It does appear that among the underdeveloped and badly governed nations of the world, what political scientists call ‘’state power’’ is now measured by the ability of a sitting government, usually led by a dictator or a person with ‘natural’ inclination to dictatorship, to arrest, abduct, kidnap or skyjack, Mossad-style, a political enemy number one from foreign soil and spirit him home to face trial, usually for trump up charges of terrorism, treason, felony, incitement to violence, etc. In carrying out such arrest, the government is ready to break international law, international convention and break the banks also, all in the efforts to prove that it too can do it just as one bad government had just shown to the world.
But while the Israeli intelligence from which this bravado is copied, usually take out those it considers the enemies of the Jewish nation, some modern-day rogue nations which carry out international terrorism on the world stage, are after individuals who are enemies of the regime in power at a particular time
As I will never tire of pointing out, in recent times, this new style of carrying out an outrage started with little Rwanda and its ‘holy dictator’, Paul Kagame, who plotted the abduction of his chief political rival, the well- known Paul Rusesabagina, the hero of the 1994 Rwandan genocide who had inspired the acclaimed 2004 Hollywood movie, ’’Hotel Rwanda’’, in Dubai and his being paraded before the media in Kigali, Rwanda, the next day in handcuffs. He was obviously abducted, drugged or tranquilized and conveyed in a private jet to Rwanda.
Up till now, the story has not been told about how Rusesabagina was lured away from his home in the USA to Dubai and tricked to board a flight that was supposed to take him to the neighbouring country of Burundi but which, instead, landed him in Rwanda in the hands of his worst enemies to face trial for the trump-up charge of terrorism. Was a woman or the promise of sex involved in the trap? The Rusesabagina kidnap, was, obviously, with the complicity and collaboration of the authorities in the UAE, is against international law.
Obviously, copying from the rogue government of Rwanda, the rogue government of Ukraine of which its leader, Alexander Lushachenko, has been in power for 30 years, plotted the skyjacking of an opposition journalist, Roman Protasevic in the full glare of the whole world. This one so ,outraged the West which wants to put a stop to another country or group staging such daring skyjacking and making air travel such an uncertain and dangerous undertaking by imposing flight bans on Ukraine. But Lushachenko had accomplished his goal by having capturing the enemy he so badly sought to quench opposition in his country.
We now come to our country, Nigeria, which has added itself to the comity of rogue nations by the abduction, last week, of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a group that has been agitating for the self-determination of the Igbos, which is not a criminal offense in the Nigerian Constitution. It is not yet known which African rogue government helped Nigeria to get its target while it is known that the UK, whose passport Kanu carries, looked away. It does not matter now who did what to facilitate Kanu’s arrest, ‘interception’, abduction, kidnapping or whatever and repatriation to Nigeria to face trial for jumping bail, terrorism and others.
What worries some of us to no end is why under-developed nations seem so eager and determined to copy bad examples and not good ones to develop their nations? As a developmentalist, I am always horrified by the enormous amounts that are deployed to the project of capturing political enemies by whatever means possible. If you bother to look into the books, you will be amazed that millions of dollars must have been committed to the Operation Intercept and Repatriate Kanu. If such sums are applied on providing develop projects in Ibo land that will go a long way in removing the sting from the agitation for Biafra. But people who are in power do not see things this way. They think that their narrow political end justifies the means.
As some cynical Nigerians have observed, if half of the determination and energy and resources deployed in the arrest of Kanu is put in addressing the real issues of Boko Haram terrorism, banditry, kidnappings, abductions and political tension in the land, those things would have been severely curtailed if not completely eliminated. But people in power do not see things that way. Sometime, they are just concerned with proving to doubters that the government has the power to get anyone from anywhere at any time to deal with him anyhow it wants and that’s all.
For us in Africa where opposition leaders are usually from tribes different from that of the sitting leader, the high-profile arrest and ill-treatment of dissidents like Kanu and Rusesabagina, increase rather than defuse political tension in the country. It is not yet known how the Ibo youths who see Kanu as a hero will react to his arrest, the gloating about how the feat was accomplished and his being put on trial for essentially a political offense when what is needed are deft political actions to put an end to the agitation for separation for the Igbo.
