Saudi Arabia, really?

I am truly worried about Nigeria, and especially worried that the present leadership corps acts as if it is unschooled; if there was schooling at all (of course there was the colonial literacy-classes), that schooling did not get to the minds as can be surmised from what we are witnessing at the present time. Else, how does one explain to younger ones that the Nigeria’s leadership corps wants to terminate the beneficial historic joint venture (JV) partnerships with Western petroleum giants like Shell, Mobil, Total (and uh, I seem to recall that ENI-Agip was sometime in the mix but I am not sure now) so that it would form a new alliance and partnership with Saudi Aramco with respect to upstream operations. This is strange. One has long heard that there is this thinking in some quarters that Saudi Arabia is now a “developed Islamic country” but one has always dismissed that as the wishful thinking of sub-educated Nigerian Muslims; alas, now, this mindset has become ever-pervading if the federal government thinks that the Saudis would replace Western expatriates in our oilfield works.

Why did it not occur to the leadership corps that Saudi Aramco, being in reality SaudiArabian-American Company, is technically a Western company that has visible Saudis in its top management echelons? This kind of insight is what a proper schooling of the mind gives to a man or corps of people who desire to rule a country but who, regrettably, are failing direly. It is well-known that it is the Saudis who would not come to Nigeria and do social works because Nigeria is “amongst the lands of the zanj, those ‘easily excitable barbarians of the dark-skin types and burnt tightly curled crinkly hair who are of inferior intelligence.’” Whether you like to hear it or not, this is how the Arabs view black folks and they have no apology for it because it is taken that there is a divine mandate to do racial stratification on the scale of the Hindu caste system; this is the reason Saudi Arabian women are forbidden, on the pain of exclusion from paradise, from ever marrying black males. And this is the reason no Saudi Arabian can be found in Muslim Nigeria doing social work; basically, the souls of the zanj can only be saved by much commitments to doing the hajj and not the Saudis coming to their barbarian hellholes. It is instructive to note that the Westerners do not view the blacks in this harsh light, otherwise they would not have built schools and hospitals for us and they would not have been square with us on the JV thing; it is because they are square with us on the JV thing that our NNPC is surely a lazy, fat cash cow today. Let us be foolish to try a JV with Saudi Aramco and see if a good share of our daily dollar rake-ins is not invested in the Arab League economies without our consent. If anyone is wondering about the implausibility of this line of thinking that one should ask who instructed the CBN to follow through with a phantom 500 billion-naira investment in the Moroccan agricultural sector? Is Morocco of all places the right place for agricultural investments?

Methinks since the Saudis are so influential in the spiritual perspectives of the Muslim North, it is the Saudis who can end Boko Haram terrorism, Fulani marauding, and now this widespread banditry menace by the simple act of threatening to exclude Nigerians and Nigerians from performing that much sought-after annual hajj rites if an end is not put to the widespread bloodletting like we know it in Nigeria today (it is no secret anymore that bokoharamism, Fulani terrorism, and sheer banditry up North are perpetrated by Muslims who hope to go to hajj at the latest convenience). Unlike America and most other powerful nations who can exert secular political influences in the affairs of other countries, Saudi Arabia is unique because it holds the religious trump card over the minds of a billion people in the world today, and this is so serious that nearly every one of these folks believe that his soul is damned indeed if the Saudis damn it on earth by proscribing hajj-rite privileges. Who has not heard the rumour of the ex-Nigerian leader wallowing in self-pity because the Saudis would not let him come over to do the hajj rites on account of the 1985 coup that overthrew the then General Muhammadu Buhari? Is it any wonder now that this same Muhammadu Buhari is now a darling of Saudi Arabia and a revered Khalifa to wit because he is only one of a few in a billion Muslims today who have entered the innards of the black cube at Mecca? Saudi Arabia is so powerful in the lives of Muslims today that the United Nations should formally adopt a resolution calling on this country to help prod Muslims out of dire poverty and terrorism. Now, too, who is following the Ganduje-Sanusi drama at Kano?

As soon as Gov. Abdullahi Ganduje strengthened his indiscretion by promising to announce the appointments of fresh emirs, away to Saudi Arabia Sanusi Lamido Sanusi went; everyone up here in the North knows that a bigger influence in Aso Rock is urging Ganduje on, thus when Emir Sanusi returned from Saudi Arabia to a tumultuous reception at the airport in Kano, the Saudis wasted no time in inviting President Muhammadu Buhari over for a “little chat” and a “lesser pilgrimage.” Who says Saudi Arabia cannot end Boko Haram terrorism with a fiat?

Who says Saudi Arabia cannot reform the almajiri system with a fiat? And also encourage girl-child education? But they lack the technical craft to take over our upstream industry. Sill on the social-work thing: I truly desire for the Saudis to come over, live and tarry awhile with our Muslims folks and then help me answer the burning question of why Islamic clerics who have been to Mecca on state-sponsored pilgrimages return back home, build mosques by the shoulders of expressways (especially in Northern Nigeria), and then proceed to pipe rank-and-black raw sewage to the very aprons of these expressways for all humanity to see. I’d like to ask, too, if that is how it is done over there in Saudi Arabia? It is just absolutely unforgivable that certain ones would chose to revel in abject shiftiness, ah, for crying out loud. Presently, does anyone see how Saudi Arabia is so influential by inviting Muhammadu Buhari over to that desert kingdom to be joined by the governor of Zamfara State and a pro-Buhari emir (Emir of Gandu, I presume) so that they may discuss the security situation at that state? The Daily Trust newspaper of Monday, 20th May 2019 quoted a press release by Garba Shehu as reporting that, in faraway Saudi Arabia, President Buhari is in charge of situation and all would soon be well in Zamfara State … blah, blah, blah.

•Jonah, wrote from, Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State