ACF lauds FG’s denial of establishing foreign military bases in Nigeria

The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has welcomed the statement by the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, disclosing that the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) has no plans to allow foreign military bases in Nigeria. 

The forum, in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Professor Tukur Muhammad Baba and made available to newsmen in Kaduna on Tuesday said, “The FGN must be appreciated for taking such a bold and reassuring stance. 

“For ACF, the development represents a victory for all imminently patriotic Nigerians who signalled readiness to campaign against the “rumoured” plans to host US and French military bases in Nigeria following their rejection in Republics of Burkina Faso and Niger.”

However, the Northern forum remarked its disappointment with an earlier statement, “credited to a supposedly non-governmental organisation concerned with promoting human rights, the Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA), supporting the possible establishment of American (US) and French military bases in Nigeria. 

“ACF finds such support patently shocking, shortsighted and against everything Nigeria stands for at the moment. 

“We are an independent, sovereign African country in uncompromising solidarity with all sister African, especially ECOWAS states in the struggles against all vestiges of the intolerable stranglehold of colonialism and neo-colonialism, that have for far too long held down Africa in conditions of underdevelopment. 

“Enough is known of experiences of countries like Burkina Faso and Niger that have hosted foreign military bases for years. Such bases have to date served only the interests of the advanced countries.

“Wheresoever they are located, the foreign military outposts operate outside of the control and in utter disregard for the national laws of their hosts, respecting only their own convenient rules. That sister African countries will, on the basis of their experience with the foreign military units, reject their presence is enough reason to dissuade Nigeria from even contemplate hosting them.

“There is just no sense that such bases as rejected by sister ECOWAS would be welcomed by any next-door neighbour. 

“HURIWA ought to realise that the presence of the bases has undeniably failed to result in any demonstrable decline in the activities of terrorist and insurgent groups that have been wrecking political, economic and social conditions in the sister countries.

ALSO READ: Military bases: Why FG must weigh options before approving US, France bid — Security expert

“For Nigeria, it is inescapable that whatever is unhelpful and/or detrimental to the interests of African countries cannot be good for us, due to shared destinies in unbroken historical, socio-cultural, economic and political ties which predated and antedates the artificial Balkanisation of our societies under European colonial control.

“Africans will forever decry the imposition of ridiculous “international” boundaries, which often cut across the very heart of communities, as systematised at the infamous 1884/1885 Berlin Conference at which no African country participated.

“It is thus instructive that the desire to establish the military bases emanate, not from African countries, but from the foreign powers themselves, and it is as if the Berlin Conference is being updated and re-enacted now, in the 21st Century.

“HURIWA is being quixotic and perhaps delusional in thinking that military and civilian personnel in the bases will respect Nigeria’s sovereignty or help us fight terrorism and insurgency. It is to ask where (and why now) have the foreign forces been all the while with our body counts in thousands, and recorded disrupted livelihoods, internally displaced populations, etc.

It is also disappointing that HURIWA would seek to trivialise the patriotic call against foreign military bases as emanating from some “Northern” leaders, as if  HURIWA’S condemnation is itself, by equal measure, a “southern” Nigerian agenda! 

“Clearly, the terrorism and banditry problem in Nigeria has gone beyond the prism of “killer herdsmen” and Boko Haram, as HURIWA would have it, and looking at the problem from such a simplistic and reductionist perspective is unhelpful in the fight against terrorism. 

“Our security forces know this only too well. No one should be lulled into complacency or think that anybody but ourselves can solve the problem. Nigeria should not be tempted by Trojan Horse promises from foreign interests that had until now at best remained benignly neglectful or uninterested in our insecurity woes.”