Simple question. Are you Nigerian? Do you have constitutional rights accorded to Nigerians to participate in their democratic process? If not, I have news you. You can’t do anything about the girls missing in Nigeria. You can’t. Your insistence on urging American power, specifically American military power, to address this issue will ultimately hurt the people of Nigeria.
It heartens me that you’ve taken up the mantle of spreading “awareness” about the 200+ girls who were abducted from their school in Chibok; it heartens me that you’ve heard the cries of mothers and fathers who go yet another day without their child. It’s nice that you care.
Here’s the thing though, when you pressure Western powers, particularly the American government to get involved in African affairs and when you champion military intervention, you become part of a much larger problem. You become a complicit participant in a military expansionist agenda on the continent of Africa. This is not good.
You might not know this, but the United States military loves your hashtags because it gives them legitimacy to encroach and grow their military presence in Africa. AFRICOM (United States Africa Command), the military body that is responsible for overseeing US military operations across Africa, gained much from #KONY2012 and will now gain even more from #BringBackOurGirls.
Last year, before President Obama visited several countries in Africa, I wrote about how the U.S. military is expanding its role in Africa. In 2013 alone, AFRICOM carried out a total of 546 “military activities,” which is an average of one and half military missions a day. While we don’t know much about the purpose of these activities, keep in mind that AFRICOM’s mission is to “advance U.S. national security interests.”
Read full article here
EziliDanto
It’s not either/or. It’s #BringBackOurGirls and #stopAFRICOM, #handsoffAfrica
EziliDanto
The girls must be rescued and their pain stopped. Period.
The article leaves us at impasse. Yes, the US leads the bankster/global
elite psychopaths ruling the world through genocide and glorifying
profit over people. But the argument that says don’t expose the Black
collaborators because his white supremacist handlers will take that
opportunity to feed on the chaos to garner more turf, is true but a dead
end. More clarity is required. Suffering bodies must be the priority,
not these artificial lines, borders and nation-state theories which as
we’ve seen, the imperialists and its post-WWII vetoing cohorts, changes
at will.
The average citizen in Nigeria has no power over the elites corruption in
their countries, the average citizen in the US has no power over the
elites corruption in their countries. When we remain locked into
dialectical thinking, we cannot see out of the box. It’s not an either
or situation. That is, do nothing because the US will only use it as an
excuse to further AFRICOM into Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Mali,
South Sudan, et al… Hellooooo, already there! There’s a global war
against Black women and this issue and the opinions about it mostly
ignore that. It’s in the US where 40percent of the mission are Black,
there are 65,000 missing Black women, organ harvesting, et al. This gets
no great attention. It’s the war against Assata Shakur, placed on the
TERRORIST list by the Obama administration. Terrorist! Could go on…
Understand,
the very fact that average citizens know the US had a hand in building
up extremists like Boko Haram and are discussing AFRICOM is more than
successful for those of us who puts this out consistently without media
attention and thus mass awareness. That this is a platform to understand
the encroachment of Northern Jihadist into West Africa as the Sahara
moves further South due to climate change is a platform, an opportunity
to rescue the girls and broaden our understanding that Nigerial is
effectively as colonized by the west today as Haiti is. Pushing Martelly
to rescue Haiti girls, if these were Haiti girls, would that bring the
US – already in Haiti, further into Haiti? Do the girls care who rescues
them? They just want the pain to stop! Do we actually care if
Martelly-Lamothe or Jonathan Goodluck and their cabinets LOSE their
positions as the moment’s-fuedal Black lords for the Nigerian or Haitian
oligarchs?
Life
is a serpentine path. The Hegelian-dialectic keep us at stalemate. It
is only in TRUTHFUL action that revolutionary change has a glimmer of
hope. We can’t be constrained by the oppressors paradigm.
We at the Free Haiti Movement understand that. So, reverse the thinking.
The US, the greatest superpower supposedly in world history, faces the
boasting of Boko Haram, a rag-tag fairly Western-audience unknown. It
needs to show off, as well as keep the oil producing countries in
Northern Africa at war and chaos in order to limit their oil
production/keep the US oil prices high to benefit Wall Street. What can
happen here if we continue to push #BringbackourGirls,
a tag and rallying cry even Mrs. Obama is sporting? If we continue to expose US pillage and market manipulation to keep oil prices high. Can it get any worst
for the masses in Nigeria, Chad, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan? Haiti says
yes. But whenever the US is over-extended and loses – like Vietnam and other places, what happens to the mass Tarzan, Superman- let’s
go kill them all, US mentality? Start the out-the-box thinking on how
Nigeria could outwit both Boko Haram and US callous power-elite maneuverings… Do we have another real choice? Dialogue on this requires participation, thinking and productive action, not the “let-us-do-nothing” because the imperialist will win if we raise awareness about the plight of defenseless children! We must do better than remain paralyzed. Bring back our girls!