustained development. He said democratic governance ought to be nurtured and encouraged until it takes firmer root across the continent, adding that the African Union must continue to stand against unconstitutional changes of government in member-states. The president regretted recent political developments in Egypt and called for a speedy return by the country to constitutional order...” Great speech, if you asked for my rating of the president’s address. Jonathan’s stance on Egypt may be unpopular with a great number of Egyptians and the Nigerian opposition and pro-democracy\civil society activists but we all know where he is coming in from. First, he is rehashing the African Union opposition to extra-constitutional change of government on the continent. Secondly, he is sounding notice to those at home who have been making statements that can be interpreted to support, even encourage or incite, military take-over that his administration is not kindly disposed to such an illegal route to power. I have no problems with that at all even as I have no qualms about “People’s Power”, as they say, if truly the people are sovereign as elementary political theory sets them out to be.
But I wonder how it could be lost on Jonathan’s speech writers that the president would be guilty of not practising what he preaches. Or is the president’s speech in China meant only for foreign consumption? If so, fine; but if not, it indicts Jonathan silly. Is Jonathan allowing, not to talk of encouraging or strengthening “institutions of democratic governance to guarantee political stability and sustained development” at home? Is he allowing, not to talk of encouraging or nurturing, “democratic governance... until it takes firmer root” in Nigeria? If a vox populi is conducted in Nigeria today, not a few citizens will indict the president on this score. Recent events in Rivers state stand out as a sore thumb in this regard. The president’s spin doctors have tried to distance him from the patently undemocratic shenanigans unfolding before our very eyes in
Rivers state and around its governor, Rotimim Amaechi, but I am certain many of those aides in the privacy of their homes would ask God for forgiveness for the half-truths and outright lies they have had to spin in the course of official duty. The ignoble acts may have been planned in secret but thank God its execution has been in the open, before our very eyes. And Nigerians are a discerning lot. I am not happy when this president is made to look cheap; especially when it is absolutely unwarranted. I feel sadder still when those who provide the ammunitions for a vicious opposition to ruthlessly exploit to their maximum advantage are those who parade themselves as the president’s men. Are these really friends or foes? Mr. President should try and find out; but who will bring this to his attention? As MKO Abiola would say, with friends such as those milling around Jonathan, no one needs an enemy!
I will state a few reasons why, were Jonathan to go wash in Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, or were he to go wash in Jordan seven times, and after that apply the best perfumes of Arabia, he will not come clean of allegations that he is the instigator of the destruction of democratic institutions playing out in Rivers state. One: Jonathan’s wife some years back had an open confrontation with Amaechi over the governor’s constitutional assignment of ruling Rivers state. Jonathan promised a committee over the issue; till date, nothing has been heard of the outcome. Two: The same First Lady visited Rivers state recently where she was guest of one or some of the anti-Amaechi legislators who were at the centre of last week’s mayhem at the Rivers State House of Assembly.
Three: In the hop-la that attended the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, the president has openly taken sides with the Gov. Jonah Jang faction. This he has done severally by action and by words. Four: Amaechi has been suspended by the PDP and Jonathan, as leader of the party, has not deemed it fit as the father of all in the party, to intervene. Rather, recently when Amaechi threatened to quit the PDP, a statement purportedly put out by the Presidency urged the governor to do so expeditiously. Five: The president cannot claim not to have read or heard of all the petrol that one of his Ministers, Wike, had been pouring on the Rivers state fire. It is not on record that he has called the Minister to order. We can go on and on.
I am not unaware that politicians do disagree everywhere; but in other climes that we should imitate, they find decent ways to go about it. The way we are doing ours here in Nigeria debases the highest office in the land. I am amused when presidential aides who descend into the gutter to fight political opponents turn round to accuse their opponents of disrespecting the president. Respect begets respect. If you live in a glass house, don’t throw stones!
Source: Tribune
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