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f you are a Nigerian, you think the most important issues of 2019 are whether the elections will be successful, who will win the presidential election, how soon the military will throw Boko Haram out of Baga, whether crude oil prices will rebound soon, whether the national economy will grow significantly this year, whether Central Bank of Nigeria will continue to artificially sustain the naira’s exchange rate at N360 to the dollar on the black market, whether workers will win the struggle for N30,000 a month minimum wage, whether ASUU’s “nationwide, total and indefinite” strike will end anytime soon, and whether government and the security forces will chase away bandits that have laid siege on most of the country. All these are important but I am not thinking about Nigerian issues today. I am thinking of the larger issues of the world, beside which many of our national problems look small indeed.
The world has many trouble spots, hot ones and cold ones. The hot ones for now include—in order of nearness to Nigeria— Libya, South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Occupied Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Somalia, which has been in turmoil since the overthrow of dictator Siad Barre in 1991, taught all Africans a lesson that linguistic, ethnic and religious homogeneity alone do not national harmony make. The most homogenous country in Africa has also been its most conflict ravaged, so what is the point in refusing to live peacefully with other communities?
South Sudan is the most graphic African lesson that secession is not the solution to problems, no matter how hard fought. Just like we have seen after every round of state creation in Nigeria, new majorities and new minorities always come up and the conflict continues. So it is with secession due to allegations of marginalization.
Bombs are not exploding in the world’s “cold” conflict areas right now but they could become hot at short notice and they can cause more havoc than the current hot zones. A few days ago, I saw Chinese President Xi Jinping on television reiterating his country’s desire to reunite with Taiwan at all costs. That has been standard Communist Party of China policy since 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang escaped from the mainland and pretended to “rule” China from Formosa island, now called Taiwan. The Chinese Peoples Liberation Army [PLA] will make mincemeat of Taiwan if it ever crosses the narrow water channel dividing the two countries, but the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet based in Japan and South Korea is there to prevent that. I am confident that they will find a peaceful way to resolve this problem because Henry Kissinger said in his memoirs that Chinese statesmen are the most patient in the world. Being products of a very old civilization, they think in terms of centuries, not years.
When the world’s oddest friends, President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un met in a Singapore hotel last year, the world was told that the Hermit Kingdom had agreed to denuclearize. Not so fast; Kim Jong-un said in his New Year address that his country will not do so until some conditions are met. At least he has stopped testing nukes across the Pacific, some of them provocatively fired above the heads of Japanese, and he symbolically demolished one test site.
Nearer to us, the war in Syria is winding down with the US pulling out and Arab regimes that sponsored the rebels are reopening their embassies in Damascus. President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is still in place, thanks to Russians, Iranians and Lebanese Hezbollah. Nearly half a million died, millions fled abroad, many millions are internally displaced and some cities mentioned in the Old Testament are in ruins. Syria is a world-wide lesson in epic folly; no one should ever again succumb to Western prodding and go to war in the name of removing a “dictator” and bringing about “democracy.” In the end they will leave you in the lurch.
Two years ago, most people’s view of the British was that they are calm, sober, considerate and calculating [I make an exception to their history of slave trading and colonial conquest], but see what they have done with Brexit. A system of government once regarded as the world’s smoothest is now in functional disarray and no one knows where it will all end. From all indications, the Brits will crash out of the European Union [EU] without a deal in March, its economy could go into a tailspin, and the Scots may renew their agitation to bolt away. A messy British exit might also cast a spell over the EU’s future. One can’t be sure that the EU’s German, French, Italian and Belgian originals will always stick together, not to mention the Spaniards, Greeks or the East European JJCs.
Which reminds me; why are many of the international groupings that dominated the news during my youthful days now in retreat? I understand that the Warsaw Pact and COMECON vanished with the collapse of the East Bloc, and the Commonwealth of Independent States [CIS] that succeeded the Soviet Union was stillborn. These days I don’t hear much about OECD; or the Non-Aligned Movement, which was once as prominent as the UN; Association of South East Asian Nations [ASEAN]; Arab League; Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC] or the Maghreb Union.
Where is the Arab Rejectionist Front, which once grouped Syria, Libya, Iraq and Algeria? I know that the East African Economic Community was dissolved long ago due to conflicts between Idi Amin, Julius Nyerere and Daniel arap Moi, but why is Southern African Development Coordination Conference [SADCC] comatose these days? ECOWAS too is not many making waves anymore; the Manor River Union is long gone and even the African Union [AU] is now a shadow of its former self.
I do not know if ANZUS [Australia-New-Zealand-US] military umbrella still exists. I haven’t heard about the North American Air Defense Command [NORAD] for a long time. NAFTA, which was signed by the US, Canada and Mexico with so much fanfare in the 1990s, is now imperiled by Donald Trump’s border wall. Little is heard these days of the Conference of the Americas or of the Caribbean Union. The Asia Pacific Forum too, which brings Asian and North American giants together, is in retreat now.
As we begin to round up the second decade of the 21st century, I am wondering when the world will ever come together to end the Occupation of Palestine. Must the people of Gaza live forever in cramped state-less ghettoes and be showered with Israeli missiles every now and then? Millions of Palestinians have lived in refugee camps in Lebanon since 1948; is that where they will reside forever? Must Kashmiris remain forever divided between India and Pakistan, with a border than not even a lizard can cross? Will the Dalai Lama ever return to Tibet, or must he forever live in exile in India?
Amid all our 2019 election worries, I urge Nigerians to spare a thought for population explosion and for climate change. Right now when we are just short of 200 million, our schools, our housing and our hospitals are inadequate; our roads are congested and jobs are very scarce. Our economy is hardly growing and the world may soon have no use for crude oil. What will happen when our number hits 400 million in 2050 as projected?
Spare a thought also for climate change. Some Pacific and Caribbean island nations are already preparing to be submerged under the sea, perhaps forever. In 5,000 short years, one third of the African continent transformed from a lush forest to the forbidding Sahara Desert that it is today. What if this desert marches southwards and takes over northern Nigeria? Millions of people will flee southwards and the farmers/herders’ conflict of today will look like child’s play. Suddenly, the APC-PDP showdown does not look like a serious problem anymore.
