Defend UNGA but defeat hunger!

THIS column has once asked what name we should call our Presidential Villa in Paris. Perhaps, a time will come when we will revisit that issue. Our dear President Bola Ahmed Tinubu obviously loves France and he has shown that he loves spending time there to cool off and at the same time get worked up with the numerous issues confronting Nigeria. Recall that in May when he went on that tour of Kenya and Rwanda, he also included the same France where he ended it as a tri-nation trip.

However, while our hard-working and strategic president is spending his well-deserved leave in Paris to still slave for us, some bitter Nigerians are alleging that the Presidential Villa in Abuja had been taken over by spiders; and that the spiders have built their cobwebs in the president’s office because of humdrum. So, in other words, these uninformed opposition naysayers are stylishly referring to our president’s office as a website! What insolence!

How daft could they even be! They have conveniently forgotten that technology was developed for times like this. These people should go and listen to Governor Dauda Lawal of Zamfara State. He educated us so eloquently on the reasons why technology was actually developed.

Governor Lawal is in New York too, and there he gave an online lecture in which he said with modern technology, presidents could rule from anywhere in the world. So, our president too can decide to be anywhere in the world and still carry out his responsibilities as the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

These uneducated and jealous people have chosen to ignore the fact that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation is available to take up issues when they arise.

Well, that is also because the Vice President and the President of the Senate are also not in the country at the moment. But why not allow our dear president to peacefully enjoy his rest ? Why place his vacation side-by-side the United Nations General Assembly? Why make it look like his not being there is tantamount to Nigeria being absent at the event? That is wrong.

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One informed diplomat has also enlightened us on the intricacies of UNGA. He said a country can be well represented at the United Nations by a delegation other than the president himself. So, it is a matter of choice. Nigeria was there with no less a personality than the Vice President So, what is really the fuss? Why must you always pick on Tinubu? Many governors were there too, and some of our high-end business leaders. Check well, look in the right places and you might see that those who have asked questions about our president’s whereabouts with regards to UNGA, do not have their governors invited to join the Nigerian delegation.

So, they consistently harp on hunger, inflation and insecurity. They also sing repeatedly about the poor state of the Nigerian economy which, admittedly, aggravates the first three. They have chosen not to see how hard Tinubu is working to tackle all these problems by deploying relevant technology from Paris. These resident and diaspora complainants are oblivious of the fact that there was hunger before Bola Tinubu himself was born! One of the secrets they have not stumbled upon is that when you travel through the Coastal Highway, they will escape poverty, hunger and insecurity.

But trust the Nigerian government, they have done a very good job of defending the absence of President Tinubu from the 81st UNGA in New York. They have also done a great job of defending the policies of the Tinubu administration. We have read statements and saw interviews of why Nigerians cannot be helped with the sharp rise in the price of petrol which is spiking inflation. Nigerians are left to the quirks of the international oil goons – everywhere they are found. Government believes that we are living in paradise when compared to those in England as far as the price of petrol is concerned. Or, you haven’t heard Governor Lucky Okpebholo who said that Nigerians are “enjoying” and that “we are doing very well here” because petrol is “N3,000-somehting” per litre in England?

Did you also hear Mr. Heineken Lokpobiri, our Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil)? They sadly take one back to Daniel Bwala’s contentions, in July, that monthly income of N60,000 in Nigeria can competently compete with £2,600 or £2,800 monthly income in the United Kingdom.

That, to Daniel, was one of the most important things our ambitious young citizens should consider before the Japa spirit takes over.

So, why should Tinubu at the 81st UNGA be so important? Is it that listeners should walk out en masse when he speaks as 77 delegations did when Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was about to address the assembly? Perhaps, we got Tinubu – the master-strategist, all wrong. He might have been way ahead of all the protesters at the 81st UNGA.

He could also have wondered why the United States of Trump did not allow Gazans a voice at the UN talk shop.

The United States of America denied the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, who will turn 91 in November, a visa to attend the general assembly. President Donald Trump of the United States addressed the 81st UNGA and there was no finger of protest raised against the USA. But its prize protégé, Israel, is now the cause of the usual UNGA drama.

Regardless of all the controversies around Trump, as well as all those controversial things he said in his address, there was no walkout. There wasn’t even as much as a squirm until when Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu mounted the rostrum. That ironic behaviour tells a lot about the “united nations” and points to some of the arguments presented in Fela Anikulapo’s Beast of No Nation. The UNGA protesters know where to turn, but they are hypocrites like the bird Chichidodo in Ayi Kwei Arma’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. They didn’t stay in the room to hear Netanyahu but they watched him on TV and also got transcripts of his speech.

The government of President Tinubu might refuse to admit it, but they have worked so hard to defend the absence of the president in New York. The government has explored numerous perspectives to drive home the point that Tinubu didn’t have to be at the 81st UNGA.

What the government has failed to explain is the confidence with which Jimoh Ibrahim, our politics-only United Nations Permanent Representative, said it was going to be different. What changed? Nigeria would have benefitted from a direct, face-to-face diplomacy, but this has not been.

The protagonists in the presidential UNGA controversy, and this includes the vocal state governors, are all correct. Their point is noted, the president must not be there in person.

Now that you have been heard loud and clear, can we see you deploy the same vigour to the problems that underlie the debate? Nigeria needs you to tackle hunger, inflation and want in Nigeria the way they have risen resolutely against the critics of Tinubu’s absence at the 81st UNGA. When our officials intentionally deploy the same amount of energy, and put up the same spirited fight against abject poverty and lack, as they have done in the UNGA debate, perhaps the constant cries against incompetence would abate. Nigeria deserves a revival.