Obama and the Politics of Boycott – By Phil Tam-Al Alalibo

Posted by admin American Politics, Articles, Columnists, NNP Columnists, P Monday, July 1st, 2013

Obama and the U.S. First Lady and President Zuma and One of the Several First Ladies of South Africa

By Phil Tam-Al Alalibo | NNP | July 1, 2013 – As the President of the United States of America, Mr. Barack Obama, tours three African countries, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania, the media has been gleefully awash by the exclusion of Nigeria from this latest African tour. It will be recalled that Obama’s first trip to sub-Sahara Africa as president was to neighboring Ghana, a gesture many considered an affront to the self-proclaimed giant of Africa, Nigeria, given its strategic importance in the grand scheme of things, especially, in the context of African geo-politics and U.S. political and economic interests in the region. I remember that the trip to Ghana was the innate source of simmering controversy as many a pundit opined that the snub underscored the diminishing importance of Nigeria to the powers that be. Consequentially, it became evident that Obama’s trip to Ghana was used as an opportunity to send a critical political message to Nigerian leaders to clean up their act or risk being sidelined in the political equation.

Of particular concern to the U.S. was the utterly unacceptable attitude of Nigerian leaders towards corruption. It was of the rigid opinion that the Nigerian government was only paying lip service to the war against corruption and ought to up the antes in this regard, enforce its criminal laws and hold politicians accountable for their stewardship and actions.

A few years since, the reasons for boycotting Nigeria in this August trip remain the same but amply compounded by the recent pardon granted to the convicted felon in the person of Mr. Diepreye Alamieyeseigha and his co-travelers in the unsavory journey of high corruption. Though the U.S. has added the Boko Haram threat emanating from the north as one of the main reasons for the boycott, it is clear to the keen observer that rampant corruption, lack of leadership of Nigerian leaders, extra judicial killings, the retarded growth of democracy among others, are central to the boycott. In many ways, the U.S. has attempted to pass on the message to the Nigerian leaders to live up to expectations of its masses and the international community or face the dare consequences of political marginalization and being branded a failed state.

All of these actions of the U.S. towards the failed leaders in Nigeria would have been noble and applauded if not for the troubling age-long duplicity of the American state in its selective ostracizing of countries deemed corrupt and thus unworthy of a presidential visit. We should not forget in a hurry that it was Mubarak’s Egypt that Mr. Obama first visited to occasion his famous speech of reconciliation (or apology) to the Muslim world in spite of the fact that he (Mubarak) presided over one of the most corrupt and undemocratic regimes the world had even seen.

During his tyrannic 30-year reign that cumulated in his un-ceremonious overthrow in February 2011, just two years after that presidential visit, Mubarak and his cronies defrauded the Egyptian state of more than $32 billion, imprisoned and murdered several political opponents including those in Tahir Square seeking accountability and calling for his overthrow. In the last fifty years, successive American governments including Mr. Obama’s government have willing supported this corrupt and inimical human-rights abusing monster of a government to the tune of $2 billion each year, resources that where either embezzled or used to further oppress the innocent citizens of Egypt, or both. The paramount question thus is; where is Mr. Mubarak at the moment, who, only in 2009 was on the same elevated platform with Mr. Obama in a much herald presidential visit?

What is profoundly puzzling about this presidential visit (to Egypt) is the fact that there were far more moderate Arab/Muslim states toeing the line of democracy and accountability to its people Mr. Obama could have chosen to render his speech to the Muslim world. Indonesia, a country where Mr. Obama spent some time, though, not an Arab state, is the largest Muslim country in the world and would have provided a befitting platform for his speech. Such an act would have immensely encouraged that country and given it international recognition for being a responsible and responsive government.

Similarly, if abundance of corruption, lackadaisical and inept leadership has kept Mr. Obama out of Nigeria, the mind wonders what he was doing in Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive and corrupt governments in the world, a country that has consistently violated international law and standards by denying more than half its population from undertaking a simple exercise of driving. The Kingdom always certainly ranks top in the human rights abuse index with its detested caste system where some citizens and foreign residents are “appraised” based on race, religion, nationality and ethnicity. It should not be confounding that the Kingdom’s judicial system avails itself of the dubious distinction of been one of the least transparent in the world as it routinely denies defendants opportunities to legal defense and summarily executes prisoners without adherence to due process. In spite of these perplexing aberrations that have catapulted the Kingdom into doldrums of human existence, it was chosen for a presidential visit in June 2009 where Mr. Obama reported bowed to King Abdullah.

At the moment, Mr. Obama is in South Africa, a crime ridden country awash in an assortment of chronic official corruption and xenophobia that climaxed in the brutal extra judicial killings of hundreds of foreigners, mostly from fellow African countries in an orgy of sustained violence that erupted a few years ago. Only a few weeks ago, President Zuma (a man grossly lacking in personal integrity) was condemned by the international community for his government’s brutal repression and murder of mostly black miners exercising their constitutional rights through protest for better working conditions. If Mr. Obama’s boycott of Nigeria is predicated on the excesses of the Nigerian leadership and its inability to curb corruption, the antecedent has indeed negated any impact such an action may have and must only be seen for its worthless cosmetic value.wp_posts