Understanding Amnesty, Transparency International

Acommon thread runs through the world empires that rose to their prime and later collapsed, military decline. Not taken in isolation and not a sole factor, military decline or a gradual degradation and subsequent destruction of the military of these civilizations spelt their doom. In modern times foreign powers that are interested in destroying a targeted country simply set out about destroying its army and the collapse of other vital institutions and the country becomes a matter of domino effect.

This process have been perfected to an extent that the population of the targeted country, who are most likely to suffer, are the deceived into applauding the destruction of their country. This is because the destruction of their military, contrary to being cataclysmic, is usually subtle; and where one would expect hostile entities driving the process, seemingly innocuous entities drive the process of destroying armies - hiding their destructive agenda behind the façade of being responsible international organizations.

Nigeria has been under sustained attack, which it has remarkably weathered well. But there is a limit to which the resilience can last, which makes it crucial that citizens are enlightened to understand what their country is going through and how they should not be brainwashed into becoming facilitators for the destruction of their country with a concept that is locked on “destroy the military and the country is gone” principle.

At the forefront of the war on Nigeria’s corporate integrity and future is Amnesty International (AI). On paper and on the storefront, AI is that respectable organization that polices the adherence to human rights of the world’s citizens. It mounts pressure on governments and corporate organizations to overhaul or reform their approach to human rights issues especially in the areas of free expression, incarceration, conduct during war and other crises. It has been at the forefront of the discontinuation of the death sentence even if the convict were a murderer; to AI death sentence is nothing short of state sanctioned murder.

Given the unfettered access it has to the corporate media, the treatment its frequent scathing reports against certain countries get is the dream of every PR practitioner, AI is able to launder its image in a way that has left large swathes of the earth’s population swearing by its name each time they perceived they have been wronged or their rights trampled upon.

Yet it is not all as it seems. Amnesty International has its ugly side. Its reports have proven to be more subjective than objective and are influenced more by what fate has been decided for a country or its leader than by the genuine desire to improve on the quality of freedoms its citizens enjoy. In implementing this kind of brief, particularly in the middle, AI has been known to look away when its favoured side is involved in committing the atrocities. By the way, the atrocities are in most cases the product of its interference in the affairs of the countries that are in crisis.

Often times Amnesty International issues slew of reports demonizing the country, its leader and army with the goal of securing forceful intervention from coalition countries. Once it gets the coalition countries the excuse they have been waiting for to invade a sovereign country it reverts to carrying on as if that country never existed. Libya is a testament to this modus operandi. The travesty is that the process of sacking the supposed leader who is killing his citizens often kills more of those same citizens; the aftermath of the misplaced interventions kill even more.

In Nigeria, Amnesty International, possibly in reaction to client feedback, modified its approach. Its strategy, from the much that have been seen, is to continually issue reports aimed at forcing the army into a position where it is constrained in its operation against Boko Haram terrorists it is fighting in the northeast of the country. Each time the military make gains in the counter-terrorism operation AI issues reports that amount to threats and blackmail of human rights abuses charges against the troops, which leaves them demoralized and allowed Boko Haram fighters to recover and launch more deadly attacks.

The same strategy applied to other insurgents and separatists that Nigeria’s security agencies are containing in the southeast and destructive militants in the south-south. Some Nigerians finally woke up to the reality of Amnesty International’s subversive activities in Nigeria, after finally realizing that the nation’s military was not lying in its previous rebuttals of that organization’s several reports of human rights violation. The citizens were taken by surprise when Amnesty International fought back when they demanded it leaves Nigeria in view of its activities. That episode seemed to have forced the human rights campaigning organization into hasty retreat even though it did not boot it out of Nigeria like protesters wanted.

AI’s clients simply dusted up and introduced another respectable looking organization, Transparency International into the project against the military in Nigeria. The anti-corruption organization wasted no time in delivering a report that promptly accuse accused the army of being rotten beyond measure even though the incidents upon which it based that conclusion have been overtaken by events. The military services of 2017 were accused of shady deals transacted two decades ago.

The accusation, it turned out, was a preface. The real chorus to the chant to destroy Nigeria came as Transparency International whipped out the collective hymnal, more like a manual, and repeated demands that Amnesty International once made to immediate past US President, Barack Obama. The crux of the matter is to prevent the military in Nigeria from buying arms. It became a matter of finding just any excuse to keep the army away from fighting terrorists: human rights abuse, repression, corruption and they will likely at some point accuse the Nigerian Army as not being gender balance just so there will be something to justify why Islamic State affiliated terrorists will get weapons and the Nigerian Army could not get same.

The only thing left to stop this wrecking train is for Nigerians to abandon difference along religious and ethnic lines since it is the next stop on the route that Amnesty and Transparency International have chosen to make Nigeria implode by first rendering its military inefficient.

Ainoko, a peace and conflict resolution expert wrote this piece from Barnawa, Kaduna.