#Endbadgovernance: Nigerians with Russia flagĀ
By Nnamdi Elekwachi
Nigeria has not enacted flag desecration law or Act, so it is hard trying to tell me that “flying the flag of another country in Nigeria” is a treason, even when that does not bring contempt to the Nigerian flag.
I take exception to waving such flags while chanting anti-Nigerian tirades on the streets in the name of protest.
I would have asked the chief of defence staff whether all the Nigerian flags at our barracks, including the one in his office, are regularly washed and kept clean. Story for another day.
Now, take a leisure trip to our police stations, airports, government offices and departments near you, you will hardly see a neat Nigerian flag. This is an abuse of the nation’s flag which is our national symbol.
Criminal Code (see Sections 37 & 38) which contemplated treason, did not elaborately specify that it is a crime waving another country’s flag in Nigeria.
I think the prosecution will have to establish whether – by intent, action or expression – the protesters waving the Russian and Chinese flags invited another sovereign country to come and take over or overthrow the Nigerian government.
Nigeria is a Westphalian state with all the attributes of a state in line with the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States. Our sovereignty, no doubt, is inalienable and not transferrable.
Any action, whether espionage or sabotage, which works to overthrow the Nigerian government or “overawe” it is treason. Nigeria’s sovereignty must be treated with jealousness.
But many Nigerians have the flags of Israel, America, Britain and the rest in their vehicles. That is not a crime. Nigerians abroad too fly their flag in the US, Canada and Europe on national day or during sports.
Some businesses, including churches, while trying to show their brand’s global reach, hoist multiple flags (of other countries) on their premises too. What has to be ensured is that those other flags don’t fly on a higher mast than the Nigerian flag.
Also, that the Nigerian flag whenever in contact with other flags, be they those of subnational governments or other groups, must take the position of honour – which is the center.
If the protesters defaced, mutilated, soiled, burnt, stamped feet on, or even verbally abused the Nigerian flag, it could be termed treason. I didn’t see them do that (at least in the videos I have harvested online).
The Nigerian flag was soiled at Lekki Tollgate by the same military, officered and manned by our chief of defence staff’s comrades, yet today a line in the second stanza of our new anthem says “To hand on to our children a banner without stain.” What a joke!
The Nigeria Army (NA) still owes us all an explanation of why it has failed to recapture lost territories where Boko Haram, ISWAP, Anseru and other terror groups have hoisted their flags and proclaimed their rule. That is even more treasonous than what these young protesters did.
Again, waving or flying flags of other nations could be a way of showing solidarity and support. During the Charlie Hebdo attack in France, for example, many Nigerian Facebook subscribers used the French flag as their profile picture; a great number of them subsist today.
Some of us even went, “Je suis Charlie,” in solidarity. As long as nothing is done to diminish the Nigerian flag, using another country’s flag is not unpatriotic or treason.
I see those Chinese and Russian flags as a direct message to Tinubu and his pro-Western liberal economy fancies; a mark of rejection of Tinubu’s IMF-backed model that supports the removal of subsidies on petrol, energy, even on national currency.
Again, it could be a call for a shift in economic alliances and foreign policy alignments. The IMF, whose advisory recommendations Tinubu is implementing by removing subsidies, is a Western institution – Bretton Woods system, so the hungry masses prefer Russia and China to the West.
Recall that Bola Tinubu, as a newly sworn in president, wanted to commit Nigeria to war in Niger Republic following an unconstitutional change of government in Niamey, in which case Nigeria and ECOWAS would have been French proxies had the National Assembly with its Northern majority not resisted.
Today, Niger, Nigeria’s neighbour, is tilting away from the West and closer to Russia, a new dawn of Third-Worldism. So the people are wanting a domino, even though their call may not offer a better rationale.
I think our laws when it comes to treason are insufficient, reason it is hard to convict people like Sowore, Kanu, others who have been charged with it. Let the military be careful how it deploys the term “treason.”
Elekwachi, Historian and public affairs analyst.
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