Nigeria play Ivory Coast in the Final of the Afcon this Sunday.

Under no circumstances must Bola Tinubu resign before then. Historically Nigeria has always performed well in football and won major tournaments under our most useless leaders. Shehu Shagari in 1980, Sanni Abacha in 1994 and 1996 and Musa Yar Adua in 2013. So as long as Tinubu is in office this Sunday the omens are good. So all Xtains head to church, all Moslems straight to the mosque and traditionalists time for night vigil in the shrines. Tinubu must still be in office this Sunday

It might drag on for a few more months, perhaps even another year, but this is now over. There comes a point during every major war when the strategic and tactical initiative shifts, irreversibly, to one side, a moment of inflection, of decision, where one of the protagonists exhausts itself so comprehensively, so completely, that an off ramp from the trajectory of defeat becomes so implausible that to continue actively considering it suggests not so much a tangent off the train of rational thought than a total departure from it.

There will be the invariable lag between the carefully constructed, cheerily delivered western narratives on the inevitability of Ukrainian victory; the talk shows will still host the confident corporate talking heads picking through the dying embers of Ukraine’s resistance desperately searching for flickers of hope. And that might come, a local breakthrough here, a Russian retreat there. The Ukrainian army has shown no shortage of courage and resilience over the last 17 months but any spark of life left will be the dying throes of a lost struggle. The German army reached this point after its crushing defeat in the Battle of the Kursk salient in the summer of 1943 in Russia. It would still go on to inflict major tactical defeats on the Russian and allied forces, but like the final violent flickers of a dying candle it served only to illuminate its defeat not stave it off.

Closer home in Nigeria, Emeka Ojukwu lost a Biafran war he probably should have won when he attacked the yoruba speaking south west and its heartland in the commercial powerhouse of Lagos, uniting the entire country against him in a struggle which before this strategic blunder, the Biafran army had not lost and did not look like losing a single major city. Enugu the Biafran capital fell weeks later. The Biafrans would fight heroically on for another two years but they had lost the strategic initiative, forever. Defeat could be postponed but not prevented

Collapse of the touted Counter offensive….

Ukraine’s much touted ‘counter offensive’, hyped for months by the mainstream western media and establishment politicians, which started on the 4th of June and is still sputtering on nearly 3 months later, has been a calamity. A deliberate misreading of Ukraine’s overhyped victories in Kharkiv and Kherson last year by the western commentariat set the scene for the current fiasco. Russia, which on false assumptions of a quick capitulation of Ukraine invaded in February 2022 with too few troops for a full scale war, had barely any forces in Kharkiv in the fall of last year when the Ukrainian army swept through its thinned out lines in the region. The Russian army was not tactically defeated in Kherson; it made the militarily sound decision to retreat in good order across the Dnieper river when its supply routes across it, over the Antonivska Road bridge were threatened by Kiev’s newly western supplied precision guided Himars missiles.
What was lost in the subsequent euphoria was that at no time in this war, not once has the Ukrainian army been able to inflict a comprehensive battlefield defeat on a prepared, fully resourced and equipped Russian force. Not once. The reason of course is not a mystery. Wars are not won by hope, wishful thinking or the supposed ‘justness’ of an army’s cause. The metrics of victory are measured in concrete, not the clouds. Structure, resources, organisation, the sustainability and security of supplies and logistics, weapons, numbers, training and leadership. On each of these counts the gap between the Ukrainian army and the Russian military is not a gulf, it is a chasm. But such is the hatred for Moscow and the historic fear of its army in the west that rational thought was unceremoniously parked and wishful thinking took over the motorways where once lucid thinking had flowed . A monster could be made less frightening if we convinced ourselves that it was not really that frightening. The Russian army, the juggernaut that won the greatest conflict in human history, the second world war virtually on its own was apparently a joke. Make believe took over while reality went on gardening leave.

Military logic set on its head....
The subsequent subversion of all military logic and sense has led to the current insanity of an army without air cover, advanced reconnaissance abilities or sufficient long range strike systems hurling itself against some of the most complex and sophisticated fortifications ever built on a battlefield, manned by an army that outguns them at least ten to one in every conceivable major modern armament including air power, drones and of course rocket, missile and artillery systems, which, not armoured tanks, rule today’s battlefield. In order to diminish the success of Russia’s brutally effective defence, and deny its detested leaders credit the western media has attributed Ukraine’s halted offensive to the dense network of mines the Russian army has laid in front of its elaborate defences. But this is nonsense. Mines on their own have little use on a battlefield as these stationary munitions can be cleared. But that is the point, you cannot remove them and move at the same time, meaning the advancing forces they hold up can then be obliterated by long range systems which now GPS precision guided, have never been more precise or more lethal on the battlefield. The end result has been a mass slaughter of the attacking Ukrainian forces across all sections of the front, particularly on the southern Zaporizhzhia front lines.

A common refrain across the western media since the war started has been the supposed strategic and tactical incompetence of Russia’s military leadership, its ‘poorly trained’ troops and the ‘tactical inflexibility’ of its ‘soviet trained’ mid level officers. But these derogatory labels are actually borne out on the field far more by the Ukrainian army than its adversaries.

Wagner was a mousetrap and the Ukrainians took the bait...

The case of Bakhmut is probably the most salutary example. From December 2022, Kiev poured tens of thousands of its best troops into a city of dubious strategic value to confront the Wagner group who contrary to the western myth were not Russia’s best troops. They were actually regarded by Moscow as average to inferior and dispensable formations designed to bleed Ukraine’s army in a ‘meat grinder’. Having walked right into a trap, the Ukrainians then doubled down on stupid and kept feeding troops into the Russian inferno. They would lose tens of thousands of their most effective soldiers.
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At a point almost 70,000 Ukrainian troops were in and around Bakhmut. As these formations containing Kiev’s most experienced, and more importantly most motivated soldiers were slowly ground down and methodically decimated by Moscow’s second string army, the Russian army’s best formations were training, resting, recuperating and preparing for the main show, the ‘counter offensive’ which Kiev had proclaimed was coming. The result has been Ukraine lost its best soldiers before the main event, while Russia kept theirs. The myth of Wagner being Moscow’s best force, fed by Russian intelligence and eagerly lapped up be a credulous western media obsessed with ‘special forces’ has been exposed by the far superior performance of the Russian army since the counter offensive started in June. For example the ease with which the professional Russian military has swept through Ukrainian defences in days in its relentless advance in the north on Kupiansk compared to the ponderous and clumsy advance on Bakhmut by Wagner which took months. And now a depleted Ukrainian army has hurtled against a replenished, trained and fully equipped Russian military behind some of the most formidable defences every constructed.

Russia has a military strategy, Zelensky has a PR strategy....

The Russians have been busy fighting a war on the field, Zelensky has been busy fighting a war on CNN. Every decision in Kiev is designed not to match the military needs on the ground, but fulfil a new PR campaign in the west. Not yielding a centimetre of ground plays well in a west unable to move away from the shade of Winston Churchill’s shadow while always looking for the next person to drape in his halo. Ukraine lost tens of thousands of its most seasoned soldiers in a senseless struggle in Bakhmut, the result has been a green, untested force been sent into battle in the counter offensive against main defences which in 3 months of fighting they have not yet reached let alone breached.

The Russian army has always worked on a doctrine of echeloned defense in depth with multi layers of defensive belts, in some across a depth of anything between 20 to 30 miles with interlocking trenches, anti tank ditches and fire points all protected by dense fields of mines designed to fix attacking forces in place where they can be picked off by precision guided long range systems. But crucially, in front of these belts lies ‘gray or crumple’ zones of mobile forces defending these areas, acting as forward observation posts to direct artillery and air attack. Their aim is not defend the crumple zone to the death but to act as a shock absorber for the main defensive belts which lie to the rear. For the last 3 months the Ukrainian’s have been stuck in this gray zone. They are yet to reach the first Russian line of defense and there are about 5 of them.

The Nato planners who trained the attacking forces are fighting yesterday’s war on today’s battlefield. Charging tanks can’t work when they can be spotted from outer space by satellites’ which then radio their exact position and coordinates to rocket and artillery systems firing GPS guided missiles to a margin of error measured in fractions. This is not war, it is slaughter. And that as terrible as it sounds is the Russian strategy.

Why hasn’t the Russian army overran Ukraine if they are that powerful…

Many wonder why if the Russian army is so superior they have not overrun all of Ukraine. Again raising the point of fighting yesteryears war in today’s battle space. The Russian strategy is to de-militarise Ukraine while reducing its own casualties by avoiding big arrow or sweeping offensives. De-militarisation in this sense means destroying Ukraine’s military by killing as many of its soldiers as possible. And they are succeeding as anywhere between 300,000 and 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the last 17 months of war and it is estimated that almost 75% of these casualties have been inflicted by long range artillery, missile and rocket systems. Ukraine obliges them by either fixing them in place in trenches or sends them with a hope and a prayer against fortified Russian lines.

This casualties are staggering are bringing Ukraine to the brink of collapse. When the war started the Ukrainian recruitment centres could not cope with the surge of potential recruits. Now the armed gangs prowl the streets kidnapping thousands to fight and die. No one wants to die any longer in a lost cause. The training is brief and rudimentary before they are sent to near certain death against a professional army. The idea that this madness can be kept up indefinitely is fanciful.

How will the end play out...

The Ukrainian counter offensive might drag on for a while with no military logic beyond allowing Kiev, Brussels, Washington and London enough time to think up what next political stratagem will follow and conceal the latest disaster. There is of course the small matter of the American election season starting next year. The ferocity of the current attacks on the isolationist right winger Donald Trump is a sign of the gathering panic in Washington, the growing alarm that he could sweep to power in next year’s presidential election on a wave of the type of anti war fatigue that propelled Barrack Obama to the white house in 2008 after the collapse in support for George Bush’s Iraq adventure. But as the old adage says, the enemy also gets a vote. The Russians, now on the up are also making their own calculations. At some point, once they are convinced Ukraine has exhausted all its reserves they are likely to go on the attack.

They will probably not go for a major sweeping offensive. They will drag this out to inflict maximum damage on Ukraine and its western backers. Industrially the west is not set up for a war like this. They did not anticipate anything like the scale of the current conflict and have had significant problems supplying Ukraine. So the chances of a sudden surge in material support for Kiev in the short or even medium term to change the course of events is ruled out. The Russian army is likely to move slowly but methodically west continuing its degrading of the Ukrainian military.

But Moscow will most likely time the final blows to inflict devastating political punishment on its main adversary, the White House of Joe Biden. For instance an encirclement or siege of Kiev during the high point of the American electioneering campaign next year. A slow moving ‘Saigon moment’ collapse in Ukraine will be the biggest military humiliation the west has suffered since the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. This is not hyperbole. The sacking of the capital of the Byzantine Empire by the great rising empire of the east, the Islamic Ottoman’s, marked at the time the ‘end of history’ for a world reared for centuries on the glories of western Christian Rome. The impact was seismic. The context today is not too dissimilar. A declining and overstretched western power riven by bitter political divisions at home, facing a humiliating military setback across a backdrop of a world increasingly resonating to the claims of powerful emerging eastern nations and a world glancing obliquely to them for leadership.

Crisis of leadership as the west declines….

At no point in time in recent history has the west’s leadership been so poor, so outmatched by the demands of the age, so exposed by the exigencies of the hour. The sheer strategic stupidity of Joe Biden’s presidency has been staggering in its scope. At a stroke one of the great achievements of American power the last half a century has unravelled in his hands. The separation of Chinese and Russian power, achieved through careful and clever diplomacy by Kissinger and Nixon in the 70’s has been turned on its head with the two great eastern powers never more firmly aligned at any point in the last 70 years. So cack handed and clumsy has Biden’s geo political manoeuvring been it has been unable to exploit the natural rivalry and quiet hostility between China and India the two Asian heavy weights who between them account for almost half of humanity. In a startling diplomatic coup, Moscow close to both countries has kept both aligned on Ukraine throughout the war with both nations refusing to isolate Russia and offering it a much needed economic life line which has helped it shred the western sanctions imposed with such fanfare in the spring of 2022.

Washington’s weak hand is revealed in its public attitude to China over its sanction busting relationship with Russia. While Beijing has gone out of its way, made a public show of not supporting Moscow militarily the idea that it has not provided Moscow with massive military aid, which the US has stated in public, is for the birds. The supplies of microchips and advanced electronics Russia needs for its precision guided munitions and devastating drones will not be possible without Chinese cooperation. Acknowledging this publicly would mean the US would have to extend sanctions on Beijing, impossibility with the dreadful state of the west’s economy. So both powers pretend everything is fine to avoid a conflict by admitting the truth that it is not.

An empire in decline produces leadership to match the moment. An Augustus during an era of social and economic progress is succeeded by a Caligula or a Nero during the phase of decay. That the choice in the world’s most powerful nation next year is between a semi senile, doddering octogenarian and a raving, semi unhinged right wing rabble rouser says everything that needs to be said about the state of western leadership and this is replicated across the hemisphere, from Berlin where the worst and most unpopular German leader since the war Olaf Schultz oversees the deconstruction and de-industrialisation of the economic powerhouse of Europe to Paris with the hapless Macron facing revolt at home and unprecedented humiliation abroad and in London where the meltdown of the west’s’ oldest and grandest political party has produced a politically stunted school boy Prime Minister. Rishi spreadsheet Sunak who holds fort till the grown ups come home.
The wests is aware of the danger looming in Ukraine as the country gradually falls apart and with nothing left to militarily halt the Russian army the scope for miscalculation is high. A clear possibility will be the insertion of Nato forces into Ukraine to prevent its collapse. This will be an extremely high risk gamble, not so much in that it can lead to nuclear war, but what could force a nuclear exchange – the very high likelihood that Nato would be defeated if it intervenes in Ukraine.

This goes against the grain of conventional assumptions in the west, of the invincibility of NATO. But what constitutes the Nato alliance is untested in the type of high end conflict now taking place in eastern Europe. The armies of the major European powers, Germany, France and Britain are a joke. The British army has less operational tanks than Nigeria. Turkey possesses the second most formidable army in Nato and a battle hardened one, but there is more chance of the Pope relocating to Istanbul than the Turks entering Ukraine to confront the Russian army. The US, Nato’s hyper power has about 40,000 troops in Europe. Russia currently has almost 1 million men under arms. The Americans still posses the world’s most powerful air force, but that advantage will be largely nullified by Russia operating the most advanced air defence system in the world, far more sophisticated and lethal than anything the Americans have ever faced.

This of course leaves the increasingly touted ‘new power’ on the block. The Poles. There is an increasing feeling that Poland probably supported by the Baltic States could enter western Ukraine to stave off the political collapse of the Kiev regime. The Polish army looks good on parade. It has always fought well when defending Poland. There is no guarantee that it will do so if ordered by an increasingly unpopular political class into Ukraine. If this does happen it might be a Polish invasion of western Ukraine and the de facto partition of the country. Whether this leads to a cessation of hostilities will depend largely on Vladimir Putin and the willingness of China to assert itself on Moscow. A full scale Russian invasion of western Ukraine where Russians are widely reviled might be a bridge too far for Russia and Beijing. Putin might be content with integrating the Russian speaking east and large part of the south into Russia and leaving the west of Ukraine to its fate. A key bargaining chip might be the fate of Odessa which Russia could cede to Ukraine, ensuring it is not landlocked in exchange for Ukraine not joining Nato.

When many of us pointed out that Bola Tinubu's criminal past would be a huge problem, a lot of people dismissed it. It was in the past they scoffed, no one was clean they argued. But this was never just a moral problem. It was always a *POLITICAL* problem.

Having a person with the baggage Tinubu has as the leader of a major country like Nigeria was always the equivalent of marrying an ex professional prostitute and expecting a peaceful happy home. In rom com novels yes. In real life no way. How many videos has she done, how many porn movies are out there, how many three or foursome movies, are there secret videos of her engaged in bestiality. Who is in possession of those videos and what could they use it for. What leverage would that give them over your wife, your marriage, your children ? If they ask her for another session would she be able to resist if they threaten to release the tapes they already have of her. Of course she wouldnt.

In less than three months since he took power, Tinubu has gone out of his way, bent over backwards to please western interests in a way no previous Nigerian leader has ever done and none of them have been anti west. He plunged the economy into chaos by aceding to long term western demands to hike the price of fuel and deregulate the currency. Now he is about to embark on a disastrous war in Niger where Nigeria has no conceivable interest to advance the geo political interests of the west. No Nigerian leader has been as pliable and subservient to western interests as Tinubu has been in just 3 months in office.

The question is why ? What leverage have they got over him. What else do they know about his drug trafficking past that we dont know. What have they got on him that has made him this subservient to the west

kokomilala:
@MASTAkiLLAh, it's a dilemma Nigeria has to face and deal with squarely. We can't shy away from it.

The writer is obviously pro-north. It smacks of his bias for the north.

Yesterday, someone posited that a counter coup could happen in Niger. I found it very interesting. Now, if that happens and Niger is plunged into deep political crisis, creating a humanitarian crisis with the movement of refugees, where do we think they would naturally to turn? Nigeria, of course.
Can we now see how it concerns us. We cannot simply stay aloof.


The comparison he drew with Margaret Thatcher and Tinubu is fundamentally flawed. Thatcher was already on her first term, with waning popularity, while Tinubu is just starting his tenure.


Thatcher was trying to save her tenure and win another term. Tinubu is a man getting to work as the head of a regional bloc with zero tolerance for political banditry.


People also forget that Africa is the centrepiece of Nigeria's foreign policy.

If Nigeria stands aloof, as many ill-educated and ill-informed want, Africa will be seized by internal and external deviants.

Seized by internal deviants? Thought we already had - by a drug lord

beelon1020:
The only person that is delusional here is YOU! We’re did you schooled? I’m guessing is Imukoro grammar school,..
Anyways, make I give you this for free, so that next time you won’t be blowing nonsense grammar with confidence...
ECOWAS is made of west Africa countries, which Nigeria is one of it, and the Nigeria president happens to be the chairman of ECOWAS, unfortunately Tinubu is doubling this position but peeps like you thinks is Nigeria, but no, is ECOWAS..
All trash you wrote up there, nothing but trash indeed...
One more lesson for you.. if ECOWAS want to war within her region, it has to be a collective decision among the countries, and each are to voluntarily give out some military forces to join forces for the mission...
Hopefully I’m able to open your mind on this.. [i][/i

.

Your terrible command of written English including basic school boy grammatical ertors shows who between us is in need of further education.

The fraudulence and mendacity of your pro invasion position is demonstrated by your and your supporters inability to artituclate a defense of it beyond hiding behind Ecowas. There is nothing in the Ecowas charter that overrides the sovereignity of its member states and committing forces to a neighbouring country is a sovreign decision. Nigerian soldiers did not swear allegiance to Ecowas, they swore to put their lives on the line to defend Nigeria. So no Nigerian president has the powers to deploy them outside Nigeria without approval from the legislature in Nigeria. Ecowas is not a country. It has no flag. It has no tax base, you cannot travel abroad with an Ecowas passport. Ecowas is not a nation, so it cannot go to war without the consent of its member nations. In the same way the UN cannot force its member nations to war. Its called sovreignity

So when you go back to school to improve your ability to write properly and in a comprehensible manner, conside taking a course in civics

JagabanB:

Nigèria is not going to war with Niger, no matter how hard u Obi's followers want to paint it.
It's an ECOWAS issue.
Prèsîdéñt of Ghana, Senegal, Benin, Cote D'Ivoire all agreed to a possible military intervention, but in Nigeria, it's now a politics because a group of people lost elections and are praying so hard to see the country fail.

Does any soldier come from a country called Ecowas. Is there a nation called Evowas. When invading soldiers die will they be buried in a cemetary belonging to a nation called Ecowas. Ecowas is not a country so cant declare war. It is the countries that make it up that go to war. Stop playing with semantics. The fact thst Tinubu's supporters have not got the guts to confidently defend their desire to invade a neighboring country but are hiding behind Ecowas says it all. If he makes the mistake of invading Niger, his givernment will collapse. The ibos already hate him, the north will turn against him and he has only lukewarm support from the yorubas.

Bola Tinubu has guile, he is cunning, and is blessed with significant street smarts, but he is not an intelligent man. Ibrahim Babangida while corrupt was very intelligent. It might be an oversell to describe Olusegun Obasanjo as intelligent but he was thoughtful and intellectually curious. He respected knowledge and sought to improve himself by acquiring it.

Tinubu has no regard for knowledge which like many 'technocrats' he sees as an unnecessary accessory. He believes in "getting things done' a task the street smart operator assumes he is fully equipped for as these men of the world see wide, albeit not deep. The problem with that approach is breadth does not equate to depth and knowledge is depth or it is nothing at all. Geography explains what an earthquake is, you need geology to predict it. Tinubu is a high school geography teacher marooned on a university reserachers chair in the department of Geology.

Tinuhu's intellectual laziness and incuriosity, his contempt for knowledge and the skills to effectively acquire, analyse and process it has now caught up with him with alarming speed in the two areas of governance where his cynical world view and shallow personality were always likely to be found out - His fiscal and foriegn policy responsibilities. The two critical functions that were conspicous by their absence in his suite of responsibilities during his much vaunted tenure as Lagos state governor.

State governors dont determine economic policy, nor do they declare war. Presidents do. A certain level of thoughfulness, a grasp of theory and history, impossible without an intellectual bent is required at the federal level in a way they are not in the more administrative state leadership role.

Babangida's relatively successful intervention in Liberia in 1990 worked because he understood that Charles Taylor's failure to quickly seize Monrovia, as Yoweri Museveni advised him to offered a window of opportunity to intervene and capture the Liberian capital before the rebels did denying them the vital oxygen of political legitimacy inspite of their military success. If Taylor had seized Monrovia rather than merely threatening to do so there would have been no intervention from Ecomog as it would have divided the sub region, as Tinubu's cack handed threat to intervene in a country where the 'rebels' who control the capital Niamey are the de facto government in a way Charles Taylor never was has. Babangida thought it through. Tinubu hasnt.

Babangida an observant and well read man also understood the politics of the West African sub region in a manner clearly beyond the reach of Bola Tinubu who is niether observant or well read. History to him is probably a subject kids take in their O'levels. Nigeria could intervene in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Gambia because like Nigeria these countries are English speaking. The francophone countries might grumble in private but they would ultimately acquiesce.

For Nigeria, an English speaking regional power to lead an intervention in a french speaking West African country sets off every political alarm bell capable of being set off. One of the shortcomings of 'technocrats' or empiricists like Tinubu is their lack of a broad political vision anchored in ideology means they magnify and deify 'reality'. To Tinubu the support of great powers like France and the US was enough to act out in front. To him having these major western powers behind him would be sufficient to declare an intent to intervene militarily in Niger and have opposition fade away.

A leader with a firmer intellectual grasp of world events and their interplay with local reakity would have been more circumspect. The US and France are no longer the forces they once were with America in particular in retreat across vast swathes of the global south. On the global stage the dominant whiff from the west is now one of weakness, not strentgh. The greatest event of the day is the Ukranian war and there is an undeniable link between this conflict in eastern Eurooe and events thousands of miles away in West Africa as the war has laid bare to many in the global south the gradual decline of western power.

The western powers never intended to intervene militarily in Ukraine if the Russians invaded because of the clear risk of a military escalation with a nuclear power that would have posed. The strategy was to use the west's global ecomonic dominance and control of the worlds financial systems to collapse the Russian economy and effect regime change in Moscow. The unprecedented ecomonic warfare launched against Russia after its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine was designed to achieve exactly that, but it has failed and spectacularly so. The Russian economy has thrived while the western European economies especially Germany's have tottered with sky high inflation and surging interest rates.

The sanctions failed for a number of reasons; Russia's limitless resources, in food, oil and gas, fertilisers and other critical minerals the world needs and China, India and Brazil stepping in to replace western customers. These events have not gone unnoticed in Africa where many now see a way of thriving economically without remaining permanently tethrred to the west. This is what explains the increasing defiance of countries like Guinea, Burkina Fasso, Mali and now Niger in the West African sub region. A cleverer and more thoughful leader would have considered these factors before launching a western pleasing campaign to militarily intervene in Niger. Obasanjo would have. Tinubu did not. Expertise in foreign affairs requires more intellectual subtlety and sophistication than that required to paint bus lanes on Lagos roads.

Bola Tinubu's fiscal policies are characterised by the same thoughtlessness, laziness, adventurism and lack of foresight as his foreign policy blunders. Like him Ibrahim Babangida too was a right wing neo liberal fanatic, but a far cleverer one. Babangida read and re read 'The Prince' Niccolo Machievelli's great 16th century masterpiece on political chicanery. Before imposing the IMF diktat on Nigerians Babangida launched a phony debate on it, drawing and exhausting his opponents fire before the battle was joined meaning when it was in a different guise they had nothing left in their amoury and what they did was vulnerable to his counter battery fire as they had already revealed their positions. Tinubu doesnt read and his supporters probably think Niccolo Machiavelli refers to a rare italian wine. He launched his economic war on Nigerians during his innaguration speech before his own forces had been assembled let alone deployed. The result has been an economic melt down of epic proportions and an avoidable galvanisation of opposition too early in his administration.

Tinubu clearly understands human emotions and needs which allows him to manipulate them but the complex social patterns and interplay of unseen forces that inform them, a firm grasp of which only comes through serious study, patient analysis and an affinity for abstract knowledge is beyond him

The intellectual ability to engage in abstract thought, to formulate broad perspectives and forge a vision that will allow him navigate the treacherous course of political leadership, that will enable him anticipate events rather than merely react to them is something which his personality and mind set will always prevent him from acquiring.

Politically he is the equivalent of an acclaimed local street fighter now in contention for the world heavy weight boxing championship title. Way out of his depth.

beelon1020:
OP! You be olodo jorr... this is not war but a military exercise, its 12 countries against one, nigeria is just one of the 12 countries... besides civilians are not suppose to get involved in any way, the military exercise is target only at the capital and the presidential villa that the president and his officials are been held hostage...
Is not about Tinubu but is about ECOWAS...
The military exercise is between military personnel only...
civilians will be allowed free passage at a point...

You think war is an olympic sport with set rules. If you take Niamey what about the rest of the country. You repeat the absured argument that this is not about Tinubu but is Ecowas. Is there any country called Ecowas. Does any soldier come from Ecowas. Has ecowas got any tax powers. It is a sign of Tinubu's weakness that he cant come out openly and confidently say he is going into Niger but instead is hiding behind Ecowas. When the dead bodies of soldiers start coming home is there a country called Ecowas where they will be buried. Let him send them and see what will happen. When Nigerian soldeirs decide to storm aso rock I am assuming he will redirect them to Ecowas hq. Yo are delusional

Alchemy528:
Your business

No you should read what you have posted. If you cant defeat a guerilla army you lose the war. America lost the war in Afghanistan because the Taliban are back in power. Which essentially means the taliban defeated the American army. If they didnt the Americans will still be ruling kabul. The Nigerien army will not waste their time fighting Nigeria conventionally. They will allow them in then attack their supply lines, ambush their isolated outposts and kill them in their hundreds and thousands,

Reading the gung ho views of a lot of Nigerians on the supposed strength of our army and how it would sweep aside the Nigerien forces if they invade as they seem increasingly likely to do is amusing.

It is amazing how so many people believe that an army that has failed to pacify Borno state, just one of thirty states in Nigeria, will successfully invade and occupy a country bigger than Nigeria. The levels of self delusion are mind boggling. Let’s be clear, with its overwhelming firepower advantage over the Nigeriens at some point the Nigerian army and any Ecowas force can expect to overwhelm the Capital Niamey, albeit, only after heavy and costly street to street urban combat, the bloodiest type of modern combat as the battles in places like Bakhmut demonstrate.
Then what? Niamey occupies only a tiny fraction of a vast sprawling land mass housing 25 million people facing a foreign invader acting as a proxy for a hated former colonial master. Every town, every district, every city every village would become a hotbed of ferocious resistance and insurgency.

Every road, every street, every bridge a site for an ambush. At nightfall every district a hotbed of insurgency, an unseen enemy everywhere . They won’t be facing 10,000 Nigerien soldiers they will be facing tens possibly hundreds of thousands of insurgents and militias defending their land from an army of occupation.

You might take Niamey with 20,000 soldiers but how many will you need to successfully occupy a country of 25 million people. Even Niamey where support for the coup is intense will never fully be controlled by any invading force. The American military, the most powerful armed force in the world never fully controlled the Iraqi capital Baghdad throughout its 12 year occupation of Iraq.
Even in Liberia and Sierra Leone where they faced poorly trained drugged up thugs with virtually no public support, the Nigerian led Ecomog forces never really controlled anything beyond the capitals Monrovia and Freetown and a few other big towns. Virtually the whole of the countryside was dominated by the rebels. In Niger where the coupists enjoy mass support what hope have they of pacifying even a fraction of the country.

How many combat troops has the Nigerian army? Possibly about 130,000. To successfully occupy a country the size of Niger, a much bigger nation than Liberia or Sierra Leone, you would need a force at least treble that with more in reserve to replace casualties and rotate troops. In Liberia and Sierra Leone the Nigerian army lost thousands of troops to the insurgency it faced there. Facing a popular insurgency in a much bigger country they will be slaughtered en masse.

Our army has no major air lift capability to transport troops around the battle space Our logistics has always been the weakest aspect of force deployment. How do we transport troops around a country that vast with our ramshackle military supply system? Why are we so blind? And make no mistake the insurgents will find a lot of external support. Forget Mali and Burkina Fasso, the real power to be feared in the region is Algeria. They have one of the most powerful militaries not just in Africa but in the global south. They have always been anti French having fought a bloody war of independence against the French in the 50's at the cost of a million lives and they won’t take kindly to a French proxy war on their doorstep. They will be even more furious at a black African regional power playing policeman in their historic sphere of influence. They will never accept a West African dictated settlement in what they regard as part of historic Arabia and will do everything in their power to undermine it.

They share a 600 mile border with Niger and a tsunami of weapons including Algerian special forces, amongst the most lethal in the 3rd world will flood across it.

The Nigerian army will stand no chance of a successful outcome in such a hostile terrain and what of the army's cohesion. Let’s face it Nigeria is a hotch potch of nations. A significant portion of our army has traditionally come from the far north. The kith and kin of the country we want to invade and whose people we are going to kill. Niger was part of the old Sokoto caliphate and was only cut off from it by the colonial division of the territory between France and Britain. They share deep cultural, linguistic and religious links transcending these colonial borders. How long before Hausa Fulani soldiers in the Nigerian army get tired of seeing their kinsman killed by their own guns. How long before they start thinking that it is only happening because they are being ordered to do so by a Yoruba president. How long before northern soldiers in the Nigerian army start accusing their Yoruba and Ibo colleagues of using excessive force against their blood relatives.

We have not thought this through. The Nigerian army has a snowballs chance in hell of successfully invading and occupying Niger. It is a fool’s errand against what is a popular anti colonial movement in the country. An invasion will spark a conflagration of violence against an invading the force the likes of which we have not seen in our life time. The Nigerian army is not equipped, trained or set up to win such a war. They will be entering a bitterly hostile terrain unlike in Liberia and Sierra Leone were large sections of the populations welcomed them. They will be killed in their thousands. It is a proxy war for the benefit of western powers who don’t want to pay the blood price. We have no skin in this fight.

If we do end up going in the outcome cannot be in any doubt. We will face a crushing military defeat and the very likelihood that what we went in to Niger to defeat will end up returning to Nigeria, a bloody military coup back home by those we have sent to fight and die in a country that has done us no harm.