Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Chido Nwangwu is Publisher of USAfrica. Follow on Twitter @Chido247
USAfrica: What will Biden tell Tinubu, in New York? By Chido Nwangwu
In the recent and past history of Nigeria, the politician who has so quickly become its most controversial is President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
In a few days, he will have an opportunity. It will be one of his most important photo ops. It’s expected to be on September 19, 2023, in New York.
He’s scheduled to meet briefly with the U.S President Joe Biden, at the sideline of the United Nations General Assembly’s UNGA 78th session.
There’s no doubt that the rash of recent military coups in the west and central Africa subregions— especially in the Sahelian clashes and terrorism have caused major anxieties and complications for west Africa, the entire African continent, the superpowers and colonizing countries, namely, the United States, Russia, China, and France.
With the dynamics of events in and around Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger Republic and Gabon have come a flurry of characterizations of the regional ECOWAS and its new Chairman Nigeria’s president Bola Tinubu as being relatively clueless…. Especially, for Tinubu whose educational sojourn to Chicago State University has become a major embarrassment.
What will America’s Joey tell Nigeria’s Jagaban?
He should consider the facts of the dangerous situation of hunger, poverty, ethnic violence across Nigeria, governments’ sponsorships of criminal bigotries, promoting of stereotypes, ancient hatreds, election rigging, corrupt judiciary, voter intimidation and killing of voters and political opponents, Boko Haram and affiliated jihadists, Asari Dokubo’s squads hired by the Nigerian government from Buhari to Tinubu (openly endorsed by Tinubu who ushered Dokubo into the Villa and showed him to the podium and whatever remained of the indignities of the Nigerian presidency) to insult and threaten citizens!
Will Biden tell Tinubu that the identity and character of any nation are impacted by the company the leader keeps? And, the key choices and decisions he or she makes?
Will the Biden who stood up to the racially polarizing, shamelessly bigoted, Mandela-hating Republicans of the 1970s-1980s-1990s who supported apartheid in South Africa remind Nigeria’s President Tinubu that nepotism, ethnocentric zealotry, animus, insularity, petty grudges against certain sections/groups of Nigerians critically and morally damaged the legacy and historical worthiness of his predecessor, retired Gen. Muhammadu Buhari? The morose soldier Buhari who shall be remembered for running that presidency of small things!
Tinubu’s American identities and security profile prepared by the CIA, FBI, and the NSA for Biden should be a confetti of complicated dalliances and dubious transactions. It should make for an interesting read! They would have puzzled and raised more questions for Biden….
Lest I forget, on September 6, Nigeria’s Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) made one of its handful of ridiculous and asinine arguments in defending Tinubu’s qualifications to run for President during the February 2023 campaign by telling Nigerians that since Tinubu has been able to enter and exit the U.S, it suggests Tinubu has no criminal case or related matter of consequence to disqualify him. Lead person for the PEPC, Justice Tsammani said the judgement of the U.S District in Northern Illinois which ordered the forfeiture of Tinubu’s $460,000 in a hard drug-narcotics-related case was in “civil proceedings.” Quite interestingly, the Nigerian Judge claimed that Tinubu was not a party to the court decision!!
Pray, how does anyone (in this case, Bola Tinubu) get to pay the government of the United States almost one-half of a million U.S dollars for alleged criminal conduct while Nigeria’s 5-person election court Judges engage and swim in the slippery seas of solipsism and misleading meandering as they struggle(d) to defend Tinubu!
It’s interesting that Tinubu seems perennially engaged in one form of mendacious fix to another, monthly, weekly….
By the way, what will Tinubu tell Biden?
•Dr. Chido Nwangwu, author of the forthcoming 2023 book, MLK, Mandela & Achebe: Power, Leadership and Identity, is Founder of the first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper on the internet, USAfricaonline.com, and established USAfrica in 1992 in Houston.He has appeared as an analyst on CNN, ALJazeera, SKYnews, and served as an adviser on Africa business to Houston’s former Mayor Lee Brown. Follow him on Twitter @Chido247
