BIDEN BINS DESPERATE BUHARI AS NIGERIA BURNS:

Over the weekend, respected columnist & ex-Editorial Board chairman of Guardian newspaper, Sonala Olumhense confirmed a story that was making the rounds in Washington DC newsrooms all of last week.

It was that the US President Joe Biden and his Vice, Kamala Harris were avoiding a zoom meeting with Nigeria’s President Buhari; and that the Biden Administration had little interest in series of requests for help by Buhari to deal with growing insecurity & loss of lives and...

property in Nigeria.
In the words of Olumhense; “…Buhari could not get a meeting with Vice-President Kamala Harris, let alone Mr. Biden. He could not speak with either official even by telephone, although both had in March spoken to the leaders of Kenya, Democratic...

Republic of Congo and President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa. The talk in Washington is that Buhari had become dispensable, inconspicuous and irrelevant, because of his policies at home and abroad.

And of course, Buhari sent to Washington DC for five years a man (Sylvanus Nsofor) who was so old it was unclear he knew where he was, let alone why he was there”.
This was why we all saw Buhari in a zoom meeting last week with US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken (an insult in

itself as Blinken isn’t US president) pleading with the US to relocate the AFRICOMM (US-African Command) from its base in Stuttgart, Germany to Nigeria. Blinken made the right, diplomatic noises and massaged Buhari’s ego but it was a firm “No”.

USA is pulling-back from overseas military adventures and just last month, Biden announced that he was ending USA’s over-20 years involvement in Afghanistan, calling it the “endless war”.

That pull-out has started on May 1. So, an appeal from Buhari to America to send its troops to another endless arm-wrestle with Boko Haram & other faceless groups mushrooming allover Nigeria is something America has no appetite for.

Equally, the Biden administration know too well that the Buhari govt has never demonstrated commitment to the task, or competence in dealing with terrorism. Buhari hardly reads the papers he signs, and never took human rights seriously.

They also know too well he has nurtured corruption and nepotism at home; cosied-up to renegade, tribal & ethnic interests while somehow hoping that everyone around the world was also deceived.

But everyone saw in the past couple of months for instance, when he finally changed his service chiefs and moved swiftly to protect them from being indicted for war crimes by converting them into “ambassadors.”

Also last week, the Chandler Good Government Index (CGGI), which ranks countries according to government capabilities and outcomes, placed Nigeria as the third-worst in the world, ahead only of Zimbabwe and Venezuela!

Sadly for Buhari, the crude oil that for so many decades has sweetened the relationship between various, corrupt Nigerian governments and the Western world, is suddenly not in demand anymore.

Most Western countries are either abandoning fossil fuels altogether and transiting to electric or wind power which are mainstays of clean, environment-friendly energy.

Holed-up in his sprawling Abuja palace and disconnected from the reality of his imploding country, the man Buhari is looking increasingly like an emperor without clothes.

Surrounded by sychopants, he has developed selective hearing and eyesight, as the body count in the country of almost 200m people averages 350 people killed, maimed, bludgeoned and kidnapped from their homes on a daily basis.

America knows too well that Buhari’s cry for help is actually not for his country, but for himself, cronies & family; as the evil cocktail of Fulani herdsmen/bandits, pocket-terrorists and Islamic zealots they helped nurture since 2015, have now grown to become a genie...

which cannot be put back in the bottle and is instead about to swallow him up.
America knows Buhari has little consideration for the country he was elected to lead. Except to turn in into a caliphate of sorts.

© Emma Nwaneri

Author of Once Upon A Woman, Fools’ Paradise.