Nigeria, through President Bola Tinubu, deserved better treatment than what it got at the swearing-in of South Africa’s President, Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa, for a second term in office on June 19, 2024. The unexpected and humiliating experience of Tinubu at the event should serve as a wake-up call for Nigeria to put its house in order to earn respect as the leading country on the African continent.
The ceremony was the climax of the general elections of May 29, in which the African National Congress (ANC) secured 159 out of the 400 seats in the National Assembly. The outcome meant that the ANC, hitherto the dominant party, would ally with others to form a government. To realise this, it had to go into an alliance with six other parties constituting about one-third of the parties in parliament, bringing the tally to 283 seats required to form a government. The coalition is led by the ANC, along with the second-largest party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), which got 22 per cent of the vote; Inkatha Freedom Party, Patriotic Alliance, Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, and GOOD, which each secured less than four per cent of the votes.
Expectedly, the swearing-in ceremony was attended by a retinue of world leaders that included President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, King Mswati III of the Kingdom of Eswatini, Cuba Vice President Salvador Valdés Mesa, Zimbabwean President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, Samia Hassan of United Republic of Tanzania, Côte d’Ivoire Vice President Tiemoko Meyliet Koné and Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo. But the optics of the ceremony invoked a humiliating treatment of Nigeria’s president, demoted to back roll in the roll call of leaders present at the occasion. The visuals showed clearly South Africa’s backslapping with other leaders while ignoring Nigeria’s president like an orphan.
The perceived contemptuous treatment of the Nigerian leader has become an issue in the public domain, invoking the immortal words of Nelson Mandela, who once warned that the rest of the world would not take Africa seriously if Nigeria did not put its house in order. Now even within Africa, no one does because of the poor quality of leadership that the country has produced since the inception of the Fourth Republic. South Africa which got its independence from white apartheid rule in 1994 has managed to stay on the democratic path despite challenges.
Nigeria has always had a dynamic foreign policy even when led by conservative leaders. For example, Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa broke diplomatic relations with France over the testing of an atomic bomb in the Sahara Desert in the 1960s. The Murtala/Obasanjo military administration stood against the superpowers to decolonise the continent. By dint of Nigeria’s effort, Angola got her independence and so was Zimbabwe. It funded ANC in South Africa and galvanised the entire civil society to support the cause of freedom in that country. Therefore, observers are of the view that no matter the quality of leadership in Nigeria, South Africa ought to give Nigeria the deserved respect. What has Nigeria done to South Africa to warrant the kind of ill-treatment that it has continued to get from South Africa? Nigerians have not only been victims of rapid xenophobic attacks but of visa discrimination. We expect South Africa to be truthful to itself and underscore Nigeria’s role in its march to freedom. It is well that President Ramaphosa met with President Tinubu in his hotel after the ceremony. What was more embarrassing was that when the Nigerian leadership had the opportunity of a meeting, he went off tangent in the conversation.
It is lamentable that despite the array of diplomacy experts in Nigeria, the incumbent government has continued to stumble in its foreign policy. Through an uninformed diplomacy within a few months in office, the president splintered the foremost West African intergovernmental body, the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS).
Currently, the government has again signed the so-called Samoa Agreement mainstreaming LGBTQ+ rights allegedly focusing on same-sex marriages, homosexuality, and lesbian practices that are offensive to our moral and religious sensibilities. Perhaps, the government may have been impelled to do so by the financial inducement awaiting consenting countries. This diplomatic faux pas is being shamelessly and ignorantly defended by the Minister of Information who argued that nothing in the agreement violates Nigerian extant laws. Recall that in 2014 the Nigerian National Assembly stood tall under the leadership of Senate President David Mark who told the Western powers and their ‘woke ideology’ to go to hell with their so-called aids over our refusal to accept their moral debauchery.
However, in the last election, we expected Ramaphosa to have stood down with his moral burden. A coalition government where the DA, its historical opponent, is a partner will disorientate the ANC from its liberation goals of black empowerment, which has largely been pursued in the breach. This reality is partly implied in President Ramaphosa’s inaugural address where he noted that “the people of South Africa have stressed that they are impatient with political bickering and the endless blame game among politicians and political parties…They want us to put their needs and aspirations first, and they want us to work together for the sake of our country.”
While a government of national unity is apposite given the situation, we are worried that economic policies may incline centrist anchors. The government must tread a fine line to avoid another cycle of historical betrayals of the immiserised masses of South Africa.
The post Nigeria deserved better treatment at Ramaphosa’s swearing-in appeared first on Guardian Nigeria News.