TINUBU IS COURTING DISASTER

Akin Ojumu

At the expiration of their one-week ultimatum given to the Nigerien military junta who ousted President Mohamed Bazoum in a bloodless coup d’etat in July, Bola Tinubu convened a meeting of ECOWAS leaders in Abuja on Thursday. 

In a statement released following the meeting, the West African leaders called for the immediate activation and deployment of the regional standby force to restore constitutional order in Niger Republic. The Tinubu led group unnecessarily heightened tension in the region by ordering their militaries to get locked and loaded ready for war.

Hellbent on proving his detractors wrong, Bola Ahmed Tinubu is foolishly leading his fellow out of touch ECOWAS leaders in a pissing contest with the Nigerien coup plotters. To establish himself as the Commander-in-Chief of Nigerian Armed Forces, and not merely the boss of a mob of violent hooligans and bloodthirsty miscreants, the Aso Rock squatter is flexing his atrophied muscles in front of a global audience.

Sadly, there’s nothing Tinubu can do to cover his crooked antecedents. The tough guy routine is a façade that won’t rid him of the stench of his thuggish past. In fact, the harder he tries to act tough, the more pathetically weak he actually looks. 

Worse still, the fact is, this decrepit of a man is being taken for a ride. The pretend leader of Nigeria is merely a pawn in the hands of the far more dexterous leaders of Western nations. The puppet masters are pulling the strings and Tinubu is twerking to the tune and he doesn’t even know it.

With the mountain of challenges that Nigeria is presently contending with, one would think that the president of Nigeria will be laser focused on solving the nation’s myriads of problems on his hand and not allow himself to be sidetracked. That’s not the case with Bola Tinubu. Rather than working hard to fix Nigeria’s problems, the hardly working impostor is poking his nose in other people’s business.

As Machiavelli once wrote, “People may go to war when they will, but cannot always withdraw when they like.” Without provocation or invitation, Tinubu is recklessly pushing Nigeria into a situation where the country will get mired in an endless quagmire. This geriatric wants to plunge Nigeria into a war without end that it cannot win. 

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat them. All those who think a war with Niger Republic will be a walk in the park need to have their head examined. They should go and ask George W. Bush how the American invasion of Iraq turned out. A war that Americans were told would be prosecuted within a couple of weeks, did not end until 10 years later claiming close to 5,000 American lives.

It's always a bad idea to go into a gunfight with people who have nothing to lose; especially if it’s a fight that can be avoided. This is particularly true if you are a nation hanging on to life by a thread. No sane leader sends his troops to tango with suicide vest wearing enemy soldiers dedicated to a cause they believe to be righteous. Well, unless you are a diaper-clad octogenarian with full-blown dementia.

When the rich and powerful declare war, it’s the children of the poor and powerless that go and die. If ECOWAS goes to war with Niger Republic, Bola Tinubu and his fellow agitators will have no skin in the game. None of their children will bleed or die on the warfront. They aren’t going to weep over any broken bone and lost life.

“Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat – those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.” Given his bellicose insistence on taking on the Nigerien coup plotters, it appears that Bala Blu Tinubu has been made mad by the gods and prepared for destruction. 

Ebola Tinubu’s belligerent posture will not end well for Nigeria. If this man succeeds in pushing the country into a war with its northern neighbor, Nigerians should brace themselves for an unmitigated disaster.