Stealing the limelight at UNGA

…also published in Daily Trust 

The annual United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) held at the organization’s headquarters in the US city of New York sees the largest gathering of presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and other heads of governments to supposedly discuss various challenges hampering the achievement of a secure, politically stable, economically prosperous and environmentally sustainable global community.

Ironically, however, while frankness in discussing issues and real commitment to addressing them are supposed to define the UNGA proceedings inasmuch as the attendees are after all the leaders of the world, the occasion often turns out to be an event where almost all the attendees take their turns one after another to feign commitment to solving issues and doing the right things purportedly to address the challenges and crises bedevilling the world.

It’s an occasion where leaders are applauded according to the blatant lies they blatantly tell in their speeches, and where notorious mischief makers speak more confidently than their victims, and even “preach” global justice and peace. For instance, successive Zionist leaders of Israel have always sounded so confident on the UNGA platform feigning innocence and vulnerability to justify their age-long occupation of Palestine and their brutal suppression campaign against Palestinians. During the just concluded UNGA, Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu acted accordingly and in his typical particularly arrogant manner as well. 

Likewise, successive US Presidents and their European counterparts as well as leaders of other countries e.g. Russia, China, India etc. have all equally acted the same way on the UNGA platform. They have always dismissed their individual and collective responsibilities for the perpetuation of the global phenomenon of exploitation against poor nations and persecution against vulnerable communities around the world. 

This is the typical pattern of the UNGA proceedings. Besides, the superfluous diplomatic protocols that characterize the occasion and the culture of hypocrisy that defines the modern-day diplomacy make it practically impossible for frank talks to flow among the attendees. The already overshadowed leaders of the less influential UN member states e.g. poor and developing countries are simply kept there only to give some semblance of legitimacy to the unjust policies and measures adopted.

However, occasionally some defiant voices of some few courageous heads of governments among these less influential member states rise to express some bitter truth and consequently steal the limelight during the UNGA proceedings. They rightly condemn the political manipulation and economic exploitation perpetrated by some powerful countries especially the US-led neocolonial powers against most of the rest of the world. They also highlight some instances of systematic persecution against some vulnerable communities, which these influential countries perpetrate or facilitate or, at least, turn a blind eye to. 

Of course, such defiant voices often excite people of conscience across the world, and consequently trigger controversy, which further exposes the moral deficiency and insincerity of these countries. Obviously, should more heads of governments follow suit, such defiant voices would certainly grow to constitute formidable pressure leading to the eventual reformation of the United Nations to make it operate as a tool to promote and enforce justice and peace across the world. 

Incidentally, not that all purportedly defiant heads of governments were/are actually innocent of what they accuse the neocolonial powers of perpetrating. Instead, while some of them, e.g. late Fidel Castro of Cuba, late Nelson Mandela of South Africa, late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, late Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, were indeed committed to pursuing the legitimate interests of their respective people while resisting exploitative neocolonialist policies, others were actually hardly any better than the neocolonial powers they often criticized at the UNGA. Leaders like late Libyan leader, Mu’ammar Ghaddafi and former Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad represent two instances in this regard. The former was more or less a joker with an overwhelming obsession with totalitarian power, which he somehow managed to cling to for decades before he began to do the bidding of the very neocolonial powers he had always criticized in the hope that that they would spare him to remain in power, which he eventually lost along with his life altogether. Equally, the latter, being the head of the political face of the Iranian Wilaatul-faqeeh, which is an ideology-based neo-imperialism agenda targeting only Muslim countries though, was simply rather more confrontational in approach than his predecessors. However, like his predecessors, he was never sincere either. He simply often acted according to the strategy of the theocracy he represented. The strategy focuses on feigning      defiance against the Israel/US governments’ anti-Muslim policies and practices to gain and retain sympathy of the gullible Muslims around the world, who it, (i.e. Iran) then manipulate in the promotion of its destabilizing and indeed heretical ideological neo-imperialism across the Muslim world.   

Anyway, though in his speech at the just concluded UNGA, President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria addressed various global issues, e.g. Arab-Israeli crisis and North Korean nuclear quandary, however, he would have stolen the limelight if only he had, for instance, seriously lamented the lack of adequate global commitment to helping Nigeria crush Boko Haram terrorists. After all, Nigeria’s influence in global politics is obviously too little to make any impact on most of the issue he chose to invest his allotted time in addressing.