Mahmud Jega

By Mahmud Jega

The statement issued by the Nigerian Petroleum Ministry at the weekend, congratulating Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries [OPEC] on the 63rd anniversary of its founding, reminded me of what the American journalist Theodore White once wrote about Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong. White wrote, “If all humanity is assembled and Mao’s name is hurled at them, one quarter will bow in veneration, one quarter will grimace with hate, one quarter will receive the name with respect, and the last quarter, the most backward section of the human race, has never heard of him.”

I am wondering. If all humanity is assembled and OPEC’s name is hurled at it, citizens of OPEC member nations whose national treasuries are awash in petro-dollars will bow in veneration, most citizens of the world’s gas-guzzling rich nations will grimace with hate because OPEC made gasoline prices expensive since 1973, oil traders, refiners and chieftains of giant oil companies across the word will receive the name with respect while a portion of humanity, the ones that are so poor they have nothing to do with petrol but deal mostly in firewood and charcoal, have never heard of OPEC.

The statement signed by Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Ambassador Gabriel Aduda, praised OPEC for making “significant strides in energy governance and the transformative impact of petroleum supply worldwide, over the past six decades.” How come that Aduda’s statement did not mention Sheikh Ahmad Zaki Yamani, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources for 25 years from 1962 to 1986, the world’s best-known face of oil, who orchestrated the 1973 Arab oil boycott of Western nations over the Middle East war and plunged their rich economies into a deep recession? Aduda also forgot to condole with OPEC for the most traumatic event of its life, the 1975 abduction of Yamani, several other oil ministers and dozens of other persons in a special terrorist operation in Vienna organized by PFLP leader Waddi Haddad and personally led by the Venezuelan left-wing terrorist Carlos the Jackal.

OPEC is 63. That set me thinking about the many international organisations whose names and activities dominated newspaper pages and airwaves for many decades while we were growing up. Many of them have since gone into oblivion; many others are almost unheard of these days, while some others are shadows of their former selves. Is it oil alone that deserves congratulation? ECOWAS, for example, is 48 years old this year. I did not see a message from the Foreign or even the Trade and Investment ministries hailing it for the landmark birthday. Was any statement issued by Nigeria to congratulate African Union [AU], which is 60 years old this year, if you go all the way back to its earlier days as Organisation of African Unity, OAU? At least we ought to remember all its old Secretaries General Diallo Telli, Nzo Ekangaki, William Eteki Mbouma, Edem Kodjo, Peter Onu, Idi Oumarou and Salim Ahmed Salim, among the ones I remember.

At least something is still heard of OPEC and AU these days, though not like before. But where is the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development [UNCTAD], of which we heard so much as youngsters? What about the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [GATT], and in particular, the Doha Round and Montevideo Round of World Trade Talks, which once dominated the airwaves? World Trade Organisation [WTO] that sprouted out of them, why is it silent these days? Are we no longer trading?

Okay, Warsaw Pact was formally dissolved with the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1991. Why can’t they revive it, since NATO is still menacingly around? Maybe if Donald Trump had secured a second term as US President, he might have dissolved NATO too, chummy as he is with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Warsaw Pact used to have more tanks than NATO; it is a shame that the Russian army today is barely holding on to Bakhmut after 16 months of “special military operation.”

Along with Warsaw Pact also went COMECON, Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the Eastern counterpart of EU. In the mid-1980s, my Polish teacher Professor Robert Miodonski complained to me that COMECON disallowed Poland from making tractors, and that it must buy them from Bulgaria or Romania while it is assigned to manufacture something else. I thought centralized planning on a regional scale was not a bad idea, though I did not tell Miodonski that, lest he failed me in the Advanced Physiology course. Afterall, Dr. Yusuf Bala Usman had been saying that West Africa must also engage in region-wide planning because “if Nigeria achieves prosperity, the Ghanaians will come. There is nothing you can do about it.”

Why should COMECON disappear when West Europeans have been steadily building on their own institutions, from European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 to European Economic Community in 1958 to European Union in 1993 to Euro Zone in 1999, with others to spare such as OECD? I get the impression that East Europeans cannot sustain anything for long. Where is the Commonwealth of Independent States, CIS, that was formed by the 15 former Soviet Republics when Boris Yeltsin led them to dissolve the Soviet Union in 1990? Is it still there? If Russia and Ukraine were still together in CIS, would they be fighting today all the way from Kharkiv to Crimea?

Let’s be frank; we Africans are often no better than the East Europeans in sustaining regional institutions. Where is the East African Community [EAC] of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, of which we heard so much when we were school kids? They even had a joint airline, railway and customs’ union. It was petty quarrel between Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere and Idi Amin that sank EAC in 1977, a big shame if you ask me. Where is SADCC, Southern African Development Coordination Conference that we once heard so much about? Is it that South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and their neighbours are now so developed that they don’t need to coordinate matters? What of the Maghreb Union of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania? If the East African Bantus could not sustain a union, you mean the North African Arabs and Berbers, of the former Barbary Coast, also cannot sustain one?

Organisation of American States [OAS] was once much more visible than it is today. Never mind the US effort to keep Cuba out of it, or to punish any member that veered to the Left, such as Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua under the Sandinistas or Grenada under Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. Ok, where is Arab Rejectionist Front that once included Iraq, Libya, Algeria, Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization, PLO? Under their dynamic leaders Muammar Gaddafi, Hafiz al-Assad, Hoari Boumediene and Yasir Arafat, they resolutely stood against moves by “moderate” Arab states, under American pressure, to make peace with Israel without a resolution of the Palestinian question. Why are they silent today? Its like all the radical and Arab nationalist leaders are now gone from Libya, Algeria, Syria, Iraq and South Yemen, while Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is nowhere as charismatic as Yasir Arafat.

Africans and Arabs are not alone in allowing regional institutions to flounder and fade. Where is the Association of South East Asian Nations, ASEAN? Even as a primary school child, I wondered what USA and Britain were doing at ASEAN summits when they are located thousands of miles away from the region. Where is ANZUS, the Australian-New Zealand-US military pact? Up until World War Two, Australia and New Zealand regarded themselves as Britain’s babies and relied on it for protection. They however realized during World War Two that only the US, and in particular its powerful Pacific Naval Fleet, could protect them from Japan. Britain itself was then tottering under the weight of daily Luftwaffe bombings directed by Reich Marshall Herman Goering. Hence, they concluded a defence treaty with the US, but why is ANZUS silent today? Is it overtaken by the Asia-Pacific Conference, which brings together China, Japan, USA and all the minor east Asian powers as well as Australia and New Zealand into one group, mostly to discuss economic ties? Who told them that China will not one day gobble up Taiwan, expand southwards the way Japan once did and retrieve the territories gobbled up by European settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries?

Whatever happened to the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea? In the 1980s, proceedings of this conference dominated newspaper pages. Ok, now that they have succeeded in defining national coastal territories and Exclusive Economic Zones, what stops the UN from organising a Convention on Law of Forests, Deserts, Islands and Deltas? We sincerely need this law in Nigeria because without it, bandits are occupying our bushes, ISWAP is occupying our Lake Chad islands, IPOB is rampaging through our forests while oil thieves are marching up and down our creeks. We really need this conference. Pray, where are the International War Crimes Tribunals? Must we wait for World War Three before we convene another one, after Munich and the War Crimes Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo? I can assist the prosecutors with a list of people who should be standing trial before this tribunal, once is it convened.

For God’s sake, where is International Whaling Commission? Does it intend to be sleeping while Chinese and Japanese fishing trawlers finish all the whales? Just one adult Great Blue Whale is 100 metres long and weighs up to 120 tones. Its heart alone weighs five tones; its tongue weighs four tones and its blubber, the fat in its body to protect it from cold seas, could weigh up to 15 tones. Should we allow Western and Asian gluttons to eat them all up and leave us to tell our grandchildren that we once had sea mammals that were much bigger than elephants and dinosaurs?

-Thisday