For the purpose of context and full disclosure, let it be clear that I am who I am… and who I am has a profound bearing on how I think. I am a full-blooded Nigerian, a Hausa-Fulani millennial Muslim male riding the 21st Century African zeitgeist.
This set of circumstances, among others, gives me restless hope, perhaps to the point of idealistic naivete. I am who I am, and who I am means I have no option but to be full of hope even though this hope has been dashed before. The alternative is despair, and no one will admit despair without also conceding their soul to the dark side of the force.
The events of the past one month, with the military coup in Niger Republic at the centre stage, have thrown the fledgling government of Bola Tinubu into political disarray. President Tinubu, being who he is, seems intent on making a mark on the joint history of Nigeria and Niger as well as West African geopolitics. This is a crisis that has exposed Tinubu’s inexperience as a foreign policymaker having impulsively chosen to react as he did.
But Tinubu belongs to the June 12 school of political thought. He found himself assuming leadership of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the West African superpower as well as the ECOWAS bloc at a time military incursions into politics are making an alarming comeback in the region. Having taken command only two months ago, he most likely considers his handling of the Niger crisis to be a litmus test for his sagacity as an international statesman. Being who he is, he has been at the receiving end of military adventures in a way many of us can’t make claims to. It is more than likely that he finds the idea of complacency or weakness on his part as suicidal, and for the fact that Niger is by some standards considered the poorest country in the world, perhaps he believed that this was something he could start and finish over breakfast.
On their own part, the Nigerien coup leaders also made a few rash decisions they clearly are rethinking. Their own masculinity and bravado as military men was threatened and they decided to make it clear that they are not willing to bend to foreign diktat no matter the cost to themselves and Niger as a country. It also greatly helped that they appear to have a critical mass of popular support and goodwill.
Over the weekend, I saw pictures from a public demonstration in Niger with people holding up cardboard signs making their opinions known on the issue and its major participants. On one sign, the Bola in Tinubu’s name was struck off and replaced with the word “Ebola” overhead. On another, the same Bola was replaced with the word “Bobawa”. Reading the latter, I did not know when a tame snicker was let loose from my lips… then it snowballed into floodgates of laughter as it sunk in.
My mother’s people are “Kabawa”, the Hausa tribe now based in Argungu (in Kebbi) and they use the word “bobawa” rather interestingly. It first and foremost identifies someone who is non-Hausa-speaking, but it is also used as a derogatory word for someone who is simpleminded. In many cases, not speaking the Hausa language is considered a metaphor for cluelessness among them. But that is because many things require context to make any sense… and whoever does not speak Hausa may lack vital perspectives on the Hausa way of thinking and this defect may sentence one to the gallows of cluelessness at least when matters with relevance to the Hausa world are discussed.
It was funny because in the aftermath of the coup, the Nigerian leader acted like a kid who could not wait to test out his new toys. Not even the near-universal chorus of disapproval for this hardline response, or even the Senate withholding authorisation for the deployment of the Nigerian Armed Forces to Niger, or even the suspicion brewing within the Northern Nigerian establishment regarding the Niger affair seem to make any difference.
Lately, the ECOWAS Heads of State under Tinubu’s leadership ordered the bloc’s Committee of Defence Chiefs to activate the ECOWAS Standby Force and draw up actual invasion plans. This was at a time many have heaved a sigh of relief, believing that ECOWAS would change tack and go for de-escalation. I do not for a second doubt that Tinubu’s leadership in this crisis comes from a good place, if only because I have no option but to make hope the determinant of my assumptions, but he no doubt also came across as overzealous, too eager to stamp his authority, too eager to get a handle on his privileges as the commander-in-chief of Nigeria’s armies. It was funny because Tinubu seemed to live on the other side of infinity, outside the sociology of the Hausa world. This sentiment is tucked into the comical aspect of President Tinubu’s handling of the crisis and captured in the replacement of “Bola” with “Bobawa”.
But there are two sides to every infinity and Tinubu aptly exemplifies this. And for good measure, this is a person who wears the infinity symbol on his caps. Being who I am, I want to believe, and this might be that one long shot in the dark, an intuition that may be called absurd but also be transcendent that Tinubu means well. Yes, his own leadership style is emphatic on the sanctity of democratic rule and the “greater good”, and if you are willing to consider this, you would see how laughable some of the conspiracy theories out there are.
There are only too many charters and protocols out there, agreements Nigeria is party to by consent that advocate zero tolerance for unconstitutional takeover of political power and Tinubu is in reality only guilty of trying to hold up the commitments we made as a country, but in his own way. It is for granted that we all know and agree that coup, military or civilian-led, is an evil we should never entertain.
For all we know, the Nigerien coupists have a morally valid reason for this, but that is a door you leave open, under any circumstances whatsoever, at your own dire peril. If you at all let it be an acceptable option, for whatever reason under the sun, that someone(s) could wake up one day and subvert the state, taking authority simply because they found ways to dishonourably hack into and subsequently hijack this same authority, then you would have forfeited any hope of society that will make any kind of progress.
