By BISI OLAWUNMI
Nigeria’s relentless push for war in Cote d’Ivoire with regard to the presidential election crisis in that country is getting curiouser and curiouser.

It is beginning to smack of the sympathiser who is crying more than the bereaved. Informed public opinion needs to be brought to dissuade the Federal Government from this path of perfidy. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), led by its chairman, President Goodluck Jonathan, is backing Alassane Quattara, one of the two claimants to the presidency of Cote d’Ivoire, the other being incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo, following a disputed  presidential election run-off election on November 28, 2010.

A political crisis had erupted in Cote d’Ivoire after the presidential election run-off  when the Constitutional Council, that has final authority to validate/review election result by the Electoral Commission, declared Gbagbo winner, after voiding some flawed votes,  while the United Nations representative in Cote d’Ivoire certified  Quattara winner, based on the preliminary result of the Electoral Commission, a certification that was backed by the ‘International Community’, thus precipitating a stalemate.

Gbagbo had led in the main election with an undisputed 38 per cent of the vote while Quattara was the runner-up with 32 per cent of the vote in a field of multiple presidential candidates. Now, the ‘international community’ is finding it difficult to accept that the front-runner could be the winner.

This, perhaps, explains why ECOWAS, the expected mediator, has turned a rabid partisan, eager to deploy military force on one of the claimants. How ECOWAS hopes to achieve peace in Cote d’Ivoire by militarily running Gbagbo out of  office, the candidate who had the highest vote in the main election, and even with the threat  of arraigning him before the International Court of Justice at the Hague, baffles the mind.

The United States has weighed in with the American ambassador to Cote d’Ivoire, Phillip Carter 111, warning at a press conference in Washington D.C., early February, that the window for Gbagbo’s peaceful exit was closing. The gloves are off – when an ambassador can threaten the president of his host country thus:  “The window for Gbagbo to leave honourably, peacefully, with amnesty, is closing” !. We can see the truth in WikiLeaks leaks of diplomatic arrogance of First World ambassadors in relation to Third World leaders. Nigeria may turn out to be no more than a puppet, with the puppeteers pulling the strings  from Paris and Washington.

Of course, I have no grouse against the  Americans if installing Quattara is in their national interest. But what is Nigeria’s core interest in going to war in Cote d’Ivoire where it will put the lives of over one million Nigerians resident in that country at risk ?

What is curious in the unfolding drama is that  as at the time the UN and the ‘international community’, that precipitated the crisis by their backing of  Quattara were inclined  to use sanctions to force Gbagbo out of office, Nigeria seems determined on a show of  muscle, as regional power, to militarily flush out the Ivorian president.

According to media reports of January 25, 2011, President Jonathan’s envoy, Foreign Affairs Minister, Odein Ajumogobia, SAN, had  on Monday, January 24, 2011, in a letter,  appealed to the United Nations (UN)  Security Council to pass a resolution authorising use of force by ECOWAS to oust Gbagbo from power. What is unsettling about the letter is its undue belligerence and  braggadocio.

“Gbagbo must be made to understand that there is a very real prospect of overwhelming military capability bearing down on him and his cohorts”, Ajumogobia thundered in the letter.

But the question is : Why is Nigeria so gung-ho about going to war in Cote d’Ivoire?  What is confounding in Nigeria’s aggressive pursuit of the war option is that Jonathan is generally perceived as a calm and calculative person, not given to theatrics. One wonders, therefore, in what circumstances he got captured by foreign policy war hawks.

But then, on further  reflections, it occurred to me that Jonathan and Ajumogobia are both Ijaw, the arrow-head group in militia-ruled Niger Delta and was wondering that perhaps this has become an export product – diplomatic militancy !  However, there are other questions begging for answers before this head-long rush to war. What is the budget for this war ?  Since this is not a military regime, won’t the Senate have to endorse the presidency’s adventure? Or is it assumed that the senators are spineless lapdogs ?

Nigeria reportedly spent $12 billion to prosecute the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone and lost an estimated 1,000 soldiers, with practically nothing to show for the sacrifices in terms of economic concessions or accommodation of Nigerians in those countries. Do we need to take that path of folly, again ?

Fortunately, the  president of the African Union (AU)  Commission, Dr. Jean Ping, has expressed reservations about a precipitate recourse to war, citing the example of  Democratic Republic of Congo, which is yet to enjoy peace nearly 20 years after President Mobutu Sese Seko was chased from power.  Also, the new chairman of the African Union (AU), President Theodoro Nguema of Equitorial Guinea, is not so keen on war, while President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has pointed out that the UN was too quick to certify Quattara as winner. The AU, at its just concluded 16th  Summit in Addis

Ababa, had admitted it endorsed Quattara as winner based principally on the position of ECOWAS and the certification of the ‘international community’.That makes Nigeria’s war option, as leader of ECOWAS, and backed by the West, to still remain a major factor that could sway the AU, particularly if Nigeria indicates willingness to bankroll the war. In spite of the hardship at home, Nigerian leaders love playing to the gallery, abroad. This reinforces the case that more interest groups should speak up against the war, as has been done by the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Another curious aspect of ECOWAS’ handling of the Ivorian crisis is appointing Blaise Campaore, who for 23 years has been president of Burkina Faso, Quattara’s native homeland, as the community’s envoy to Europe to drum support for war in Ivory Coast. Campaore had shot to power in a coup on October 15, 1987, a coup in which his bosom friend, patriotic and charismatic President Thomas Sankara, was killed.

So much for the credibility of ECOWAS’ warriors for democracy !  And to imagine he is among the African Union panel of five presidents given one month to sort out the Ivorien mess. The other absurdity is African Union mediator, Kenyan Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, who settled for that post in similar presidential election dispute in 2007 with President Mwai Kibaki, now rooting for war in Ivory Coast.

Why not a similar accommodation of Quattara with Gbagbo rather than a push for a winner-takes-all in favour of runner-up Quattara?  Shouldn’t election conflicts in Africa dictate a shift from the contentious winner-takes-all syndrome imported from the West to the embrace of the accommodative African communalism?

Meanwhile, as a Jonathan-led ECOWAS lobbies for war, it is important he is reminded that the so-called ‘international community’ also has poor impressions of  Nigeria on electoral matters, especially the 2007 elections that brought him to power. The Financial Times of London had in an editorial captioned: ‘African poll season’ noted: “Were Nigeria to experience a repeat of 2007 polls, marred by violence and fraud, it would be destabilising for both country and continent”.

Four years on, and with the prospect of a repeat of the 2007 polls going by the violence and fraudulence which had trailed the party primaries, the country’s April 2011 elections are becoming a difficult pregnancy, that risks complications which could also make Nigeria the object of attention of  the ‘international community’.   So, the advice is : Those who live in glass houses  need to exercise restraint in throwing stones.

* Olawunmi, former Washington Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) and Fellow, Nigerian Guild of Editors, teaches Media and Politics at a university in Southwest Nigeria.Email:[email protected]