It’s been almost 20 years since my diagnosis, and I’ve learned quite a bit.

Are you someone who enjoys the unsolicited opinions of strangers and acquaintances? If so, I can’t recommend cancer highly enough. You won’t even have the first pathology report in your hands before the advice comes pouring in. Laugh and the world laughs with you; get cancer and the world can’t shut its trap.

Stop eating sugar; keep up your weight with milkshakes. Listen to a recent story on NPR; do not read a recent story in Time magazine. Exercise—but not too vigorously; exercise—hard, like Lance Armstrong. Join a support group, make a collage, make a collage in a support group, collage the shit out of your cancer. Do you live near a freeway or drink tap water or eat food microwaved on plastic plates? That’s what caused it. Do you ever think about suing? Do you ever wonder whether, if you’d just let some time pass, the cancer would have gone away on its own?

Before I got cancer, I thought I understood how the world worked, or at least the parts that I needed to know about. But when I got cancer, my body broke down so catastrophically that I stopped trusting what I thought and believed. I felt that I had to listen when people told me what to do, because clearly I didn’t know anything.

Much of the advice was bewildering, and all of it was anxiety-producing. In the end, because so many people contradicted one another, I was able to ignore most of them. But there was one warning I heard from a huge number of people, almost every day, and sometimes two or three times a day: I had to stay positive. People who beat cancer have a great positive attitude. It’s what distinguishes the survivors from the dead.

There are books about how to develop the positive attitude that beats cancer, and meditation tapes to help you visualize your tumors melting away. Friends and acquaintances would send me these books and tapes—and they would send them to my husband, too. We were both anxious and willing to do anything in our control.

But after a terrible diagnosis, a failed surgery, a successful surgery, and the beginning of chemotherapy, I just wasn’t feeling very … up. At the end of another terrible day, my husband would gently ask me to sit in the living room so that I could meditate and think positive thoughts. I was nauseated from the drugs, tired, and terrified that I would leave my little boys without a mother. All I wanted to do was take my Ativan and sleep. But I couldn’t do that. If I didn’t change my attitude, I was going to die.

People get diagnosed with cancer in different ways. Some have a family history, and their doctors monitor them for years. Others have symptoms for so long that the eventual diagnosis is more of a terrible confirmation than a shock. And then there are people like me, people who are going about their busy lives when they push open the door of a familiar medical building for a routine appointment and step into an empty elevator shaft.

The afternoon in 2003 that I found out I had aggressive breast cancer, my boys were almost 5. The biggest thing on my mind was getting the mammogram over with early enough that I could pick up some groceries before the babysitter had to go home. I put on the short, pink paper gown and thought about dinner. And then everything started happening really fast. Suddenly there was the need for a second set of films, then a sonogram, then the sharp pinch of a needle. In my last fully conscious moment as the person I once was, I remember asking the doctor if I should have a biopsy. The reason I asked was so that he could look away from the screen, realize that he’d scared me, and reassure me. “No, no,” he would say; “it’s completely benign.” But he didn’t say that. He said, “That’s what we’re doing right now.”

Later I would wonder why the doctor hadn’t asked my permission for the needle biopsy. The answer was that I had already passed through the border station that separates the healthy from the ill. The medical community and I were on new terms.

The doctor could see that I was in shock, and he seemed pretty rattled himself. He kept saying that he should call my husband. “You need to prepare yourself,” he said, twice. And once: “It’s aggressive.” But I didn’t want him to call my husband. I wanted to tear off my paper gown and never see that doctor, his office, or even the street where the building was located ever again. I had a mute, animal need to get the hell out of there. The news was so bad, and it kept getting worse. I couldn’t think straight. My little boys were so small. They were my life, and they needed me.

Three weeks later, I was in the infusion center. Ask Google “What is the worst chemotherapy drug?” and the answer is doxorubicin. That’s what I got, as well as some other noxious pharmaceuticals. That oncologist filled me and my fellow patients up with so much poison that the sign on the bathrooms said we had to flush twice to make sure every trace was gone before a healthy person—a nurse, or a family member—could use the toilet. I was not allowed to hug my children for the first 24 hours after treatment, and in the midst of this absolute hell—in the midst of the poison and the crying and the sorrow and the terror—I was supposed to get a really great positive attitude.

The book we were given several copies of, which was first published in 1986 and has been reissued several times since, is titled Love, Medicine and Miracles and was written by a pediatric surgeon named Bernie Siegel. He seems less interested in exceptional scientific advances than in “exceptional patients.” To be exceptional, you have to tell your body that you want to live; you have to say “No way” to any doctor who says you have a fatal illness. You have to become a channel of perfect self-love, and remember that “the simple truth is, happy people generally don't get sick.” Old angers or disappointments can congeal into cancer. You need to get rid of those emotions, or they will kill you.

In 1989 a Stanford psychiatrist named David Spiegel published a study of women with metastatic breast cancer. He created a support group for half the women, whom he taught self-hypnosis. The other women got no extra social support. The results were remarkable: Spiegel reported that the women in the group survived twice as long as the other women. This study was hugely influential in modern beliefs about meditation and cancer survival. It showed up in the books my husband read to me, which were filled with other stories of miraculous healings, of patients defying the odds through their own emotional work. But I was so far behind. From the beginning I couldn’t stop crying. I began to think I was hopeless and would never survive.

I needed help, and I remembered a woman my husband and I had talked to in the first week after my diagnosis. Both of us had found in those conversations our only experience of calm, our only reassurance that we were doing the right things. Anne Coscarelli is a clinical psychologist and the founder of the Simms/Mann-UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology, which helps patients and their families cope with the trauma of cancer. We had reached out to her when we were trying to understand my diagnosis. Now I needed her for much more.

For the first half hour in her office, we just talked about how sick I felt and how frightened I was. Then—nervously—I confessed: I wasn’t doing the work of healing myself. I wasn’t being positive.

“Why do you need to be positive?” she asked in a neutral voice.

I thought it should be obvious, but I explained: Because I didn’t want to die!

Coscarelli remained just as neutral and said, “There isn’t a single bit of evidence that having a positive attitude helps heal cancer.”

What? That couldn’t possibly be right. How did she know that?

“They study it all the time,” she said. “It’s not true.”

David Spiegel was never able to replicate his findings about metastatic breast cancer. The American Cancer Society and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health say there’s no evidence that meditation or support groups increase survival rates. They can do all sorts of wonderful things, like reducing stress and allowing you to live in the moment instead of worrying about the next scan. I’ve learned, whenever I start to get scared, to do some yoga-type breathing with my eyes closed until I get bored. If I’m bored, I’m not scared, so then I open my eyes again. But I’m not alive today because of deep breathing.

When I began to understand that attitude doesn’t have anything to do with survival, I felt myself coming up out of deep water. I didn’t cause my cancer by having a bad attitude, and I wasn’t going to cure it by having a good one.

And then Coscarelli told me the whole truth about cancer. If you’re ready, I will tell it to you.

Cancer occurs when a group of cells divide in rapid and abnormal ways. Treatments are successful if they interfere with that process.

That’s it, that’s the whole equation.

Everyone with cancer has a different experience, and different beliefs about what will help. I feel strongly that these beliefs should be respected—including the feelings of those who decide not to have any treatment at all. It’s sadism to learn that someone is dangerously ill and to impose upon her your own set of unproven assumptions, especially ones that blame the patient for getting sick in the first place.

That meeting with Anne Coscarelli took place 18 years ago, and never once since then have I worried that my attitude was going to kill me. I’ve had several recurrences, all of them significant, but I’m still here, typing and drinking a Coke and not feeling super upbeat.

Before I left that meeting, I asked her one last question: Maybe I couldn’t think my way out of cancer, but wasn’t it still important to be as good a person as I could be? Wouldn’t that karma improve my odds a little bit?

Coscarelli told me that, over the years, many wonderful and generous women had come to her clinic, and some of them had died very quickly.Yikes. I had to come clean: Not only was I un-wonderful. I was also kind of a bitch.

God love her, she came through with exactly what I needed to hear: “I’ve seen some of the biggest bitches come in, and they’re still alive.”

And that, my friends, was when I had my very first positive thought. I imagined all those bitches getting healthy, and I said to myself, I think I’m going to beat this thing.

 

The Atlantic

A 19-year-old man faces three months to five years in prison for stealing a horse and trying to hide it in his apartment on the third floor of a residential building.

When police officers in Wejherowo, Poland, received an emergency call about a man trying to lead a horse to the upper floors of a local apartment building, they thought it was a clever prank. However, the person on the other end of the line was not laughing. They insisted that there was a grown horse on the staircase of their building making its way up, and the residents needed police assistance. Police reluctantly sent out a crew to investigate, but they were shocked to find that the caller’s story checked out. There was indeed a full-grown horse being led to the upper floors of the apartment building by a young man who appeared to be arguing with disgruntled neighbors trying to stop him.

“A young man was trying to lead a mare into the stairwell of a multi-family building,” Anetta Potrykus, a spokeswoman from the District Police Headquarters in Wejherowo, told Radio Gdansk.

Officers later learned that the unnamed resident trying to lead the horse into his third-floor apartment had stolen the animal and was trying to conceal it, in case someone came asking about it. He apparently never considered how conspicuous that operation would be, or how he would keep a full-grown mare in his two-bedroom apartment if he managed to get it through the front door.

Police officers estimated the price of the horse at around 15,000 Polish zloti ($3,800). They managed to get the animal back to the owner – who had already reported it stolen – safe and sound.

As for the 19-year-old genius who tried to hide the stolen horse in his apartment, he has been charged with theft and risks spending up to five years behind bars.

 

Oddity Central

Nigeria's Portuguese coach Jose Peseiro said on Friday he had left the job only weeks after taking the team to the Africa Cup of Nations final.

He made the announcement on X, formerly Twitter, confirming the end of his contract with the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).

“Yesterday, we concluded our contract with the NFF. It was a pride and honor to coach the Super Eagles. It has been 22 months of immense dedication, sacrifice, emotion, and enormous enthusiasm. We feel a sense of fulfilment,” he wrote.

Peseiro took Nigeria to the Cup of Nations final for the first time since 2013 but they let slip a 1-0 lead against hosts Ivory Coast to go down 2-1 in Abidjan on Feb. 11.

The much-travelled 63-year-old has also managed Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

 

Reuters

Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) says it has reimbursed depositors of 179 microfinance banks (MFBs) and four primary mortgage banks (PMBs) that were recently shut down.

Bello Hassan, managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO) of NDIC made this known at the ongoing 45th Kaduna International Trade Fair on Thursday.

He said the corporation has significantly improved its processes to ensure swift payment of insured sums to depositors in case of bank failure.

Hassan, who was represented at the occasion by Hauwa Jimeta, a senior official of the corporation, added that NDIC has continually strengthened its systems, processes, and procedures to enhance transparency and accountability across its operations.

“Notably, the corporation achieved remarkable success in reimbursing depositors during the recent closure of 179 microfinance banks (MFBs) and four primary mortgage banks (PMBs), ensuring timely payment of insured sums,” Hassan said.

“We also deployed digital remote payment strategies to facilitate electronic funds transfers to verified depositors’ alternate bank accounts.

“It is essential to emphasise that payments are ongoing, with depositors holding funds exceeding the insured limit set to receive liquidation dividends following debt recovery and asset sales.

“To address apathy among depositors with small balances, we launched the ‘Deposit Tracer’ initiative in partnership with a Mobile Money Operator 2 (MMO), enabling depositors to access their unpaid balances through mobile accounts.

“Furthermore, we have deployed a mobile application and updated our website for online claims processing, offering depositors the option of virtual verification during payout exercises.”

He further said NDIC  has introduced the “single customer view (SCV) framework to speed up payment to depositors of closed banks”.

Hassan said the priority of the corporation is to protect Nigerian depositors.

“We are dedicated to safeguarding depositors’ funds from the adverse effects of bank failure and complementing the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in effectively supervising insured deposit-taking financial institutions and formulating sound banking policies,” he said

According to the CEO, NDIC has enhanced collaboration with the judiciary for speedy prosecution of failed insured institutions.

“This concerted effort has resulted in resolving long-drawn cases of closed banks such as Fortune and Triumph Banks in liquidation,” he said.

“Moreover, we have utilised alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms and out-of-court settlements, revitalising our liquidation activities.

“These efforts have significantly improved our debt recovery rate, enabling us to declare 100 per cent liquidation dividends to uninsured depositors of more than 20 deposit money banks in liquidation.”

Hassan, therefore, urged depositors of banks in liquidation to utilise these initiatives to claim their funds trapped in closed banks.

 

The Cable

Western officials indulging in escalatory rhetoric should realize that they are effectively invoking the specter of an all-out nuclear war, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in a speech to legislators in Moscow on Thursday. He also once again accused the West of instigating the Ukraine conflict.

Putin addressed the topic in the opening minutes of his annual state-of-the-nation speech, a key event in which the president declares his plans and priorities in a televised address to both houses of the Federal Assembly of Russia, the national legislature.

President Putin insisted that recent claims by Western officials, that Moscow is planning to attack NATO, are “nonsense.” At the same time, those same nations are “selecting targets to conduct strikes on our territory,” the Russian head of state claimed, adding that there is now talk of “deploying NATO military contingents to Ukraine.”

Putin reminded would-be aggressors that all previous attempts to conquer Russia have ended in failure, warning that “now the consequences for potential invaders would be far more tragic.” He pointed out that Russia has a massive nuclear arsenal, which is in a state of “complete readiness for guaranteed deployment.”

“Everything that they are thinking up now, that they are scaring the world with, it all really poses the threat of a conflict involving nuclear weapons, and therefore, the destruction of civilization. Don’t they understand this?” 

The Russian president suggested that Western politicians making those escalatory remarks “have already forgotten what war is.”  

Unlike Russians, who have faced “difficult trials” in recent decades, Westerners apparently “think that these are just some cartoons,” President Putin opined.  

His remarks came after his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, toyed with the idea of a potential ground deployment of Western militaries to Ukraine while talking to reporters on Monday, saying “in terms of dynamics, we cannot exclude anything.” 

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg hastened to emphasize that “there are no plans for NATO combat troops on the ground in Ukraine.”  

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in turn, declared that there will be “no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil, who are sent there by European or NATO countries” in the future. 

The leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Finland also chimed in with similar assurances.  

Commenting on Macron’s remark, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that such a development would mean that “we have to talk not about the probability, but rather the inevitability” of an all-out military confrontation between NATO and Russia. 

 

RT

A former Ward Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party in the Federal Capital Territory, Alhassan Sidi Kawu, was among 23 persons abducted by  gunmen numbering about 40 who stormed Kawu Community in the Bwari Area Council of the FCT in the early hours of Thursday.

The Kawu community shares boundaries with Kaduna and Niger states.

The councillor representing the community, who is also the Deputy Speaker in the council, Abdulmumini Zakari, told newsmen that the gunmen arrived the community on Wednesday, from the Kuyeri Forest in Kaduna State.

He added that among the gunmen’s victims were the wife and son of the District Head, Abdurrahman Danjuma Ali, alongside a former Ward Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party and his four children.

“They divided themselves into groups and some went into the palace of the District Head where they abducted his son, Lukman, and his wife, who he married two weeks ago.

The bandits also reportedly went into the compound of Sarkin Pawan Kawu, Gambo Pawa, and abducted him alongside his two wives and some children.

Efforts by our correspondent to reach the FCT Police Public Relations Officer, Josephine Adeh, proved abortive as she did not respond to phone calls or texts from our correspondent as of the time of filing this report.

 

Punch

More than 100 killed while seeking aid in Gaza, overall death toll passes 30,000

Gaza health authorities said Israeli forces on Thursday shot dead more than 100 Palestinians as they waited for an aid delivery, but Israel blamed the deaths on crowds that surrounded aid trucks, saying victims had been trampled or run over.

At least 112 people were killed and more than 280 wounded in the incident near Gaza City, Palestinian health officials said.

The loss of civilian lives was the biggest in weeks. Hamas said the incident could jeopardise talks in Qatar aimed at securing a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages it is holding. When asked if he thought it would complicate the talks, U.S. President Joe Biden said: "I know it will."

Medics in Gaza said they could not cope with the flood of serious injuries, which came as the death toll in nearly five months of war passed 30,000, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Israel disputed the account provided by officials in Hamas-run Gaza, which has been bombarded by Israeli forces for months since the Palestinian militant group's deadly rampage in southern Israel on Oct. 7.

The Israeli military said the trucks were operated by private contractors as part of an aid operation that it had been overseeing for the past four nights.

One Israeli official said there had been two incidents, hundreds of metres apart. In the first, dozens were killed or injured as they tried to take aid from the trucks and were trampled or run over.

He said there was a second, subsequent incident as the trucks moved off. Some people in the crowd approached troops who felt under threat and opened fire, killing an unknown number in a "limited response", he said. He dismissed the casualty toll given by Gaza authorities but gave no figure himself.

In a later briefing, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari also said dozens had been trampled to death or injured in a fight to take supplies off the trucks.

He said tanks escorting the trucks had subsequently fired warning shots to disperse the crowd and backed away when events began to get out of hand. "No IDF strike was conducted towards the aid convoy," he said.

"The IDF was there conducting a humanitarian operation to secure the humanitarian corridor and allow the aid convoy to reach its designated distribution point."

The U.S. State Department said it was urgently seeking information on the incident as did the French foreign ministry.

WHITE HOUSE SAYS AID INCIDENT IS 'ALARMING' AND 'TRAGIC'

Hamas issued a statement rejecting the Israeli account.

It said the Health Ministry had presented "undeniable" evidence of "direct firing at citizens, including headshots aimed at immediate killing, in addition to the testimonies of all witnesses who confirmed being targeted with direct fire without posing any threat to the occupying army".

The White House said Biden discussed the "tragic and alarming incident"with the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, as well as ways to secure the release of Israeli hostages and a six-week ceasefire.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said it was an "ugly massacre" by Israel, and French foreign ministry spokesperson Christophe Lemoine said Israel was responsible under international law for protecting aid distribution to civilians.

One video shared on social media, whose location Reuters was able to verify, showed trucks loaded with many dead bodies as well as wounded people.

Another, which Reuters could not verify, showed bloodstained people being carried in a truck, bodies wrapped in shrouds and doctors treating injured patients on the hospital floor.

"We don't want aid like this. We don't want aid and bullets together. There are many martyrs," a man said in one of the videos.

The Pentagon expressed alarm but declined to assign any blame. "These are human beings that are trying to feed themselves" Air Force Major General Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, told a news briefing. "We're all kind of looking at that and saying: 'What happened here'?".

PALESTINIAN DEATH TOLL TOPS 30,000

The Palestinian health authorities said 30,035 Palestinians were now confirmed killed and more than 70,000 wounded in Israel's offensive, launched after the Oct. 7 attack in which Israel said Hamas gunmen killed 1,200 people and abducted 253.

Much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble and most of its 2.3 million population have been displaced from their homes at least once.

Aid deliveries to northern Gaza have been sparse and chaotic, passing through more active military zones to an area where the U.N. says many are starving, with videos showing desperate crowds surging around supply trucks.

U.N. and other relief agencies have complained that Israel has blocked or restricted their attempts to get aid in. Israel denies putting any restrictions on humanitarian aid.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. Palestinian aid agency UNRWA, told reporters in Jerusalem that the supply of aid into Gaza as a whole had halved since January.

 

Reuters

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

UK ‘directly involved’ in Ukraine conflict – Kremlin

Britain’s direct military involvement in Ukraine was never a secret, but one of the country’s establishment media outlets has now admitted it outright, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said on Thursday.

The outlet RTVI asked Peskov to comment a report from The Times which claimed that Admiral Tony Radakin, the head of the UK armed forces, has helped make “battle plans” for Ukraine.

“In general, it’s no secret that the British really provide different forms of support [to Ukraine]. People on the ground and intelligence and so on and so forth,” Peskov said. “That is, they are actually directly involved in this conflict.”

According to the British outlet, citing a Ukrainian military source, Radakin “is understood to have helped the Ukrainians with the strategy to destroy Russian ships and open up the Black Sea,” and seen as “invaluable in coordinating support from other senior chiefs in NATO.” 

The admiral also reportedly visited Kiev and met with President Vladimir Zelensky, to discuss Ukraine’s strategy and the ways in which the West could help. 

The Kremlin doesn’t have specific information related to Radakin, but “probably our military knows about this,” Peskov said.

Radakin, 58, was due to retire in November after three years as chief of the defense staff, but will stay on the job for another year at Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s request, the Times reported. One source told the outlet that the British government considered it important to retain “continuity” ahead of the upcoming general election.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz this week inadvertently confirmed the presence of UK troops on the ground in Ukraine, noting that British fire control operators were directing Storm Shadow cruise missiles. A British lawmaker subsequently denounced Scholz’s comments as “a flagrant abuse of intelligence” that put UK personnel in danger and gave Russia a pretext to escalate.

 

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine repels Russian attacks but situation is difficult, top general says

Ukrainian forces have pushed back Russian troops from the village of Orlivka, west of Avdiivka, but the situation on the eastern front remains difficult, Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Thursday.

Orlivka is less than 2 kilometres (1-1/2 miles) northwest of Lastochkyne, which was occupied this week by Russian forces.

Russian forces last week captured the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka after a months-long assault and are pressing on other areas along the front line, Ukrainian authorities say.

Ukraine's military said this week it had withdrawn from two more villages near Avdiivka, losing more territory as support from its Western allies runs short.

"The enemy continues active offensive actions in many areas of the front line. The situation is particularly tense in the Avdiivka and Zaporizhzhia sectors," Syrskyi said on the Telegram messaging app.

He said Russian assault units were trying to break through the Ukrainian defences and capture the settlements of Tonenke, Orlivka, Semenivka, Berdychi and Krasnohorivka.

Syrskyi, who visited troops on the eastern front, said some commanders had revealed certain shortcomings in their "situational awareness and assessment of the enemy", which affected the sustainability of defence in certain areas.

"I took all measures to remedy the situation on the ground, with the allocation of additional ammunition and material resources, as well as the necessary reserves," Syrskyi said.

Russia's Defence Ministry, in its daily account of front-line activity, said its forces had secured more advantageous positions in the Avdiivka sector and inflicted losses on Ukrainian units around Orlivka and nearby villages.

Reuters was unable to verify accounts from either side.

A Ukrainian commander in the area described a "significant difference" in fighting since Avdiivka changed hands.

"Russians have slightly fewer opportunities to engage aviation. But artillery and FPV (First Person View) drones are used in large quantities," Maksym Zhorin, deputy commander of the Third Separate Assault Brigade, wrote on Telegram.

"Beneath all this, there is a frenzy of infantry. Sometimes we observe groups of up to 40 people running through a field in a seemingly disorganised manner."

The Third Brigade, in a separate posting, said its forces had pushed into the town of Krasnohorivka on armoured vehicles and forced dozens of Russian troops to flee.

"The enemy had no intention of retreating and clung to every building," the report said. "The Russians were driven out of them by using force, bullets and grenades."

Ukraine's military and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy have said that troops lack equipment and ammunition needed to repel Russian attacks because of a shortage of Western aid.

Zelenskiy, posting on the social media platform X, said Ukraine's air defences had enjoyed success in February, downing 13 planes, including 10 Su-34 and two Su-35 fighters and an A-50 surveillance aircraft.

 

RT/Reuters

 

 

The resolutions following the Extraordinary Summit of the Heads of Government of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), at the recently concluded summit of Heads of State and Government in Abuja, were truly extraordinary.

Seven months after threatening to deploy force in Niger, one of the four delinquent states – the others being Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso – and three months after wide-ranging economic sanctions were imposed on all four, the regional body backed down spectacularly last week.

If the Afrobeat icon, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, had rendered a welcome tune for the embattled regional leaders as they met in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, it would have been his famous “Confusion Break Bone (CBB).” Misery never had a better company than the current state of affairs in the 50-year-old regional body, which apart from SADC, was perhaps Africa’s most exemplary model of regional co-operation.

While ECOWAS said it offered amnesty to its delinquent members on “humanitarian grounds”, the response from the military leaders in Bamako, Conakry, Ouagadougou and Niamey, has been mockingly indifferent. Yet the truth about how this 15-member regional block with annual trade valued at $150 billion came to this sorry pass is deeper and more nuanced than it appears.

Wrong turn

The Lomé Declaration of July 2000 recognised the continent was drifting and needed urgent course correction. An earlier era of democratic consolidation was being eroded by the return of military coups and the AU needed to create mechanisms to roll back the trend. 

But that’s precisely where the problem was misdiagnosed. While continental leaders were rightly concerned that unconstitutional changes of government were once again becoming a clear and present danger, the emphasis has been big on response but often, too little too late, on prevention. 

Nowhere has the situation played out more regrettably than in the delinquent Sahelian states of Mali, Guinea Burkina Faso and Niger. Whereas ECOWAS played a lead role in managing the crisis in Liberia and Sierra Leone; and forced Yahaya Jammeh to back down when he tried to play games in The Gambia after his final term, the problems in Francophone west Africa are more complicated. They speak French, which translated, means the continent should have prioritised prevention, instead of response. 

The French question

The delinquent military leaders have accused ECOWAS of keeping silent while their countries have been ripped off by France for decades. This largely true, but partly self-serving sentiment has found a place in the hearts and minds of citizens in these countries.

France has accumulated a notoriously poor record on the continent that it can hardly be proud of. In Niger, for example, Tom Burgis writes in his book, The Looting Machine, that French state-owned atomic energy group Areva's profit from uranium is twice Niger’s GDP. The footprint is the same everywhere in the region.

Fourteen Francophone countries, including the four troubled ones, store 50 percent of their reserves in the French Treasury, an arrangement which has been widely criticised. Even French President Emmanuel Macron, born after colonial rule, acknowledged this injustice with a heavy heart, but then turned around to say later it was a part of the “civilising” obligations of France. If civilisation means robbing a country at gunpoint and having the victims pay interest for the crime, I wonder what primitiveness would look like.

While France may be the most obvious, and perhaps the most perniciously complicit, it is not the only source of Francophone west Africa’s misery. As I wrote in an earlier article on this subject entitled, “Again, A Bizarre Joke in Niger Speaks French,” China, and lately, Russia, also have their hands in it for their own strategic interests. Yet, not a single one of these foreign powers have gotten away with murder without the complicity of the political elite in these countries – politicians and military alike.

It is convenient for the delinquent military leaders in the Sahelian states to look for scapegoats elsewhere, exploiting widespread insecurity, rampant poverty, identity politics and foreign meddling to gain legitimacy. 

The point is, military leaders have no greater claim to patriotism than do the rest of us. We have seen in dozens of military coups on the continent that those who came claiming to be messiahs left their countries worse off.

Blaming Tinubu?

Where does the flip-flop and mollycoddling leave ECOWAS, a regional body obviously anxious to prove under the leadership of Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, that it is as good as its word that coups would have no place on his watch?

It's hard to blame Tinubu for pressing ECOWAS to act tough as military coups piled on themselves. As the leader of a country that had witnessed nearly half a dozen successful coups, he had to do what he did as a matter of self-preservation and enlightened interest. 

The problem, however, was that there were so many artisans involved in making this broth, it turned out to be a chef’s nightmare. Strategy should never have been sacrificed for expediency.

The Delinquent Four have seen that the regional powerhouses have been considerably weakened and distracted internally by insurgency, political strife, economic crisis, and poor governance. Add that to a global system pre-occupied with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, then it becomes clearer why the Delinquent Four have adopted defiance as strategy.

The Chairman of the ECOWAS Commission, Omar Toure, expressed the hope that eating the humble pie is worth the price of losing four members. I’m not sure the Delinquent Four will withdraw their threat of leaving, U-turn or not. They’ve got ECOWAS exactly where they wanted and won’t be in a hurry to climb down. Sanctions hurt and studies have shown that they could have statistically significant immediate and long-term effects on the targets. 

But that, of course, is assuming that the countries imposing sanctions have the capacity and will to enforce them. Even though the four countries targeted by ECOWAS are landlocked and therefore could ordinarily have felt the impact more, boundaries in the subregion are so porous and informal trade so deeply entrenched – about 30 percent of regional trade actually – a successful implementation of economic sanctions was always going to be quite problematic. 

Then, there is the potential threat that if these countries harden beyond redemption, it would not only further weaken the multinational framework for containing insurgency in the region, these states may themselves become epicentres of regional destablisation. 

As things are, ECOWAS will have to swallow its pride and set up credible negotiating teams with the Delinquent Four that take into account their grievances. The artisans have done enough harm. It’s unlikely that these military leaders would honour any transition guidelines but that must remain the minimum basis for any future agreements. 

Tacky Macky Sall

There is, of course, the case of Senegal where President Macky Sall is also waiting to go rogue. Before ECOWAS is caught on the backfoot again, this would be a good time to start meaningful negotiations to ensure that Sall doesn’t endanger himself, his country and the subregion by extending his tenure too far beyond his already exhausted expiry date. 

In light of the fragile situation in the continent, the AU must now pay far greater attention to prevention, focusing on triggers and early warning signs such as flawed elections, poor governance, and systemic corruption, instead of making a virtue of chasing the horses after they have bolted the stable. 

That’s why the launch this week of the Regional Citizen’s Dialogue Programme (RCDP) in Abuja by a consortium of NIPSS, Kuru; the Dantiye Centre, Kano; the Sierra Leone-based regional cenre (RCGSPI); and KAICIID, to mobilise civil society and complement institutional effort at prioritising prevention deserves serious attention. 

Who would have thought that three landlocked countries with a combined eight percent contribution to the $761billion GDP of ECOWAS, according to the World Bank, could hold the community to ransom, forcing it to swallow more than a trayful of humble pie?

** Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP

 

One of the oft-repeated myths in this country is that when the poor are hungry enough, their final resort will be to eat the rich. But when one considers the Nigerian situation, one wonders just how much more hungry people need to get before they finally combust. Several revolutions in human history have been triggered by people who could no longer manage their hunger pangs. From Russia in the 16th century to South Africa in 2020, hunger has launched the public protests that changed the course of history. Only time will tell if the physiological experience of hunger will drive the urgency of political action in Nigeria.

No thanks to the current economic situation, “ebi ń pa wá o!” has become the defining anthem of the Bola Tinubu era. The gustatorial politics of jęun sókè that made our man popular has been overtaken by the insatiability of the gut. Last Friday, a stampede that occurred during the sale of rice “seized” by the Nigeria Customs Service Yaba office reportedly killed seven persons. There is so much one can begin to say about the organisers who failed to factor in crowd control properly. What technical and organising capacity did they have that they trusted themselves to efficiently handle the starving multitude that would surge to their offices to buy food a little more affordably?

Given the rate at which the politics of ethnicity and religion are being weaponised as a taming mechanism to curtail agitation, maybe we are seeing all there is to the shouts of ebi ń pa wá o! A faction in the socio-cultural group Afenifere, for instance, begged fellow Yorubas not to join the public protests breaking out over the current economic hardship. Reuben Fasoranti, factional chairman of Afenifere’s elders caucus, said that though people face hardship, they must also be understanding. After restating the same trite excuse that our situation is comatose because of the failures of past administrations, he added, “The government’s commitment to implementing these measures is a testament to its dedication to addressing the root causes of our economic challenges, inherited from the ills of the previous years.”

I do not know if Baba Fasoranti is an economic analyst to trust that the ongoing reforms are truly as restorative as government officials insist, but I can bet that the elderly man has witnessed enough of Nigeria’s history to know that what he describes as “the ills of the previous years” do not exclude key actors in this present administration. Nigeria did not become the way it is presently because a bunch of aliens dropped from Mars to inflict pain on us. We are stuck in history because we are repeatedly being served by the same old executioners garbed in the robes of statesmen.

Even Sunday Igboho, the so-called revolutionary who stepped up for the “Yoruba nation” during the Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.)’s administration too has joined the company of Yoruba attenuators. He also exonerates Tinubu from the ongoing hardships and blames Buhari instead. I think he forgets that the insecurity situation that prompted him to become a “freedom fighter” in the Buhari era also predated the Buhari presidency. I do not recall him offering Buhari the same alibi he is now tossing around for his kinsman. The fact that every Nigerian problem is a carryover from a previous era does not mean we should merely shut up and suffer. What is the point of electing a president when the best he can do is to merely contextualise the problem we—not them—live through every day?

By now, if there is one consistent quality one has come to expect from our people, it is that the politics of identity will always trump the affinity of class. Even amidst the hunger that killed seven while they struggled to buy cheap rice, our people still manage to maintain some clarity on the ethnic import of their reaction to the hunger. Even the NLC protests planned for Tuesday and Wednesday could barely be held after several unions backed out.

Former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, Usman Yusuf, who has been making provocative public statements in the media regarding the worsening economic hardship recently wondered “why the South-East is uncharacteristically quiet.” Several self-appointed representatives of the South-East handed him some self-justificatory answers, but who can blame any southeasterner for not joining or staging protests after all the traumas they went through under the Buhari administration? The man’s politics, especially his imprudent response to the rise of IPOB, did not bode well for the South-East. Why go through another phase of unrest again and so soon too?

Then, of course, there was the 2023 elections where an Igbo man was a leading presidential candidate. While he managed to upend the structuration of Nigeria’s political calculations, the election outcome was another story. Not only did the results feature many instances of electoral manipulation, but the triumphalism of the supposed winners fuelled toxicity. The silence of the South-East can therefore be a manifestation of a well-earned schadenfreude. Really, why should they not gloat now that “èmilókàn” has become “ebi ń pa wá o”? Let those who opened their eyes wide to retain the APC after suffering eight years of affliction under Buhari stand up and fix what they broke.

Whatever one might think of Yusuf’s singling out a region in his expectations of political agitations, he had a point about how public protests work in Nigeria. If Nigerians who have been serially hit by Tinubu’s harsh policies are now pacifying themselves with stories of how everything got spoiled by previous administration(s), it is not because they have a better perspective on their history. If, by now, the South-West has not brought out its famous rage machine to antagonise the government of the day over the excruciating economic conditions that their people—crying ebi ń pa wá o! in the streets—are enduring, how else do we account for their complacence other than the “àwalókàn” sentiment?

Under a different set of circumstances, certain characters—you know them—would have been jumping from one media house to another to register their aggrievement over the unfortunate incident of the deaths at the Customs Office. They would have been alleging a systematic plot to diminish the “Yoruba race” and be threatening fire and brimstone. But now, they ask us to sit still. Not even the affliction of hunger can put paid to our people’s marshalling of tribal troops.

If Atiku Abubakar or Peter Obi had won the 2023 presidential election, would Fasoranti have issued a statement cautioning the Yoruba people against public protests? I know it is a hypothetical question, but it is one that can be answered by considering precedents. Under Goodluck Jonathan and Buhari, did they also enjoin Yorubas not to protest because the hardship was for the eventual good?

If we will advance as a people, we need to reach a point where the region (and the religion) that succeeded in putting a candidate into power should be the one to lead the agitation if that leader starts faltering. If you voted out of a conviction that the person can level mountains, then you owe the rest of us the legwork to see that the better world you envisioned while casting your vote is realised. People who go all out for a candidate should take the pains to also hold them accountable. It should not be enough to want to see your tribe (or religion) in power, but you should also go all out to ensure that their administration represents the best your tribe has to offer the country.

Seriously, Tinubu’s supporters owe us public protests and accountability for opening the door to an affliction everyone knew would happen.

 

Punch