When we see a sleekly produced video with subliminal political overtone like the “Yoruba” woman on a viral video showing President Tinubu sleeping in the background, making an emotional plea about the plight of Yorubas in Niger, please keep your wits about you and be vigilant and know that you are being subjected to perception manipulation by AI and deep fake.
The woman who claims she is more Nigerien than a Nigerian and that she is a foreigner in Nigeria should be told to stay her butt in her native country Niger, and let the president who Nigerians have elected to take the hard decisions on our behalf to do his job.
History and the electorate will hold him accountable for the outcome of his decisions. That is why he has been hired, to take all the information in his possession and the experts serving on his national security council into account, to make the hard choice. He has the intelligence report most of us do not have access to.
Yes, we can exercise our civic responsibility to let him know where we stand, but international crisis management is not conducted by taking polls but by data.
Don’t let us be manipulated by crass emotionalism and social media hyperventilating when it comes to the ongoing Niger crisis.
We must remember that complex international issues such as a military junta in Niger, and a clientele state run by Putin’s Wagner mercenaries, with which we have no real geographical nor cultural border, represents a present, imminent and existential danger to our country.
None of us is getting the security and intelligence report that is on the desk of the president in Aso Rock, so we are not in the position to know the dynamic at play in the Niger crisis.
Yes, Mr. Tinubu as the president of Nigeria and the Chairman of ECOWAS is the face of the Niger crisis, but we must remember this is a crisis of dire international and geopolitical implications and there are many actors involved, including the ECOWAS, the African Union, the UN, the Western powers and of course Russia.
So the notion that piling pressure on President Tinubu like many are erroneously assuming, will cause him to deviate from what intelligence report is guiding him to do, shows naïveté about the complicated dynamics of international crisis management like the contagion of military coups that is spreading and rampaging the Sahel region, and that is inching towards our homeland.
They are not issues that can be resolved by the maddening appeal to emotionalism on Nigerian social media.
No one wants war. However, sleeping with one’s two eyes closed when you have a raging lion at one’s doorstep is neither a smart thing to do.
The Nigerian social media and especially WhatsApp, is consumed by fear mongering about impending war and dooms day prediction about how the ragtag Niger military will make a mince meat of the Nigerian military.
That is nothing but an empty posturing and fear-mongering. We must realise that behind the scenes, frenetic diplomatic, economic, and political pressures are now being applied to the juntas to make them see reason.
Russian propagandists have seized on this crisis to portray the Nigerien coup plotters as anti-imperialists who are seeking to liberate Niger and the entire African continent from under the yoke of France imperialism, neo-colonialism, economic servitude and exploitation. What a pile of hogwash.
Would a true anti-imperial regime go to bow before and kiss Putin’s ass like the young lad leader from Burkina Faso did, when like a school boy before his dad condescendingly gave his rousing support for the Ukraine war and then begged the Russian leader, that he is willing to open Burkina Faso economy to the Russian with no strings attached?
He then made the ridiculous request to Putin to come and build a nuclear plant in impoverished Burkina Faso.
We all could see the flag of Russia flying all over Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. Are those the kind of actions that a Thomas Sankara whose image all the three military leaders are invoking would take?
On the contrary, by their naive posturing, it can be said that they are frankly desecrating the values that their fabled hero stood for.
If anything, they are merely selling to us their selfish lust for power as the long awaited African revolution to free the continent from servitude to France and other Western powers.
Record has it that the coup leader in Niger, General Tchiani has been a member of the Nigerien political class that has enjoyed the spoils of power and that have been serving the imperialists’ interest of their France overlords for decades as the head the presidential guards.
He, in fact, crushed another coup against President Bazoum just days to his inauguration in 2021. Reports have it that the reason he struck with a coup was because he was about to be booted out of his position of power and influence.
All of a sudden, he is now the liberator and Thomas Sankara of Africa. What a desecration of that sacred name and of the legacy of Shankara, one of the greatest leaders to walk the surface of Africa.
We must remember that we are fighting on social media against information, disinformation, and propaganda warfare, and against a force that is a thousand times smarter, more nimble, and more adaptable than us.
Artificial intelligence and deep fake. AI can gobble through trillion bytes or data and use it to manipulate our thought process and perception.
That is what is happening with the Niger coup with the massive amount of auditory and visual information manipulation and disinformation that is coming at us like the great flood of Noah.
We must guard our brains and minds against this powerful enemy that is seeking to mess with our minds and perception of reality like the woman in the sleekly produced video whose intent is to tug at our heart strings.
Don’t let us be fooled by this well orchestrated information warfare, of which Russia is a grandmaster.
Written by Adewale Alonge,
President of Africa-Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment & Development (ADPED) & Egbe Omo Oduduwa of South Florida, Miami.
