Nearly 50 years after Nigeria’s charismatic former Military Head of State, the late General Murtala Muhammed, warned from the hallowed rostrum of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now African Union (AU), in 1976 that “Africa has come of age and it is no longer under the orbit of any extra-continental power”, a German diplomat, Mr. Weert Borner, reportedly lectured leaders of West African countries against partnership with the Russia Federation in their respective countries at a recent event.
General Mohammed has cautioned then that, “For too long has it been presumed that African needs outside experts to tell him who are his friends and who are his enemies. The time has come when we should make it clear that we can decide for ourselves; that we know our own interests and how to protect those interests; that we are capable of resolving African problems without presumptuous lessons in ideological dangers which more often than not, have no relevance for us, nor for the problem at hand”. General Murtala Mohammed spoke against the background of the infamous letter from the then U.S President Gerald Ford, warning African leaders against the continent’s effort to bring unity among pro-independence forces in Angola.
Borner, Germany’s Consular General in Lagos, spoke at an international conference, marking the 50th anniversary of the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) hosted by the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs, (NIIA) in Lagos. The German diplomat warned, “do not regard Russia under President Putin as a reliable partner on peace and stability in the region. From Russia’s direct neighbourhood to various parts of Africa, Putin’s Russia is playing a power and resource game without respect for the true interests of the respective countries in the region”.
The German diplomat is among the archetype of “outside experts” that General Muhammed warned several years ago that would tell the African “who are his friends and who are his enemies”.
Since 2022, when the simmering Russia-Ukraine conflict broke into an open proxy war, with the 32-member US led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) vowing to inflict “strategic defeat” on Russia, various European countries, especially Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Poland, have made it a key of their diplomatic activity to rupture by all means the long historic Africa-Russia relations inherited from the the defunct Soviet Union for which the Russian Federation is the major successor.
Both at the multilateral forum of the United Nations and bilateral platforms, these countries have arm-twisted and pressured African countries to line up behind their agenda of inflicting “strategic defeat” on Russia; a project which has turned out to be a geo-political fantasy from the reality of actual combat in the battlefields and the compulsive failure to isolate Moscow on the world stage. African countries have maintained a pragmatic approach to the conflict, which consists of adding their voices to the call for a negotiated settlement through diplomatic engagement which contrasts with NATO’s inflammable actions of pouring more weapons to the conflict.
Africa’s cautious and pragmatic approach is based on the reality that Russia being a nuclear power with the largest numbers of the deadly war heads in its arsenal can be forced to unleash it, if cornered, and bring humanity to an end. While leaders of Western European countries and its NATO alliance can gamble on this end time scenario, they have no right to force others, especially Africans, to share in their geopolitical containment strategy which can backfire with unpredictable consequences.
Telling African leaders especially in the ECOWAS region to beware and steer clear of “Putin’s Russia” is an outdated diplomacy of fear- mongering that no longer works. Having prodded Ukraine to poke fingers at the eyes of her stronger neighbour with her reckless ambition to join NATO and the open maltreatment of ethnic Russia, what have Ukraine achieved except its cities in ruin, nearly two million dead, over six million in exile and at internal refugee camps, with European leaders bantering the Ukraine beleaguered leader, Mr. Zelensky? Europe has opportunity to end the conflict, when it first broke out in the 2010s.
Germany and France were key European countries that acted as guarantors under the 2014 negotiated settlement of conflict held in Belarus, Minsk from which the two major agreements ending the conflict then called Minsk 1 and 2.
Germany’s long serving leader then, Angela Merkel, and her France counterpart, Francois Hollande, both explained later that the agreement produced at the negotiation was intended as a hoax, to deceive Russia and buy time for Ukraine to re-arm and create a “strong army”.
Following the start of the war in 2022, a process of negotiated settlement was started in Istanbul, Turkiye and again, according to the head of the Ukrainian negotiating team, an agreement which would have ended the war few months after it started was derailed, when the then British Prime Minister, Mr. Boris Johnson, ostensibly acting on behalf of NATO, urged the Ukrainians to walk away from the Istanbul process and just “fight”. While these are the unassailable facts in the trajectories of the escalations of the conflict to its current phase, the NATO establishment and their media outlets label all such factual chronicles as mere “Russia-narratives”, which they claim is routinely fed to Africa with their arrogant assumptions that Africans are unable to decipher facts from fictions or even fables. African leaders have at several forums made clear that Africa of the 21st century prefers to be pole of international stability, demonstrating even handedness on global issues instead of being a pawn in the geo-political contestations of major powers. Africa’s space is large enough to accommodate all partners, especially those who respect the integrity of the continent to choose and decide what is best for her.
Peace and stability are prerequisites for sustainable and inclusive development in Africa and the need for it cannot be allowed to be trifled by diplomats whose goal is merely to score geo-political points against their rivals. Those countries in the West African sub-region – Senegal, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger – who kicked out American and French military forces, know best the reality and experiences they have lived through with the military presence of these powers and are best placed to decide what comes next for them and not a German diplomat living in the safe and exquisite corner of Nigeria’s commercial hub, Lagos.
At least, he should say what Germany brings along to support the sub-region in addressing the security concerns and not to engage in fear-mongering about “Putin’s Russia”. It appears Western Europe and its NATO alliance are yet to come to the reality that Africa’s partnerships with China, Russia, India, Turkiye, Brazil, Vietnam, Republic of Korea etc, is the existential fact of Africa’s irreversible embrace of the emerging multilateral international system and which have so far delivered concrete returns in the many areas of Africa’s priorities of economic growth, poverty reductions, peace and stability and mutual political respect.
It is also well known fact that military procurements and trainings in Africa are carried out now with more diverse partners, thereby eliminating the lethargic conditionalities imposed by Western Europe and their NATO alliance in such important field of cooperation. Except such traditional partners in Europe and their diplomats engage in understanding the evolving realities, especially as Africa seizes the opportunities of the shifting international landscape, to diversify her partnerships, its approach would continue to look like the discredited old gun-boat diplomacy. As it is typical of Africa even far before the emergence of its modern states, Africa never forgets her old friends, even those with colonial record of brutal domination and exploitation, and, therefore, welcomes everyone to the cooperation safari of win-win outcomes.