By Omoh Giwa
My dearest Gaddafi,
I send you warm greetings, not on account of your celestial residence or our spiritual closeness, but because our current predicament demands every ounce of warmth we can muster. I write from the world’s most prayerful nation, which, judging by recent absurdities, has also earned the title of the global headquarters of paradox.
The airwaves are saturated with reports of an impending invasion of Nigeria by the self-proclaimed sheriff of global salvation, Donald J. Trump, who, in his boundless benevolence, claims to be riding to our rescue, all in defence of Christian sensibilities in this far-flung corner of Africa.
Now, I know you must be chuckling in whatever inferno you inhabit. You, of all people, understand the language of intervention. It is the modern gospel according to Washington: Blessed are the nations that are bombed in the name of democracy, for theirs shall be the ruins of freedom.
You remember how they came for you, don’t you? They said Libya needed to be liberated. That your people were crying for democracy. And indeed, they cried. For democracy, for bread, for electricity, for life. Today, those cries still drift through the Libyan desert, faint and hollow, though the good people in Washington can no longer hear them; the sound of oil contracts being signed has grown far louder than the wails of the liberated.
So, when news reached me that America might soon come thundering through Nigeria’s skies with its freedom-laden jets, my thoughts turned to you, dear Colonel. I felt compelled to write, not to summon you back from the beyond, for your ghost should rightly haunt every African ruler who confuses sovereignty with immunity, but to seek your counsel from the afterlife’s quiet vantage point. How do we prepare for the arrival of the Saviours of Civilisation and Democracy?
You remember how they came for you, don’t you? They said Libya needed to be liberated. That your people were crying for democracy. And indeed, they cried. For democracy, for bread, for electricity, for life. Today, those cries still drift through the Libyan desert, faint and hollow, though the good people in Washington can no longer hear them; the sound of oil contracts being signed has grown far louder than the wails of the liberated.
Our government, in its usual grace and composure, has already responded. The Minister of Denial (or is it Information or Communication?) declared that the situation is being exaggerated. “Christians are not being targeted,” he said. Muslims are also dying. So it balances out. And there, Gaddafi, lies the genius of our leadership, equality in death! A perfectly bipartisan genocide. The Americans should be impressed. In Nigeria, we have achieved what even the most sophisticated democracies could not: balanced slaughter.
Of course, the statement pleased no one. The Christians in Plateau and Benue think the government is downplaying their suffering; the Muslims in Sokoto and Kano think they’re being blamed for everything; and the rest of us, those who cannot afford religion beyond basic superstition, are simply praying that the bombs, when they fall, will at least improve the roads.
Trump, meanwhile, has mounted his sacred podium, lips pursed in divine outrage, declaring that America will not stand idly by while its Christian brethren are slaughtered in Africa. Lofty words, indeed. But you and I, dear Colonel, are well acquainted with the melody beneath America’s humanitarian hymns: drone strikes wrapped in righteousness, reconstruction contracts signed in foreign tongues, and documentaries celebrating how grateful the natives are for being saved from themselves. Curiously, their radar for Christian suffering seems to lose signal somewhere over Congo and Sudan.
You see, Gaddafi, America’s moral compass always points toward oil and sometimes gold. It is a strange phenomenon of geography: every nation that suddenly needs liberation just happens to sit on a mineral deposit or a strategic trade route. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, all invited to the same party of democratic rebirth, and each leaving with its infrastructure bombed and its sovereignty auctioned.
I must confess, we Nigerians are nervous. Not about the invasion itself, after all, we are already accustomed to chaos. We are nervous because our leaders may not have properly briefed America on our map. You see, when the American drones begin to hover, they might mistake our oil wells for terrorist camps. And given how accurate their precision strikes are, the only thing left of the Niger Delta may be the fumes.
Therefore, my dearest departed brother and leader, I beg you to intercede on our behalf. Whisper to Trump in his sleep, or better still, to the Pentagon generals who love maps more than morals and tell them: When you bomb Nigeria, please avoid the oil. Bomb the potholes instead, or the power grid that never works. Better still, bomb the professional naysayers who spend their days denouncing our leaders. Bomb the errant opposition if their missiles are that advanced. But for heaven’s sake, spare the oil and the gold. We need them for the next election campaign.
Our leaders, ever proactive in the face of crisis, are already presenting their responses. The Senate, in its usual display of semantic gymnastics, has likely convened to debate whether “genocide” can be rebranded as “ethno-religious misunderstanding.” One of our most distinguished lawmakers has reportedly noted that he has no business responding to Trump at all. The House of Representatives, for its part, will no doubt pass a motion condemning Trump’s tone, while quietly booking flights for their children to London. And Baba, our ever-reassuring patriarch, will issue a statement from an undisclosed location, declaring that Nigeria remains strong, united, and indivisible, even as flight trackers place him comfortably somewhere above French airspace.
Some patriotic citizens have suggested we preemptively declare victory. After all, optimism is our national habit: when the power fails, we haul out generators; when lecturers protest decrepit government institutions, we dismiss them as troublemakers. Why not rebrand an invasion as a foreign partnership? We can even form a welcome committee for the Marines, complete with banners reading: Thank you for saving our Christians.
Trump, meanwhile, has mounted his sacred podium, lips pursed in divine outrage, declaring that America will not stand idly by while its Christian brethren are slaughtered in Africa. Lofty words, indeed. But you and I, dear Colonel, are well acquainted with the melody beneath America’s humanitarian hymns: drone strikes wrapped in righteousness, reconstruction contracts signed in foreign tongues, and documentaries celebrating how grateful the natives are for being saved from themselves. Curiously, their radar for Christian suffering seems to lose signal somewhere over Congo and Sudan.
Even you, with your flamboyant speeches and Amazonian guards, could not have imagined such a performance of absurdity. I wouldn’t be surprised if certain men in the corridors of power are already competing for who will chair the Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Committee after the first American missile lands. International aid is, after all, the only development plan we have perfected.
Some say we should resist. But resist with what? Our army is too busy escorting convoys and dispersing unarmed protesters. Our police cannot even catch a generator thief, let alone a drone. And our youths, God bless their creativity, are occupied with TikTok videos and trending news of Ms Geena’s crashing nuptial.
Still, I am told that hope is a national duty. So I hope, if America must come, that they arrive with good intentions; and if their intentions are poor, may they at least bring reliable Wi-Fi and steady power, for even the sinking Titanic glowed before it went down. I hope their bombs fall with a semblance of sympathy, too.
But most of all, I hope you, dear Gaddafi, will forgive us. You warned Africa about these interventions. You warned us about the price of inviting foreign salvation. You told us that when the lion offers to protect the gazelle, it’s not out of friendship but appetite. We mocked you then, called you paranoid, dictatorial, delusional. Yet here we are, waiting for the same lion to save us.
So, before I end this letter and begin drafting my will (someone, after all, must inherit my scribbles and chipped coffee mug), allow me a small favour. If you still keep company with the afterlife’s diplomatic corps, kindly whisper to whichever spirits oversee American foreign policy. Tell them Nigeria is already in shambles; there is no need to add democracy by detonation. Tell them that if they must bomb us, let it be with biodegradable explosives, eco-friendly, at least. And remind them, please, that we are already masters of self-destruction; we have no need for foreign consultants in that field.
And finally, tell them, as only you could, that Africa’s chaos does not need rethinking. It needs remembering. For every time America plays saviour, another African nation disappears into the footnotes of history, written in oil and blood.
Your comrade in pre-invasion anxiety,
*Omoh Giwa writes from the Department of English, Unilag, within the Almost Bombed Federal Republic.
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