Why France Backs Boko Haram

Why France Backs Boko Haram (2)

There is also a slight reconfiguration of the pecking order and hunting ground. With the US and its over 500,000 troops permanently stationed abroad too preoccupied with its de facto occupation of the Middle East and the South China Sea while Russia and China struggle to maintain their hegemony over their former communist cohorts in Eastern Europe and Latin America, Africa is the richest available colony albeit with too large a population. Britain and France being the remaining two superpowers are expected to contest for control of the continent.

However, the British are now so empire-weary that they would not even join the European Union and are even allowing the Scots to vote out of the United Kingdom. The islanders who once ruled a territorial domain on which the sun never sets have learnt their lessons about the toil of global hegemony. Unfortunately, they are increasingly becoming the choirboys and lapdogs of the USA in a bid to pick the crumbs from America’s bloody wars for domination of the conflict-soaked but resource-rich Middle East.

This leaves the African stage almost exclusively for France hence its rapid generation and inflammation of conflicts and troop surges across the continent. Tellingly, the French have simultaneously set the most ambitious economic goals on record. On a recent visit to Nigeria, Ms Nicole Bricq, France’s Minister of Foreign Trade attended the signing of a Strategic Agreement between Schneider Electric and Mikano International Limited. Schneider is the leading French company in the field of electricity and renewable energy in Nigeria with a turnover of $100 million per annum. She announced that there are 1800 French firms exporting finished goods to Nigeria and France has set a target to gain a 50 per cent increase. The reason, she ominously stated, was that “If you are not in Nigeria, you are not in Africa.”

Yet, from 1902 when the Compagnie Francaise de l’Afrique Occidentale (CFAO) was established in Nigeria, there are now over 100 French companies “in” the country mainly engaged in exploitation of hydrocarbons, agricultural resources and communication facilities. Famous French brands include Total, Peugeot, Lafarge as well as Alcatel and Sagem which were instrumental in the setting up of GSM telephony and the National Identity Card. Others such as Michelin in Port-Harcourt produces unprocessed rubber from its rubber plantations and exports tires at exorbitant costs. Over this past century, the balance of trade remains heavily tilted in favour of France. In 2006, French companies exported $3.2 billion worth of goods to Nigeria but imported just $1.9 billion of the country’s petroleum products and $49 million of raw materials such as rubber and cocoa. Similarly, about 4500 French firms supply the basic needs of all Francophone African countries from apparels to cosmetics and even currency notes.

While the French desperation to corner more of Africa’s abundant resources at the cost of lives and livelihoods is attaining new heights, the callous, racist and selfish trend is not new or unexpected. For instance, a 2008 paper titled Conflict and Cooperation in the Global Arena: A Historical Perspective of Nigeria-France Relations, 1905-1985 by O. Ekanade published by African Journals Online concluded that “The historical landmarks in their diplomatic ties are suggestive of the iron laws that govern international relations. These laws favour the strong and sanction the weak. France’s pre-eminent status in the international arena during this period, 1905-1985 dwarfed Nigeria’s voice and actions and ensured that Nigeria pandered to the whims and caprices of France.”

The PhD thesis titled Franco-Nigerian Business Relations: The Emergence of International Social and Commercial Configurations, Exchange, Uncertainty and Identity Strategy submitted to the University of Paris-Diderot by Marjolaine Paris provides greater details about the negative nature of French interaction with Nigerians over the past century. In it, Ms Paris established among other things that, “Inequality in the extension of privileges, social benefits, official treatments at the level of French expatriates, on the one hand, and their Nigerian counterparts, on the other, is another problem. It is at this level of where an expatriate comes from (ethnic factor), status of the expatriate, superiority/inferiority questions that breed untold animosities among Franco-Nigerian economic operators.”

According to her, the problem is that the French businesses, like many others, are only interested in money making but not much in the welfare or solving the domestic problems of the host community. This is an issue that Government is yet to meaningfully address in its economic calculations. This is also why there has been frequent tension between the petroleum-producing communities and oil giants in Nigeria. The oil companies are yet to reckon with the need to factor social development of their host communities as part of their business objectives. She therefore posited that “It is no longer sufficient to reckon with the obligations created by business contracts signed. In fact, future business contracts should specifically provide for social development of host communities.”

The Nigerian government and indeed all African countries under the aegis of the African Union (AU) can and must checkmate France’s current insidious influence in the country and on the continent.  The first step is Nigeria should demand the immediate cessation of French backing for Boko Haram, MEND and all other insurgents working in or against the country and an undertaking that France will pay compensation for every life and limb lost to their terrorists, restore the tens of thousands of homes and social facilities destroyed and provide scholarships for all school-age out-of-school children in the frontline states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa and across the Niger-Delta.

Secondly, the AU should pass an immediate resolution to send away all the 60,000 so-called French peacekeepers and other military personnel since African troops in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere have proved capable of doing a sincere job at a fraction of the cost. This is the only way to eliminate the current high tension in African-French relations in the long run and also engender accommodation and mutual respect between the two parties.

The third step is for Nigeria and Africa as a whole to review all existing political pacts and economic agreements with France and French firms to enable rapid industrialisation and sorely needed employment generation in the world’s poorest but most endowed continent. Under the revised rules of engagement, these companies and other multinationals should no longer be permitted to exploit and export raw materials but to create a value-chain by fully processing these resources to end-products in industries in Nigeria or elsewhere in Africa. Politically, the French Intelligentsia value human liberty and democracy but just for themselves. France was the first country in the world to sponsor a coup against democracy when it propped up military regimes following the annulment of Algeria’s elections which brought the FIS to power in 1991. The 150,000 Algerians killed in subsequent protests is only a fraction of the one million lives Algeria lost in its war of independence from France.

Finally, failing any of these, Nigeria should break off relations with France. In 1961, when Nigeria broke off relations with the country over its devastating atomic weapons tests in the Sahara desert in neighbouring Niger Republic, it not only ended such crimes against humanity on African soil but inspired the whole continent. The incumbent President Francois Hollande of France is going ahead with the machinations in spite of the disclosures but he would have to compromise a whole lot more Nigerians than the diminishing drug-driven maniacal death squad codenamed Boko Haram. Too, following Professor Olaghere’s public revelations, Hollande and his horde including our own French connections may expect the tens of thousands murdered, orphaned, widowed, maimed, bereaved, displaced, dispossessed or even those just distressed by the news from afar to ask the Almighty God for justice. Worse still, they are putting their beautiful country and its mostly kind-hearted and poetic people at risk of meeting a fate more humiliating than Nazi Germany suffered in 1945. Weakened by excessive wining, dining and hedonism the aging French population cannot even hope to recover as swiftly and as superbly as the Germans did over the past 55 years. However, if the international community fails to impede and bring them to justice here and now, they will surely pay Hereafter.

The outlook for Africa is also not too good as at now. The Nigerian tragedy is that if we keep careless, compromised and compromising leaders rather than courageous, fair and just ones, the French conspiracy against our country and the entire continent is halfway achieved. In fact, this is not even an era for clueless, incompetent or inexperienced hands at any level of government. As Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State recently said after his second but last meeting with President Jonathan: “This is war!”