Nigeria’s relentless push for war in Cote d’Ivoire with regard to the presidential election crisis in that country is getting curiouser and curiouser.
It is beginning to smack of the sympathiser who is crying more than the bereaved.

Informed public opinion needs to be brought to dissuade the Federal Government from this path of perfidy. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), led by its chairman, President Goodluck Jonathan, is backing Alassane Quattara, one of the two claimants to the presidency of Cote d’Ivoire, the other being incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo, following a disputed presidential election run-off election on November 28, 2010.

A political crisis had erupted in Cote d’Ivoire after the presidential election run-off when the Constitutional Council, that has final authority to validate/review election result by the Electoral Commission, declared Gbagbo winner, after voiding some flawed votes, while the United Nations representative in Cote d’Ivoire certified Quattara winner, based on the preliminary result of the Electoral Commission, a certification that was backed by the ‘International Community’, thus precipitating a stalemate.

Gbagbo had led in the main election with an undisputed 38 per cent of the vote while Quattara was the runner-up with 32 per cent of the vote in a
field of multiple presidential candidates. Now, the ‘international community’ is finding it difficult to accept that the front-runner could be the winner.
This, perhaps, explains why ECOWAS, the expected mediator, has turned a rabid partisan, eager to deploy military force on one of the claimants. How ECOWAS hopes to achieve peace in Cote d’Ivoire by militarily running Gbagbo out of office, the candidate who had the highest vote in the main election, and even with the threat of arraigning him before the International Court of Justice at the Hague, baffles the mind.

The United States has weighed in with the American ambassador to Cote d’Ivoire, Phillip Carter 111, warning at a press conference in Washington D.C., early February, that the window for Gbagbo’s peaceful exit was closing. The gloves are off – when an ambassador can threaten the president of his host country thus: “The window for Gbagbo to leave honourably, peacefully, with amnesty, is closing” !. We can see the truth in WikiLeaks leaks of diplomatic arrogance of First World ambassadors in relation to Third World leaders. Nigeria may turn out to be no more than a puppet, with the puppeteers pulling the strings from Paris and Washington.

Of course, I have no grouse against the Americans if installing Quattara is in their national interest. But what is Nigeria’s core interest in going to war in Cote d’Ivoire where it will put the lives of over one million Nigerians resident in that country at risk ?
What is curious in the unfolding drama is that as at the time the UN and the ‘international community’, that precipitated the crisis by their backing of Quattara were inclined to use sanctions to force Gbagbo out of office, Nigeria seems determined on a show of muscle, as regional power, to militarily flush out the Ivorian president.
According to media reports of January 25, 2011, President Jonathan’s envoy, Foreign Affairs Minister, Odein Ajumogobia, SAN, had on Monday, January 24, 2011, in a letter, appealed to the United Nations (UN) Security Council to pass a resolution authorising use of force by ECOWAS to oust Gbagbo from power. What is unsettling about the letter is its undue belligerence and braggadocio.
“Gbagbo must be made to understand that there is a very real prospect of overwhelming military capability bearing down on him and his cohorts”, Ajumogobia thundered in the letter.

But the question is : Why is Nigeria so gung-ho about going to war in Cote d’Ivoire? What is confounding in Nigeria’s aggressive pursuit of the war option is that Jonathan is generally perceived as a calm and calculative person, not given to theatrics. One wonders, therefore, in what circumstances he got captured by foreign policy war hawks.

But then, on further reflections, it occurred to me that Jonathan and Ajumogobia are both Ijaw, the arrow-head group in militia-ruled Niger Delta and was wondering that perhaps this has become an export product –[size=13pt] diplomatic militancy[/size] ! However, there are other questions begging for answers before this head-long rush to war. What is the budget for this war ? Since this is not a military regime, won’t the Senate have to endorse the presidency’s adventure? Or is it assumed that the senators are spineless lapdogs ?

Nigeria reportedly spent $12 billion to prosecute the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone and lost an estimated 1,000 soldiers, with practically nothing to show for the sacrifices in terms of economic concessions or accommodation of Nigerians in those countries. Do we need to take that path of folly, again ?
Fortunately, the president of the African Union (AU) Commission, Dr. Jean Ping, has expressed reservations about a precipitate recourse to war, citing the example of Democratic Republic of Congo, which is yet to enjoy peace nearly 20 years after President Mobutu Sese Seko was chased from power. Also, the new chairman of the African Union (AU), President Theodoro Nguema of Equitorial Guinea, is not so keen on war, while President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has pointed out that the UN was too quick to certify Quattara as winner. The AU, at its just concluded 16th Summit in AddisAbaba, had admitted it endorsed Quattara as winner based principally on the position of ECOWAS and the certification of the ‘international community’.That makes Nigeria’s war option, as leader of ECOWAS, and backed by the West, to still remain a major factor that could sway the AU, particularly if Nigeria indicates willingness to bankroll the war. In spite of the hardship at home, Nigerian leaders love playing to the gallery, abroad. This reinforces the case that more interest groups should speak up against the war, as has been done by the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Another curious aspect of ECOWAS’ handling of the Ivorian crisis is appointing Blaise Campaore, who for 23 years has been president of Burkina Faso, Quattara’s native homeland, as the community’s envoy to Europe to drum support for war in Ivory Coast. Campaore had shot to power in a coup on October 15, 1987, a coup in which his bosom friend, patriotic and charismatic President Thomas Sankara, was killed.
So much for the credibility of ECOWAS’ warriors for democracy ! And to imagine he is among the African Union panel of five presidents given one month to sort out the Ivorien mess. The other absurdity is African Union mediator, Kenyan Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, who settled for that post in similar presidential election dispute in 2007 with President Mwai Kibaki, now rooting for war in Ivory Coast.
Why not a similar accommodation of Quattara with Gbagbo rather than a push for a winner-takes-all in favour of runner-up Quattara? Shouldn’t election conflicts in Africa dictate a shift from the contentious winner-takes-all syndrome imported from the West to the embrace of the accommodative African communalism?

Meanwhile, as a Jonathan-led ECOWAS lobbies for war, it is important he is reminded that the so-called ‘international community’ also has poor impressions of Nigeria on electoral matters, especially the 2007 elections that brought him to power. The Financial Times of London had in an editorial captioned: ‘African poll season’ noted: “Were Nigeria to experience a repeat of 2007 polls, marred by violence and fraud, it would be destabilising for both country and continent”.

Four years on, and with the prospect of a repeat of the 2007 polls going by the violence and fraudulence which had trailed the party primaries, the country’s April 2011 elections are becoming a difficult pregnancy, that risks complications which could also make Nigeria the object of attention of the ‘international community’. So, the advice is : Those who live in glass houses need to exercise restraint in throwing stones.


* Olawunmi, former Washington Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) and Fellow, Nigerian Guild of Editors, teaches Media and Politics at a university in Southwest Nigeria.Email:olawunmibisi@yaho.com

This is why i'm beginning to hate GEJ.
This is nothing but France's wish to maintain a colonial grip of CIV.
Gbagbo is growing more anti-french and Quattrara or whatever is a stooge.
Now, when CIV was firmly a french puppet state they

opposed the creation of ecowas to that nigeria wouldn't gain too much influence in the region
supported Biafra so Nigeria can splinter and be less powerful in the region
made an 'alternative' group to Ecowas headed by CIV
and was against Nigeria and the ANC's anti-apartied actions in SA


CIV has been used by france to extend french influence in west africa at the expense of Nigeria.



The minute the 'international community' say jump, GEJ, himself a tool, jumped higher then anyone can imagine without a 5 second consideration of the implications this has to Nigerian interests like ANY president of any non colonial entity would do.
Nigeria has no business in CIV. Worst yet, it's shameful that GEJ can't see this as a colonial grab and is being the puppet CIV once was to restore CIVs slavery to France.

GEJ is a feather, wherever the wind blows he's there. This man is not a world class leader and wouldn't win an election in any of the countries we aspire to be like.

and to show how dense the man is, he evacuated Nigerians from egypt though that were no direct threat to nigerians
but has left nigerians in CIV though there were specific threats at an AU summit against them.

He's also speaking of intervening in a country 3 times the size of Liberia or Sierra Leone and the military budget has remained at it's same pathetic state of non existence.
smfh.

I can't allow this guy to be president of the largest black nation in the world, it's like allowing a 7 year old to fly a plane

***sighs****

Hope this will not result to another loss of innocent lives?? common!

Ikengawo relax. GEJ is not sending Nigeria to war.

This is all just diplomatic grandstanding.

I repeat: Nigeria is not going to war in Ivory Coast.

Thanks.

i know all about political granstanding. The problem is anyone using this strategy is encouraged to "speak softly and carry a big stick", jonathan is screaming and waving a village chewing stick

there is no reason in god's green earth why Nigeria's military shouldn't be the largest in africa. It's so ridiculous that if any portion of the country decided to split today they could do it if the US and UK don't get involved.

the way biafrans were humiliating the Nigerian army with home made guns has sent no alarm in the Nigerian political structure, or the way MEND, a bunch of unemployed gangsters, nearly shut all oil production down has sent no alarm to anyone.

stockpiles of drugs and weapons, no increase in security or military spending,

disorder in west africa that will flood our country with refugees, no increase in anything

Chadians and nomads from Niger flooding in to kill people all the way in Jos with no need to worry about any resistance.

France constantly working to break the country

politicians with more arms then their state police force.


all of this raises no alarm to anyone in the elite, it's pathetic.
Im sick of it, we're all sick of second rate 'leadership'.
PDP must die.