Wole Soyinka once said: “History matters. Records are not kept simply to assist the weakness of memory, but to operate as guides to the future”. Anyone looking for a guide to French president Emmanuel Macron’s rolling out the red carpet for President Bola Tinubu, should look to the history of France in Africa.
Macron wooed Tinubu last week with an official state visit – the first for a Nigerian ruler in over 20 years. The official line was that France was seeking a “renewal” with Africa and will continue to “invest” in Nigeria. This was with a backdrop of setbacks for France as military coups in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea had upset the cosy neo-colonial relationships France had with puppet Francophone Africa rulers.
Following the military coup in Niger, there were reported moves by Ecowas, the regional body of West African states, with Nigeria in the lead, to send a military force to remove the junta from power. Many people believed those plans were instigated by Macron using Tinubu as a proxy. Tinubu eventually faced embarrassment when a deadline given to the junta to cede power or face an invasion ended without firepower to back the ultimatum.
Why has France found a willing ally in Tinubu? Officially, this is purportedly related to Macron having spent six months working at the French embassy in Lagos as an intern in 2002. But there are more sinister reasons. Tinubu’s partner in crime Gilbert Chagoury lives in Paris and the president also has a home there. In 2021 Chagoury “paid $1.8 million to resolve allegations that he, with the assistance of others, provided approximately $180,000 to individuals in the United States that was used to make contributions to four different federal political candidates in U.S. elections”.
Chagoury also helped dictator Sani Abacha loot billions of dollars from Nigeria in the 1990s and then developed a close relationship with Tinubu from 1999 when the latter became the governor of Lagos State. That relationship continues today with the Chagourys’ fingers in every pie of corruption associated with Tinubu.
Tinubu keeping up with the Chagourys in France
With the wind of change sweeping across Francophone countries such as Mali and Chad, useful African fools have become a necessity for France. Cameroonian historian Achille Mbembe said: “An African who refuses to be corrupted is very dangerous to the French neo-colonial system”. Mbembe spoke in a 2020 documentary “Blood and Tears: French Decolonisation” about the incorruptible Cameroonian liberation hero Ruben Um Nyobe, who was killed by the French army in 1958 for fighting to free his country from the exploitative shackles of France. The French preferred instead to collaborate with the corrupt Ahmadu Ahidjo in a managed transition to a neo-colonial system in which economic power still remained in Paris.
An African ruler who is neck-deep in corruption is therefore very useful for the French neo-colonial system. The system was described in this way by former French president Jacques Chirac in Yaounde, Cameroon in 2001: “We bled Africa for four and a half centuries. We looted their raw materials, then we told lies that Africans are good for nothing. In the name of religion we destroyed their cultures. And then after being made rich at their expense, we now steal their brains through miseducation, misdirection and misinformation as well as propaganda to prevent them from enacting African retribution against us.” Chirac went further in 2008: “Without Africa, France will slide down into the rank of a third [world] power”.
This is the historical context in which Macron views Nigeria, using as an accomplice Tinubu, who Nuhu Ribadu, the first boss of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), described in 2006 as someone whose “criminal case is of international dimension”.
As Nigerians suffer under soaring inflation, poverty and other societal ills and – as a result – have nicknamed Tinubu “T-Pain” for his contributions to their misery, the president said after his meeting with Macron: “Nigeria is open for business”. Knowing Tinubu’s history and the nature of French neo-colonialism, this “business” will bring more pain to Nigeria.
