The Sierra Leonean High Commissioner to Nigeria, Dr Solomon Gembeh, was recently reported as saying that Nigeria spent over $13 billion on the liberation of his nation and Liberia. According to him, Sierra Leone would remain ever grateful for Nigeria’s ‘big brother’ interventions in the fratricidal wars that were launched by rebel groups in the two contiguous West African neighbours.
Gembeh emphasised that Nigeria’s assistance came out of goodwill, with nothing demanded in return, unlike a situation where such help (especially from Western nations) was paid for through the staking of national assets. He said that funds from Nigeria and the African Development Bank (AfDB) were efficiently being used to train Sierra Leonean children, particularly the girls.
“We provide what we enjoyed when we were in primary school, we enjoyed lunch served; you have free buses to take you to school; you eat there; and there are teachers everywhere.
“People are beginning to get computers, trying to get Internet services all over the schools; places that are hard to reach you make sure that they don’t walk so many miles to get to school,” said the diplomat.
Gembeh used the opportunity to remind the Nigerian government of its unfulfilled funding pledges to his country and hoped that such friendly aid would help restore the education system for a generation of Sierra Leonean children who lost a decade of proper schooling as a result of the civil war.
It would be recalled that the Liberian and Sierra Leonean Civil Wars were fought mainly between militia groups which craved to control the rich diamond mines in these countries. It actually started in December 1989 when Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) attempted to oust the military government of Sergeant Samuel Doe.
The internal struggle spilled over to Sierra Leone when a splinter gang of the NPFL, known by the ULIMO acronym, which occupied Liberia’s western region crossed the border into Sierra Leone to fight Taylor’s forces from there. The Sierra Leonean Army would have none of that in their country. But ULIMO was too hot to handle. So, Guinea and Nigeria had to ship in military supplies to help Freetown chase out the intruders. While this lasted, an indigenous rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) led by Foday Sankoh and suspected to be supported by Taylor, sprang up in 1991 to take up territory of its own. And that was how a brutal civil war ensued in the once tranquil former British colony.
A multinational force was raised by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), named as ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), to restore and monitor peace in both countries.
In her usual character to always play the big brother in Africa, it was reported that Nigeria had readily opted to contribute the bulk of the troops and materiel that went into the regional peacekeeping effort. This obviously accounted for her anger and immediate takeover of the ECOMOG high command when President Doe was captured, brutally tortured and killed under the nose of a Ghanaian commander, Lt. Gen Arnold Quainoo.
One is not averse to Nigeria playing major roles in regional and global affairs. After all, isn’t that the dream of every patriotic citizen of any country? I still remember a CNN footage of troops of the Nigerian ECOMOG contingent fanning out in the Liberian capital as they were ferried ashore from a warship and under heavy attack by Taylor’s men. Honestly, I had never felt prouder of our soldiers as they moved quickly to liberate Monrovia and save people from further anguish. It reminded me of those pictures of World War II Normandy Landing in 1944.
If indeed Sierra Leonean primary school kids are beginning to be bused to school where they eat free lunch, have access to good teachers and Internet facilities as claimed by Gembeh, then they can be said to be already ahead of their Nigerian contemporaries.
Down here, reliable statistics have always placed the number of our out-of-school children at a conservative 10 million. Some of those considered lucky to attend school do so trekking long distances or paying their ways to and from school. Save for the few states where a federal government-sponsored school-feeding scheme has been introduced, Nigerian kids mostly fend for themselves while in school. As for Internet access, many rural kids may not even have seen a computer since registering at school.
Liberia, Sierra Leone and other beneficiary countries should please make do with whatever helps that came from Nigeria in their most trying times. They should forget any outstanding pledges because the so-called big brother is now in some dire straits of his own and wishes that those beneficiary nations begin to act as big uncles to him. And who said Nigeria is not at war right now; what with al-Qaeda’s Boko Haram/ISWAP insurgents in the north east and the itinerant bandits elsewhere in the land? Surely, Abuja will greatly appreciate a return of any previous favours and goodwill at this time.
What’s more, during our major bloodlettings in the 1960s only Ghana’s General Joseph Ankrah made any serious attempt to try to mediate between Colonels Yakubu Gowon and Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu in order to avert the kind of carnage that was witnessed in the Nigerian Civil War. The rest of Africa took sides on the sticking points at Aburi or were simply not interested; including the then Liberian President William Tubman and Prime Minister Siaka Steven of Sierra Leone who were not moved by pictures of gravely kwashiorkored Biafran kids.
Enough of this African big brother histrionics, please. Even the US is rethinking her global big brother posturing.

By: Ibelema Jumbo