By Olukayode Oyeleye
The blatant display of Russian flags by protesters in the states of Kano and Kaduna has introduced another dimension to the #EndBadGovernance protests, one that would require tact and restraints to handle. The federal government will be making an egregious blunder in trying to apply brute force against protesters because of this.
We know that hardly is there any smoke without a fire. Directly or indirectly, something has led to the Russian dimension to this protest. Going after a tailor or after the boys waving Russian flag is going to be a futile effort that won’t yield any meaningful result. That, at the very best, could be diversionary.
The federal government has a lot to worry about. The sitting president, in particular, should be very worried. Beyond what was seen on the streets with the flag waving, an attempt to alter public perception may have succeeded. And this needs to be carefully managed. Here, it appears like a communication strategy is at work. It doesn’t matter if it achieves some unintended consequences. What seems important is to turn the whole protests into a Hydra headed issue that the FG will have to be preoccupied with. How well or how poorly it is handled by the FG will determine the outcomes.
A year ago, about this time (July 26), the civilian regime of Niger was sacked. Almost instantaneously, Nigeria’s new president went on overdrive, closing the border between Nigeria and Niger. The key omissions or mistakes in that singular decision could be explained in plain words. The hard-pressed people of Niger trooped to the streets, almost instantaneously, many waving Russian flags, an indication that they wanted to replace the country’s allegiance to France with an allegiance with Russia.
Not a joke. The Niger people and the new military leaders pushed out the French ambassador and ordered the French troops to leave. In its place, Putin’s informal mercenary group known as Wagner was ushered in. Nigerian government lost sight of three things in Niger’s change of guards. The fact that Niger is tending towards the precedent set by Mali and Burkina Faso was spreading to Niger was not reckoned with as having a potential influence on Nigeria.
Secondly, the man in power in Nigeria failed to reckon with the homogeneity of the tribes on both sides of the border between Niger and Nigeria. To wit, the Hausa speaking people in Niger are dominant in areas bordering Niger, from Kebbi, Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Kano and Jigawa states, essentially the region in which a bulk of the population of Niger people are found. English or French are no barriers to their interaction as they relate purely in Hausa. A highly educated traditional ruler of one of the ancient towns in Kebbi once told a team of visitors (I was in that team) that most of their people are on the other side of the border. In essence, the border between them is no barrier at all.
Flowing from this is the error of judgment in which the Niger’s case was handled by Nigeria’s president. Most people in the states bordering Niger Republic saw the border closure as a punitive measure against them and they still hold the grudge till now. This is one of the considerations that led to the failure of the president to secure the Senate’s backing to attack Niger under the guise of ECOWAS. Was it not surprising that a rubber-stamp Senate would be opposed to a totalitarian’s demand so vehemently? It was obvious that there was no way the request for Senate’s approval would have scaled through without the support of those who rose vehemently against it, essentially from those northern states.
Perhaps the man in power is not aware that Niger is an extension of Nigeria by some measure. Whoever lives (or has lived) close to the border will have no difficulty in knowing this. The religious influence is so potent that the clerics from Niger have followers in northern Nigeria and vice versa. Their leaders and followers don’t need any foreign language for communication. Listening to an Islamic cleric’s comments from Niger, you don’t need to look any further. Realising the pervasive influence of these preachers on their followers, should it then be difficult to infer that those flag-displaying youth in Kano and Kaduna were inspired by their mentors and leaders from Niger Republic?
The president and his men need to be careful and tactful in handling the flag issue for multidimensional reasons. Cracking down on those boys on the street could be treated like a proxy war against their base from where they got inspiration. This could backfire, not only within Nigeria but also from Niger. A borderless crisis could spring up from this. While it is difficult to comment on the possibility or extent of Russia’s involvement, it will be too naive to rule this out entirely. Nigeria is obviously going to be walking a diplomatic tightrope on the Russian flag controversy as it cannot directly confront Russia on this because it could draw the ire of Russia in response. Yet, Russia, in its expansionary tactics, could be surreptitiously and remotely planning on destabilisation of that extreme northern region as it tries to gain a foothold in Niger. Such a development makes it difficult for Nigeria to meddle in Russian affairs in its military incursion into Niger.
Nigeria will be losing the battle on other fronts if it decides to be hostile against Russia on supposed or confirmed clues to the flag controversy. In a world that is tending back towards bipolarity and very likely to be involved in another political and economic standoff in form of Cold War 2.0, Nigeria has to weigh its options carefully and proactively. Pandering to West unapologetically while closing the door against the East might prove very costly. This is especially so as France, which Nigeria’s president desperately wants to impress, is losing its grips on its former colonies, while also having some frosty relationship with Russia on account of African francophone former colonies. Over-reliance on the US will not help much either, as the US struggles while China rises.
The possible benefits that Nigeria may reap from the increasingly influential and expanding BRICS may elude Nigeria. For strategic reasons, it is important for Nigeria to hedge its diplomatic bets. Since Russia is an influential member of BRICS, it makes a lot of diplomatic sense to keep the Nigeria-Russia diplomatic backdoor open at all cost for strategic reasons. Since Nigeria was not included in the expanded BRICS in August last year, it should not ignore the worrisome implications of that omission. It should not be engaged in any diplomatic head-on collision with Russia as this can help foreclose or forestall Nigeria’s prospects of being part BRICS in the the nearest future. It needs to tread carefully and manage the flag issue rather quietly in a manner that will not attract attention either through conventional or social media. The ignorant and jobless youth on the street caught displaying Russian flags should therefore not be made scapegoats. There could be more troubling issues beneath the flag display. Those are the things that must be looked into, but must be handled rather cautiously rather than with a brute force.
Dr. Oyeleye is a public analyst
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