By Reno Omokri
May 2, 2023
As a Nigerian, what happens in Sudan concerns you. And very much so. If Sudan sneezes, Nigeria will not just catch a cold, Nigerians may even catch COVID. The contagious effects of the war in Sudan can unleash a super spreader on Nigeria because of the solid links between them and us.
We intervened in Liberia and Sierra Leone because we are the regional superpower. So, we must intervene in Sudan to remain the West African powerhouse. If we do not intervene, what will hit us will seriously heat our polity and possibly displace us as the West African stabiliser, as I will now explain.
The war in Ukraine increased the cost of food in Nigeria because a fifth of the world’s wheat, and some other food staples, come from Ukraine. But the war in Sudan will increase the cost of security in Nigeria because a fifth of all refugees from Sudan may end up in Nigeria.
If Nigeria does not actively take part in bringing peace to Sudan, we will have a massive explosion of terrorism in Nigeria. Remember what happened after the Libyan civil war? Some Nigerians in Libya came back with money and weapons, did a hostile takeover of Boko Haram, and radicalised that sect.
The same thing WILL happen if Sudan is destabilised. The millions of Nigerians there (many Nigerians have Sudanese citizenship) will return to Nigeria with weapons and money. They will make the current banditry trend look like child’s play.
It is in our enlightened self-interest to help stabilise Sudan. Unfortunately, neither President Buhari nor his foreign minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, has the clout, intellect, and vision to do this. Thus, the Nigerian Council of State ought to intervene, especially former Presidents and heads of state who identify as Muslims.
The reason I say this is because Sudan is a conservative Muslim country, and the warring parties are more likely to listen to a Muslim statesman than they are a Christian. Look, let’s face some inconvenient truths.
No country in Africa will want to take a massive influx of Nigerians. The reason is that they have fears about the never-say-die Nigerian spirit, which tends to dominate wherever it finds itself.
And when the nations bordering Sudan shut their door on Nigerians, guess where they will come to? It will be a shock to our economy. Crime will increase. Insecurity will increase. Ethnic tensions will be exacerbated.
And this coming at a vulnerable time for us, when we are about to transit to a new administration? And we want to fold our hands and do nothing? No, no, no. We are already involved. We must help ourselves by helping Sudan.
On Wednesday, April 26, 2023, a federal commissioner of the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants, and Internally Displaced Persons, named Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, complained about the 10,000 persons now seeking asylum in Nigeria. I laughed at her complaints. 10,000, and she is complaining?
If Nigeria does not intervene to bring peace to Sudan, we will be looking at hundreds of thousands of either refugees or asylum seekers. Then what would Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim say?
Of the seven countries directly bordering Sudan, not one of them is very politically stable. Each of them has had either recent or relatively recent domestic instabilities. And that is going to make things even more difficult.
I see many Nigerians making much of a muteness about Ethiopia, allowing some other African nationals to seek refuge in Ethiopia via their land borders with Sudan but stopping Nigerian citizens. It is not as a lot of us see it.
I have been to Ethiopia 17 times. If you know what some of our citizens (sadly, almost all from a particular geopolitical zone) have done there, you may even start to pity the Ethiopian government. Ethiopia was forced to withdraw visas on arrival for Nigerian citizens in October of 2022.
Their prisons are full of Nigerians. They are just trying to resolve an internal existential crisis. The excuse they gave for withdrawing that privilege for Nigeria was because it “is aimed at better border control of movement of persons into Ethiopia given the ongoing armed conflict in the Northern part of the country.”
It is easy to want to make Nigerian refugees Ethiopia’s problem. But quite frankly, Ethiopia has more than enough problems to resolve. Our government has to step up and sit up.
For example, there are tens of thousands of Ethiopians from the Tigray region who are themselves refugees in Sudan due to the Ethiopia-Tigray conflict. And Chad has closed her borders with Sudan. Egypt is looking like it wants to go that route.
As such, the priorities of the Ethiopians would be their citizens first and then members of their own subregional body, IGAD, before others.
This is not new, strange, or inhumane. It is precisely what happened when war broke out in Ukraine. The Ukrainian border guards prioritised their citizens seeking to flee. Next came other Eastern Europeans, then the rest of the world. And then, just as now, Nigerians complained.
As a people, we Nigerians must stop thinking emotionally and start thinking strategically. We are, after all, a country that kicked out half a million Ghanaians during President Shagari’s Ghana-must-go purge. And we did it when Ghana was going through political upheaval.
Sudan is at war. Its neighbours are in crisis mode.
So, while the hot war is raging in Sudan, the colder war is going toward those seven nations and their neighbours in the form of an influx of refugees and possible further destabilisation of their dicey internal affairs.
The African Union has no higher priority right now than to ensure that its diplomacy is entirely focused on Sudan. It does not bode well to have the largest nation in Africa, by land mass fall into the hands of multiple militias, as has happened in Libya.
The resolution of the AU calling on Moussa Faki, chairman of the African Union Commission, to go to Khartoum as soon as the security situation allows is not encouraging. The reason he should go there is to make the security situation allowable. He should not be waiting for it to be allowable.
The sub-regional body, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), is ill-equipped to step in. This places a higher burden on the AU to step in because the risk of a regional and extra-regional spread is very high.
And if the issue is proving to be a hard nut to crack for the AU, then there is no shame in asking those Arab states with which Sudan has shared long-term affinity to intervene.
And I have a feeling that they may be eager to intervene since of the seven countries bordering Sudan, the most politically and economically stable, and therefore the most desirable destination for those fleeing war in Sudan, is Egypt.
And Egypt is already dealing with a relatively large population of Syrian refugees, causing some resentment among many Egyptians. So, I can see them wanting to do whatever is necessary, along with other Arab nations, to bring peace to Sudan and stem the flow of refugees into their country.
But Africa, like Nigeria, cannot afford the luxury of doing little or nothing. Already, Kenya’s economy has been significantly impacted by the instability in Somalia. In fact, so problematic has the situation in Somalia proved to them that they have had to send troops in and around Somalia to protect their national security interests.
Somalia does not directly border Sudan. But there are hundreds of thousands of Somalians in Sudan, drawn there by the conservative Islam in that country. More trouble for Somalia means a high likelihood of a spillover effect in Kenya.
It is hoped that by now, it is clear to African leaders that Sudan is too strategic to fail. If Sudan fails, Africa will flail.
I have already talked about the options for Africa. But what are the options for Nigeria? What can we do rather than the Nero-like navel-gazing of the Buhari regime?
In my opinion, the best course of action would be to negotiate a power-sharing agreement between al-Burhan and Hemetti (as Dagalo is fondly called).
Hemetti is one of the wealthiest people in Sudan. A man with as many business interests as he does can usually be persuaded to see reason.
We can offer to mediate. There are several very high-profile and respected Nigerians that have some juice in Sudan. It is time for them to do Nigeria some service by leveraging their clout to help Nigeria’s national security interests. I say this because our foreign ministry, as presently constituted, would not have that capacity.
Another thing we can do is to block other nations from exacerbating the situation, by providing weapons for either side of the conflict, so that the Sudanese themselves can reach a homegrown agreement.
We can do this in conjunction with the United Nations and/or the African Union. Sudan is not a landlocked country. However, the current fighting between forces loyal to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary under General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo is, for the most part, raging on in Khartoum and Marowe. And both places are quite a distance from the port of Sudan.
This means that both belligerent forces will now heavily depend on airlifting weapons. Nigeria can persuade brother African nations to prevent such aircraft from flying over their airspaces.
I do not know if we can enforce a naval blockade on the port of Sudan, but if we can, then it is another possibility.
Another option, which in my view is the least attractive, is to intervene in the conflict by sending troops to Sudan. But here are the drawbacks. The world would support us and even fund such a venture if Sudan was in West Africa. But if we start intervening outside our sub-region, some global powers will feel threatened. So this comes with risks.
And Sudan itself is not a pushover. They have a reasonably decent military-industrial complex by African standards. Therefore any country wanting to go this route would like to think hard and long.
The option to intervene diplomatically to contain the conflict, and stabilise Sudan, is therefore, the most attractive.
But whatever option we or Africa take, we must note that the risk of inaction is greater than the risk of action.
