If you are not a Russian, then of course you know by now that Volodymyr Zelenski is the reigning darling of the Western world. The former comedian-turned-politician earned this status by being the President of Ukraine at the time that Russia began what the Western media call “its adventure in Europe”. Earlier, it had annexed Crimea in what the Western media portray as a tacit quest to re-establish the USSR that Mikhail Gorbachev dismantled 32 years ago.
Western powers established numerous outposts in Ukraine in their determination to keep their eyes on Russia. It did not worry Vladimir Putin, Russia’s hawkish president, who enjoys a Soviet style of democracy famous with Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and deposed Ali Bongo of Gabon. When Putin sensed that Ukraine was joining NATO, he did what Joe Biden of the US would have done if Mexico was in alliance with Cuba. Russia forgets that only the West reserves the right to bully others as enforcers of democracy.
Russia would learn the hard way as Western powers soon gingered Zelensky to stick his tongue out to Putin. The rest of the story is written in the chronicles of Western-justified wars like the one US waged against Iraq and Saddam Hussein for its mythical Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD); or against Libya and Syria.
Zelensky is fighting to save his country from being annexed by Russia. He crisscrosses rich nations asking for arms to prosecute his war. His appeal has garnered more success than any appeal to end hunger, starvation and inequality anywhere else in the world. It has had more success than Nigeria’s or ECOWAS’ appeals for weapons to defeat religious insurgents. Literally, everyone in Europe and the “democratic” world have aligned with Ukraine. Those who disagree are forbidden from officially saying so.
With a world struggling for economic rebound after the COVID pandemic, Russia is yet subsidising the senseless war in Ukraine. Western megaphones gloatingly report how Russia has failed to win the war within stipulated time as if the Kremlin shared its war strategy and timeline with their greedy proprietors.
From helplessly watching his country decimated by Russia, Zelensky takes occasional diplomatic mendacity to Western capitals to buy more weapons. On a recent trip to Ottawa, he left a $650m hole in the Canadian economy and a political casualty in Ottawa. He addressed the Canadian parliament where its Speaker, Anthony Rota, invited a “Second World War Ukrainian Veteran”, 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, to take a bow. Rota had introduced Hunka as a Ukrainian hero. Zelensky saluted the unsung “hero” without knowing of his Nazi part. Hunka’s World War II unit had trained under the Nazis. Neither Roka, Zelensky nor Trudeau were privy to this until newspapers dug out the truth.
When Canadians got wind of the gist, they insisted that their speaker must step down. It was either him or the government. Last Tuesday, Roka tendered his resignation ending a four-year illustrious career. He threw in the towel on the grounds, as he put it: “The work of this house is above any of us,” regretting what he called “my error”.
Here is one Western grand-standing that is very unlikely to make an impact on Godswill Akpabio. His many gaffes within a short stint as President of the Nigerian Senate led to fake reports that he might be removed when the Senate resumed from its first recess. He has returned to chair the screening of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBNs) top shots after letting it slip that the clerk was to share a N28m windfall as “tokens” to members for their recess.
Reports that it might end his career turned out to be as true as Western media’s propaganda of Ukraine gaining grounds against Russia. If Rota had been a Nigerian official, he would have quoted religious scriptures and mobilised the tribal army to stay on. Not only do Nigerian officials have a thing against resigning for faults, they believe that they are incapable of making mistakes – erring is one of the faults of the underprivileged. The elite are incapable of making mistakes, except that an unusual aberration appeared on the political horizon last week. While Rota was tendering his resignation for an error beyond his power, David Umahi, Nigeria’s works minister, apologised to – wait for it – staff of his ministry. Weeks after being deployed to the ministry, Umahi, a former governor, was so bored on the job that he left his opulent office to usurp the position of the gatekeeper for the ministry for a few minutes. He locked the main entrance against stragglers, put the keys in his coat pocket and returned to watch events from his CCTV while sipping coffee. He was hoping for a repentant workforce on its knees pleading for leniency from the almighty minister. Instead, the workers reversed the trick and locked him in. He could have called in the military, the police or the overzealous members of the Department of State Services (DSS) to beat the hell out of them, spray them with teargas and hit global headlines. Instead, he ate the humble pie by officially apologising for treating his workers with utter disrespect, stripping them of their dignity and usurping the job of human resources.
Seeing the minister’s contrition, the workers evened up the score by lecturing him on his role and apologising for making him a prisoner in his own office.
While a tit-for-tat converted Umahi, the Nigerian democratic landscape is still littered with elected and appointed officials who see themselves as God’s deputies. One of them, Umaru Bago, Governor of Niger State, threatened prospective demonstrators with detention, banishment to their first generation. This followed rumours that indigenes of Lapai might protest the conversion of Shiroro Hotel into a satellite campus of the IBB University Teaching Hospital.
Speaking in Hausa, Bago threatened that if the people “make good on their threats, they would have known who Bago is” adding that, “I will not only lock them up, I will lock up their parents too, without a shred of doubt, and I will chase them permanently out of Lapai.”
Those who wonder why cops hold the relatives of fugitives hostage have now heard it from a sitting governor – vicarious punishment is an official policy of the state. The irony is that Bago’s influence covers only Minna and a few environs. The rest is under the control of insurgents. Now his citizens know that his executive power is reserved for the lawful protester, not the armed insurgent.
In Edo State, one of the two states where deputy governors are in official quarantine from their principals, a lawyer was allegedly beaten black and blue by DSS officials for insisting on being present at the interrogation of his client. When he attempted the old threat of telling the president of his ordeal – they simply asked him to make their day, adding, “We are the president’s boys.”
With Nigeria, it’s always, one step forward – five steps backwards with democracy, democratic language and ethos, but Nigerians are not Ukrainians, and the supervisors of democratic culture really don’t care how the rules apply.
