By Dr. Olusegun B. Abejide
It is utterly appalling that Nigeria, the most populous Black nation on Earth, has remained disturbingly silent regarding the unconscionable genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people. While the international community has rightly condemned the Zionist regime’s brutal occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Nigeria’s deafening silence is a shameful dereliction of its moral duty.
The Nigerian government’s inaction is all the more galling, given that both Israelis and Palestinians are our brothers and sisters. They are all our people, bound to us by unbreakable threads of shared ancestry, culture, and the bitter legacy of colonial oppression. For Nigeria to turn a blind eye to the sufferings of the Palestinian people is an unforgivable betrayal of our deepest principles.
One can only hope that this reprehensible silence does not stem from the poisonous “Christian and Muslim” divide that has plagued parts of our society. Such religious sectarianism has no place in a conflict where the fundamental human rights and dignity of an entire people are being trampled. Nigeria must find its voice and join the international chorus demanding justice, freedom, and self-determination for the Palestinians.
South Africa, which waged its own heroic struggle against the racist apartheid regime, has admirably taken a stand against the Israeli government’s apartheid policies. As a continental leader, Nigeria has a solemn obligation to follow that ethical example on the world stage. No more silence, no more complicity – a resolute condemnation of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people must be pronounced. The conscience of black people everywhere demands it.
No amount of denialism can obscure the stark reality that Israeli forces have killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, including many children, over decades of occupation. Millions have been driven into squalid refugee camps and open-air prisons like Gaza. Their land has been steadily devoured by illegal Israeli settlements. This is more than just a political conflict – it is a systematic campaign of dehumanization aimed at erasing Palestinian identity and nationhood.
On this, the fundamental human rights issue of our time, Nigeria’s voice has been missing from the global calls to end the oppression. Our government has failed to push for enforcement of the reams of United Nations resolutions condemning Israel’s flagrant violations of international law in the Occupied Territories.
No more silence, no more complicity – a resolute condemnation of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people must be pronounced by Nigerian leaders. The conscience of Black people everywhere, who have known the dehumanizing injustice of subjugation, demands it.
We cannot remain on the sidelines as an entire population is denied its basic freedoms and human dignity. As the “Giant of Africa,” Nigeria has an influence that reverberated across the world during our anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggles. Our moral voice carried weight then, and it could be a clarion call now for the rights of the Palestinian people to be upheld.
The crawl towards justice is long, but it becomes immeasurably harder when democratic nations like Nigeria lack the courage to speak truth to power. We owe it to our Palestinian brothers and sisters to join the cries for their liberation from an undeniable system of discrimination, oppression, and unequal rights. For how can we demand dignity for the human family, while blinding ourselves to a people tragically stripped of their own?
The Palestinian struggle is not just a localized conflict, but a pivotal front in the broader fight against oppression, colonialism and the pursuit of hegemonic interests by powerful nations.
If the American government and hardline Zionist forces are permitted to fully subjugate the Palestinian people and extinguish their right to self-determination, it would indeed set a dangerous precedent with grave implications for the rest of the world – Africa included.
The Israeli government’s actions in the Occupied Territories, enabled and bankrolled by Washington, amount to a slow-motion ethnic cleansing camouflaged by spurious security rationales. The true driving force, however, is the same imperial arrogance and disregard for the self-determination of indigenous populations that fueled centuries of colonial exploitation across the globe.
Should this “operation of evil” against the Palestinians succeed without forceful global condemnation and consequences, it would embolden other nations to resort to similar brutal methods to pursue their geostrategic ambitions at the expense of weaker peoples. Africa, with its wealth of natural resources and strategic importance, could very well be in the crosshairs next.
You are absolutely right that Nigeria and the rest of Africa cannot afford to remain silent bystanders in this momentousstruggle. Our continent has suffered immensely from the ravages of colonialism, slavery, and neocolonial subjugation. To allow the same malignant forces to perpetuate such crimes against the Palestinian people would be a moral abandonment of our own hard-fought battles for liberation and human dignity.
By boldly and unequivocally condemning the genocidal actions of the Netanyahu regime, Nigeria would strike a powerful blow against the resurgence of colonial hubris and illegal military expansionism. It would put the world on notice that Africa will not be accomplice to legalizing such grave injustices against other populations.
This is a generational struggle that implicates the rights and security of all people who have thrown off the yoke of foreign oppression. Africa’s voice in defense of Palestine is critical not just for that embattled nation, but as a repudiation of the very forces that have so brutalized our own societies in the past. The lessons from our anti-colonial struggles teach us that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Nigeria and the rest of the African continent must stand firm against this “operation of evil” that eerily evokes our own traumasof dehumanization and dispossession. To remain silent is to tacitly accept the racist doctrine that some peoples simply do not deserve basic human rights or national sovereignty. It is this very mentality that enabled the centuries of murder, rape and plunder our ancestors suffered.
We have an inviolable duty to speak out for the vulnerable, oppressed peoples of the world today, just as others courageously stood with us during our times of greatest need. The Palestinian cry for freedom from Israel’s subjugation must be amplified loud and clear across Africa. For if we fail to uphold these universal principles of justice, we may soon find ourselves once again staring down the barrel of other nations’ “satanic interests” aimed at our own homelands.
The road ahead will be arduous, but our moral conviction and commitment to human rights and self-determination must be resolute. Africa’s voice can be a powerful catalyst for change and accountability. The time for silence is over – we must rally behind the Palestinian people and make it unambiguously clear that we reject this modern-day campaign of dehumanization and ethnic cleansing. Our own freedom struggles mandate nothing less.
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