VARIED ATTITUDES IN AFRICA: THE NIGERIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AND THE SERBIAN TRADER SELLING PUTIN SHIRTS IN NAMIBIA

For those of you who read my articles on the Duran Locals Page, I have often said that, with three notable exceptions, Anglophone African countries are inhabited by populations that are very pro-Western.

That explains why the USA never really cared who eventually emerged as President of Nigeria, the most populous country on the continent (~200 million citizens), which also happens to be Anglophone.

Three days before the 25 February 2023 general elections, famed musician, with three hit singles on Spotify, Mr. Tony Blinken, cut a US State Department video with the help of Democrat Party apparatchiks such as Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Samantha Power.

In the video, Tony Blinken delivered some “advice” to Nigerian voters who would be going to the polling stations to elect a new President, several federal legislators, state governors, state legislators and municipal officials.

Attempts to put on an air of neutrality did not last long. Tony Blinken and other officials of the US government voiced support for the affable and social media savvy Peter Obi, who was running for President as a third party candidate.

Obi was popular among the young and the well educated because he was largely seen as free of the corruption for which many Nigerian politicians are notorious.

Predictably, Mr. Bola Tinubu, the haughty presidential candidate for one of the two establishment political parties, was declared the winner of a Presidential elections partly marred by voting irregularities. (See my March 2023 article for details).

Initially, the US government made some noises about sanctions and refused to congratulate Bola Tinubu. But, it didn’t take long for the United States to do a volte-face, deciding that it would be in its best interest not to offend the new leader of Africa’s largest country (by population), especially after the said leader had been seen meeting with the Chinese Ambassador.

The US government not only congratulated Tinubu, it sent a nine-person delegation to the presidential inauguration ceremony, causing outrage among many of the youthful supporters of the third-party candidate who are still placing their hopes on the ponderous Nigerian judiciary, which is yet to rule on whether the Presidential election had been rigged and should be cancelled.

These youthful, twitter-loving Nigerians had naively believed that the US government officials genuinely liked Peter Obi (as opposed to opportunistically backing him because they thought he would be declared winner of the elections).

These young voters trusted the Biden government to maintain its refusal to congratulate the supposed winner of the presidential election, Bola Tinubu, and act on its threats to place US travel bans and sanctions on Nigerian political figures who allegedly masterminded the electoral irregularities. Oh, how wrong they were.

Like I explained in my March 2023 article, there was nothing at stake for the US government in the Presidential Election because the entire political class in Nigeria is generally in the pro-Western camp. All the candidates ranging from the third party challenger to the two establishment candidates are firmly pro-Western just like most of the Nigerian population.

However, being in the pro-Western camp is not an indication of hostility towards Russia and China. Both countries are important business partners of Nigeria, especially in the realm of space technology, defence and trade.

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SIDE BAR #1:

In 2003, Nigeria's first weather satellite was launched into outer space by Russian Kosmos-3M rockets. Russia launched a second Nigerian weather satellite in 2011. Between 2007 and 2011, Nigerian telecommunications satellites were transported to outer space with the aid of Chinese rockets. To avoid too much dependence on China and Russia, Elon Musk's Space X was hired in June 2017 to launch into space a nano-satellite designed and built in a Nigerian university. (All previous Nigerian-owned satellites were built abroad either in UK or China).

SIDE BAR #2:

The current President of Nigeria, Mr. Bola Tinubu, has a history of working with the Chinese. During his tenure as the governor of Lagos State (1999–2007), he awarded a contract to China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCEC) to build the Lagos State Mass Transit Rail system to rival the Abuja Light Rail system operated by the national government in the federal city of Abuja. Western companies, such as Alstom of France and Talgo of Spain, were also brought into the (still ongoing) Lagos railway project to maintain a balance with the Chinese government-run CCEC.

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Like I stated before, Anglophone Africa’s pro-western disposition does not translate to hostility to Russia. It just means that these English-speaking African countries prioritize relations with the UK and USA at Russia's expense. (Although, it has to be said that China is increasingly displacing both NATO countries from their top positions on the priority list.)

Next are the three outlier countries in Anglophone Africa, which can be defined as being firmly in the pro-Russian camp. These are South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia. All three have the unique history of having to fight local white settler ruling elites who had successfully resisted the decolonization efforts of the British government and refused to extend full citizenship rights to the black African majority.

The Soviet Union supplied weaponry to black African guerrilla groups operating inside Namibia and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The Soviets also gave diplomatic cover and asylum to exiled members of Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, which was a banned political movement in apartheid-era South Africa. So it is not a shock that these three English-speaking African countries are staunch supporters of the Russian Federation— the primary successor state to the defunct USSR.

Some of the support for Russia in Zimbabwe is rubbing off on Belarus. As an ally of Russia, the Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko was warmly received when he visited Zimbabwe in January of this year:

Not far from Zimbabwe is the arid nation of Namibia. Over there, a Serbian street trader named Dragan makes a living by selling merchandise. He told a Russia Today (RT) journalist that T-shirts with Putin's image sells best in Namibia.

Of course, the RT video claim—“Africa Is Experiencing A Peculiar Russian Trend”— is a gross exaggeration. Pro-Russian sentiment is not uniformly distributed across the continent. For instance, Dragan would not sell as much Putin T-shirts if he were based in countries such as Nigeria, Kenya or Ghana.

Sub-Saharan African countries with predominantly Russophile populations are found in:

• Lusophone countries liberated from Portuguese rule with the aid of Soviet weaponry— Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde Islands. (Although, Cape Verde is increasingly leaning towards pro-Western camp nowadays. Blame tourism revenue earned from European holidaymakers).

• Francophone countries deeply resentful of the suffocating domination of France and looking up to Russia to help them militarily to fight jihadist terrorists unleashed when NATO destroyed Libya's statehood.

• Three Anglophone Southern African countries now governed by left-leaning African liberation movements once supported by USSR— South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

In the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, the predominant attitude towards Russia is ambivalent, although there are small minorities who are either intensely pro-Russian or intensely anti-Russian.

In Anglophone Africa, tiny left-wing parties tend to be pro-Russian (e.g. Zambian Socialist Party) in a way not representative of the general population. Likewise, the print and electronic media of many Anglophone African countries are filled with journalists foaming at the mouth with russophobia. Again, the views of these African journalists do not reflect the mostly neutral sentiments of the Anglophone populace.

By contrast, China enjoys a lot more support across the entire continent from Egypt in North Africa to South Africa in the southern African region. This has to do with big construction projects undertaken by gigantic Chinese government-owned companies, which is making life easier for ordinary people, and growing business networks linking African entrepreneurs to individual Chinese businessmen and privately-owned small & medium scale companies in China.

THE END

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