Time to reconsider our ties with Israel

In an article titled “Is Nigeria fuelling Israel’s genocide against Palestinians?” which was published in Business Day on October 30th 2024, one Suraya Dadoo, who wrote in from South Africa, opened his contribution by quoting our Hon. Minister of Foreign Affairs, my friend and brother, Ambassador Yusuf Tuggar who he attributed the following words to: “There is no justification for the carnage that is going on in Gaza… the complete disregard for the proportionality of force that is being meted out on innocent civilians. This carnage is completely out of hand and totally unacceptable. There is no way to explain the double standards; it has to stop.”

He went further by quoting our nation’s number two citizen, Vice President Kashim Shettima’s words at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in September where he said the following: “Justice is antithetical to revenge… Freedom is an inalienable right and a natural entitlement that cannot be denied to any person. The Palestinian people deserve their independence.”

Both the minister and the vice president have done us proud with their courageous words and bold stand and it is a reflection of the fact that the Bola Tinubu administration represents the thinking and has expressed the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of Nigerians and have opted to tread the right path when it comes to the tragic events in Gaza and the pitiful plight of the Palestinian people.

Dadoo went further by writing the following: “The Nigerian government has consistently condemned Israel’s military occupation of Palestine and has been particularly outspoken against Israel since October 7. Historically, Nigeria has been a strong supporter of the Palestinian struggle for liberation, and Nigeria was central in efforts to ensure that Israel was not granted observer status at the African Union (AU). According to sources who were at the October 2021 meeting of the AU executive council attended by Africa’s foreign ministers in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Nigeria’s then Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama took the lead in objecting to Israel’s accreditation and urged other member states to do the same.”

Again this is comforting but he follows it by getting to the crux of his essay and the heart of the matter by dropping the following clanger. He wrote: “While the Nigerian government has strongly condemned Israel’s military onslaught on Gaza it also stands accused of fuelling the Israeli war machine that had already killed, at the time of writing, more than 40,000 Palestinians through direct violence and bombing.”

To substantiate his point he wrote: “According to a recently released report titled “Behind the Barrel: New Insights into the Countries and Companies Behind Israel’s Fuel Supply,” Nigeria accounts for 9 percent of the total crude oil supplied to Israel between October 21, 2023, and July 12, 2024. Researchers analysed satellite imagery, ship positions, shipping logs, commodity trade flows, information from port authorities, and financial and media reports to track 65 oil and fuel shipments to Israel in that period.”

He concludes by alleging that: “Over 133 kilotons of Nigerian crude were delivered to Israel from Chevron, Eni, Exxon, Shell, and TotalEnergies. Gabonese crude accounted for 22 percent, and the Republic of the Congo supplied 6 percent, but it is Nigeria’s contribution that has raised eyebrows given the country’s vocal criticism of Israel.”

Dodoo’s allegation, if proven to be true, is deeply troubling and needs to be taken very seriously indeed lest we leave ourselves open to his grave charge of complicity in the genocide that is being unleashed on Gaza by the Zionists.

The matter can be resolved by simply banning all crude oil shipments from Nigeria to Israel.

I hereby call on our President, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to do precisely that and take an even stronger stance against the Zionists by banning all arms purchases from them and terminating any military and/or intelligence advice or services that the Israelis are offering or providing us with.

If he could find the courage to implement a number of bold and much-needed fiscal, economic and constitutional reforms and policies such as the removal of the oil subsidy, the floating of the naira, the establishment of autonomy for the local government areas, the implementation of the student loan fund, the numerous tax reforms and most important of all the refusal to go to war against Niger Republic despite the enormous pressure that the western powers, led by France and the United States of America, put on him to do so earlier this year, he can certainly muster same to kick the Zionists out of Nigeria, nullify their pervasive influence in our country and sub-region and sever all trade, economic and diplomatic ties and relations with them.

General Yakubu Gowon, our revered former head of state, did this in 1973 when he was in power and as chairman of the then OAU (AU) in order to punish the Jewish State for its attack on the Palestinians during the Yom Kippur War.

For a number of years before then and specifically during our three-year civil war, Gowon had viewed Israel with much distrust and suspicion given the covert support she gave to the Biafran secessionists and her complicity in the attempt to dismember and break up our beloved country.

However, the straw did not break the camels back until 1973 after which the final break took place and diplomatic relations between our two countries were not restored until September 1992 by the then Head of State General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida.

I am constrained to say that now is the time to break diplomatic ties with Israel again.

This is the right and proper thing to do in the light of their insatiable compulsion and appetite for mass murder, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide and given their insane and psychotic disposition for murdering helpless and defenceless women and children and for killing babies.

Again this is the right and proper thing to do given the fact that they have not only illegally occupied the land of the Palestinian people for over 76 years and slaughtered and incarcerated millions of them but they have also unleashed what can best be described as the second holocaust against them over the last one year killing over 60,000 in Gaza alone and thousands more in the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria!

If the world could go to war with Nazi Germany in 1936 as a consequence of the first holocaust every civilised nation ought to, at the very least, be able to break diplomatic ties with Zionist Israel as a consequence of the second.

Morality, decency and justice demand no less and those nations that insist on applauding the atrocities of the Jewish state and selling weapons of mass destruction to her are not only complicit in her war crimes but are also from the pit of hell and in the service of shaitan.

The Holy Bible says there can be no fellowship between light and darkness. It says we must either choose God or Belial.

It also compels us to resist evil and to fight for the weak, the poor, the vulnerable and the oppressed.

The Holy Koran does the same and is emphatic on the importance of justice for all and support for the less privileged and the vulnerable.

Nigeria can and must NEVER be seen to be complicit in the bestial barbarity that is going on in Gaza or to have relations with the beasts that have relentlessly unleashed it.

Though we have many challenges, ours is a nation of decent, God-fearing, just and right-thinking people who have a long history of standing for the oppressed all over Africa and contributing to the efforts of numerous liberation struggles.

Let us prove to the world once again that that is who and what we are by openly and loudly challenging the barbarity, lunacy and thuggery of the State of Israel at the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the United Nations, the African Union and all other relevant fora and calling her out for her continuous violations of international law, her disdain for an international rules-based system and her racist, fascist and ethnocentric disposition.

Let us expose her contempt for humanity and human life, her total and complete adoption, espousal and implementation of apartheid as a fundamental principle and cardinal policy in her system of government and her religious fanaticism and proselytising bigotry.

Let us vigorously and aggressively resist her hatred for Arabs and Africans, her appalling treatment of Christians and Muslims, her rejection of the two-state solution, her desire to ethnically cleanse, wipe out and totally eradicate and eliminate the Palestinian race, her intention to establish a ‘Greater Israel’ whose borders would stretch from Egypt to Iran and her heinous crimes and unspeakable atrocities in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

These are concrete and cogent steps that we as a people and nation can take to contribute our quota to the collective fight against the tyranny and oppression of the Zionists and I believe that we are still big and strong enough to take them.

May God guide and protect us in this noble endeavour and may history and posterity be kind to us.

Femi Fani-Kayode, the Sadaukin Shinkafi, a former minister of aviation and a former minister of culture and tourism of Nigeria