Those who have placed visa bans on some “selected Nigerians” for supposedly “undermining democracy” and “rigging elections” are entirely within their rights to do so since it is their nation and they have the authority to do so.
We should not be concerned about that because the Nigerian people, a great and sovereign people who belong to a great and sovereign nation, spoke loudly and clearly and made their legitimate choices during a series of free, fair, and credible elections that have produced, to the glory of God, a President-elect and a set of Governors-elect, all of whom will be duly sworn-in according to law on the 29th of this month.
Wherever those elections were rigged or democracy was weakened, it can only be properly assessed by our election tribunals and courts after all facts and evidence have been presented, analysed, and concluded, not by any remote and/or partisan foreign authority or entity.
It is also my view that foreign policy, which ought to be based on the principle of equality of nations and conducted on the basis of reciprocity, requires the Nigerian Federal Government to consider the possibility of doing the same to the nationals of those that have implemented and announced this measure and issue a visa ban to any foreign citizen or member of any corporate entity or institution that may have indulged in undermining democracy or rigging elections in either their own country or any other country in the world over the last 25 years.
Courage, equity, justice, fairness, and mutual respect demand no less.
The irony of it all is that the President, whose government has issued a visa ban on selected Nigerians for rigging, has himself been accused of the most blatant and shameful election rigging in the history of their country by no less than his predecessor in office and millions of his fellow countrymen.
That is a pertinent observation and a relevant point.
The truth is that the world is becoming less tolerant of double standards, double speak, neo-colonialism, pseudo-imperialism, the hypocrisy and interference of big, rich, and powerful countries, who believe that they own and rule the world, in the affairs of less rich and less powerful ones, and the practise of what Lord Palmerston, Great Britain’s 18th century Foreign Minister, impudently and arrogantly enunciated and described as the implementation of a ‘paternalistic foreign policy’.
African leaders generally, and Nigerian leaders particularly, are not mice. They do not scramble and scatter at the sound of a gong, and they do not quiver or wet their pants in the face of a gratuitous insult, threat, or storm.
Gone are the days when Africans or their leaders shiver under their bedsheets and seek validation from, more often than not, ill-informed and ill-advised foreign government officials with local vested interests and misplaced, malevolent intentions.
Gone are the days when we sold our souls for a pittance or our people as slaves for mirrors and a bottle of “fire water” whisky.
We are no longer configured to fear mere mortals. We have learned that God alone is to be feared. He alone is our shield and defender. That He alone is our glory.
That He alone is the lifter of our heads. That He alone rules in the affairs of men and that He alone forges the destiny of nations.
No nation on earth, no matter how rich and powerful, can thwart the will of the God of all flesh for our people or undermine the purpose of the Lord of creation for our country.
All the visa bans in the world can’t change that.
