SO, NOW, BOKO HARAM IS FRENCH CONSPIRACY AGAINST NIGERIA?© (“A FANATIC IS ONE WHO WON’T CHANGE THE SUBJECT OR TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER”) -Attorney Patryk Utulu The great American thinker, F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that “a true test of intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in one’s mind at the same time.” I believe he was being satirical that (wo)men of high intellect should remind themselves that they are sometimes wrong. It is a warning I take very seriously especially because my Mother used to say that “to know is to know that you don’t know it all.” Recently, I wrote an article entitled Conspiracist Nonsense of Boko Haram as CIA Plot Against Nigeria. After posting it I lost some friends who inboxed their strong grievances that I didn’t support or reinforce their CIA suspicions. Politely I thanked them for making their surprising insults private via inbox. It is my own code of honor (except for fraud or criminality) to respect the confidentiality of “inboxers.” The price of friendship must never be that we all become clones of one another. I AM NOT IRREVERSIBLY OPPOSED TO THE IDEA THAT “OUTSIDERS” COULD BE STOKING the violence and killings and senseless butchering of my people in Northern Nigeria. However, those who keep suggesting that the CIA or Global Oil Interests (or as they now claim, FRANCE!) is behind Boko Haram should provide reasonable proof or concrete argument to support their claim. Printing and recycling already-debunked online fallacies and fantasies won’t change realities on the ground. Besides conjectures, half-statements and conclusory statements no one has even come close to showing how Western Powers are behind the attempt to break up Nigeria. A conclusory statement is NOT valid conclusion. Conclusions require certain steps. For example, STEP 1: Borno State has been turned into hell by fanatics. Step 2: Borno used to be a peaceful place of unique Culture, and History. Step 3: (you state examples of Borno’s culture and prior peaceful coexistences). Step 4: (show how BH’s bombings ended safety of life in Borno. Finally, Step 5: (reinstate your original premise that Borno’s once-peaceful environment has been turned into hell). That is how to turn statements – with proof or at least, reasonable evidence – into valid conclusions. To simply jump to conclusion (e.g. France is responsible for Boko Haram bombings!) is simply “conclusory” and not valid “conclusion.” CONCLUSORY” statement is based on faith and fantasy, not reality or facts. Like any Nigerian I would like to catch and expose any foreign power behind the violence tearing up my country. What I see instead is a rush to put the blame on invisible “foreigners” or “outsider” puppet masters without proof or cogent evidence. As Nigerians we must be careful to test our prejudices and assumptions: Do we rush to blame outsiders for emergence and intransigence of Boko Haram because it makes us feel “helplessly” justified? Does blaming outsiders absolve us of our duty to resolve what is at core a Nigerian problem? Even if we find evidence of foreign interference, does it remove our obligation to find a solution to BHaram? A practical way of asking this question is: Does the fact that Nigeria has so many bad roads take away my responsibility to visit my home community when I de-plane at Abuja from the U.S.? Should we, as Nigerians, permanently avoid sleep because of the fear of nightmares? As I did with the so-called CIA plot so I must do with the new claim regarding France. France has always been a pompous colonial interloper. Its colonial policy of “Assimilation” demonstrated an insufferably arrogant presumption that colonized people preferred to be French at the expense of their indigenous cultural heritage. [Note: my disdain for French Assimilation policy is NOT an endorsement of British “Indirect Rule” rule system which was equally exploitative but less dismissive of indigenous cultures]. But France knows its limitations. Despite the outsized global role it plays, France is a third-rate economic power. France’s GDP is the same size as that of California and far less than Germany’s GDP. France knows it hence France put together the European Union as a global powerhouse through which it can flex its fragile economic muscles. But the E.U. isn’t under French control. Improved technology has led to oil discoveries in virtually all corners of the world. Hydraulic Fracturing (also called “Fracking”) has ensured that oil can be found even inside super rock structures miles deep on land, sea and mountain sides. Benin Republic, Ghana, Sierra Leone and other places not usually associated with oil are now oil producers. Due to fracking technology we are now prospecting for oil in areas of Minna, Niger state. The U.S., which is the highest consumer of global energy is NOW the highest producer of natural gas and is for the first time in history, an exporter of energy. [Note: I didn’t say that every nation has oil, only that those who have it can now find it]. This availability – or global abundance – of oil is why there has been no disruption of supply or even oil price hike despite ongoing war in Syria, renewed insurgency in Iraq, instability in Libya, Egypt and South Sudan, uptick in Saudi vs. Iran regional rivalry, and Shia awakening in Bahrain. HERE IS A GLOBAL FACT: NIGERIA NO LONGER COMMANDS GREAT RESPECT AS AN OIL SOURCE. [Why? Lack of refineries, crude pipe disruptions, corruption, Niger Delta instability – and, yes, Boko Haram]. Namibia, Guinea Bissau, Algeria, etc. are more reliable producers. Even Saudi Arabia is a less powerful global oil player as huge discoveries are made in Kazakhstan, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, with Iranian oil returning to global markets. My point is that France is NOT desperate for Nigerian oil. France has the highest population of Muslims in Europe. France’s Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (similar to CIA) and the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (Domestic Intelligence branch of the French National Police) are working round the clock, fearful that young French Muslims now fighting in Syria and Iraq will come back to France battle-tested, and completely radicalized. France is so worried that it is pressuring the highest levels of Turkish Government to stop these French boys from crossing into Syria. Turkey does not like to be told what to do but Turkey had wanted to join the European Union for the past 27 years and France had blocked it. Now, France is so desperate it is making “E.U. membership promises” to get Turkey’s help. Should we now believe that the same France is desperate to cross-pollinate Boko Haram? Does France want to create a Boko Haram-led Islamic Caliphate in Northern Nigeria? How does creating uncontrollable Boko Haramite “sultanates” serve US-CIA’s strategic global interest? What is the American national interest that today’s “united” Nigeria threatens? Hmmm!!! Patryk A. Utulu is a U.S.-based attorney and Strategic Communications Consultant Executive Director, The Center for Community Empowerment and Lifeskills, Inc. [All Rights Reserved 02152014. Copyright Privileges and Immunities Apply]]
Posted on: Sat, 15 Feb 2014 20:20:31 +0000
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