By Okey Ikechukwu
Notwithstanding the fact that the Federal Government has provided some details about a $150 billion Samoa Deal it signed recently, Christian and Muslim organizations and supporters of indigenous culture and traditions are up in arms. Their query is why the Federal Government should sign an agreement with clauses that require underdeveloped and developing nations to support LGBTQ rights as a condition for receiving financial and other forms of support.
This very provision of the Samoa agreement looks very much like a reincarnation of Biden’s Presidential Memorandum released shortly after he took office. In that Memo, he threatened to sanction countries which were still reluctant to make laws to promote, accommodate and expand the rights and privileges of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex (LGBTQI+) people. With the specific provisions on gay rights in the Samoa Deal, and given Biden’s antecedents, it is easy to see why many are asking why sexual orientation should be part of the condition for financial and other support. Is this an underhand way of bringing back something that our National Assembly has outlawed?
The controversial agreement was signed at the Organisation of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (OACPS) Secretariat in Brussels, Belgium on June 28. Details of the agreement indicate that the partnership is between the EU and its Member States, on one hand, and the members of the OACPS on the other. Negotiations on the agreement began in 2018, as a tangential engagement at the 73rd United Nations General Assembly. Then it was signed in Apia, Samoa, on the 15th of November 2018 by all 27 EU Member states and 47 of the 79 OACPS Member states.
The African Regional Protocol on this matter consists of two parts, namely: (1) The Framework for Cooperation, and (2) Areas of Cooperation, containing Inclusive and Sustainable Economic Growth and much more. The government has since said, in response to the uproar, that the signing was done after extensive reviews and consultations by the Interministerial Committee, convened by the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning (FMBEP) in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and Federal Ministry of Justice (FMOJ).
It says that (1) None of the 103 Articles and Provisions of the Agreement contravenes the 1999 Constitution as amended or laws of Nigeria, and other extant Laws, (2) Nigeria’s endorsement was accompanied by a Statement of Declaration, indicating that any provision that is inconsistent with the laws of Nigeria shall be invalid. This is what the government has to say on the issue of same sex marriage: “,,, there is an existing legislation against same sex relationship in Nigeria enacted in 2014. It is necessary to assure Nigerians that the President Bola Tinubu Administration, being a rule-based government, will not enter into any international agreement that will be detrimental to the interest of the country and its citizens”.
Fair enough, but let us recalibrate, in order to maintain perspective and thus be extra vigilant. Everything about human relations, and even the actual essence of a human being, coming from the US during and after the Obama administration is open to question for me. This very matter, as well as the antics of the current US government to drive it down our throat, came up for scrutiny on this page on February 22, 2021. That was shortly after Biden became president and gave clear indications about some of the ways in which he would further globalize the LGBT project. Take a read.
“America is back,” said Biden about a week ago (second week of February 2021). But which America, and whose America, is back? The answer to the question was given the aforementioned Presidential Memorandum, wherein he promised hell to non-compliant developing nations. That Memorandum was all about a worldwide plan to strengthen the protection of LGBTQI+ rights, in such a way that it would be taken for granted that humanity must now collectively drive a new global priority under this umbrella of rights.
Should all mankind tremble and fall in line because an American president has announced that his country would roll out sanctions against other countries which do not subscribe to America’s preferred values? Can he even do that in US states which are yet to fall in line in this regard? Can he do anything about the legislative federalist orientation of the American State, despite a respected Supreme Court?
What warrants Biden’s presumption? By what universal standard was Nigeria classified a “homophobic” country; as was done under Obama, because of the country’s anti-gay law? Surely a US president who was Vice President when the Nigerian anti-gay law was passed, despite great pressures from the Obama government where he was Vice President, would be out to “call Nigeria to order?”
The article continued: “So, watch out! The drama is only just beginning. With Nigeria deemed an anti-LGBTQI+ country, Biden’s threat of “…financial sanctions, visa restrictions, and other sanctions” targeted at “…foreign governments” that “restrict the rights of LGBTQI+ persons…” applies here.
When Biden says: “The United States belongs at the forefront of this struggle – speaking out and standing strong for our most dearly held values”, does he consider that “our most dearly held values” in Nigeria are not American values? Since when did America start speaking for all climes? When Biden speaks of “…enforcing freedoms and promoting tolerance,” does he consider that he is the President of the US, rather than the earth? Does he even look at the overall impact of the US on “rights” with regards to global peace, climate change and morality? Less than two months into the Biden presidency, what are we seeing and what do the things we are seeing portend?
On November 23, 2020, this column carried a piece with the title “Biden and the Global Gender Crisis.” That article observed as follows: “The Obama Government threatened Nigeria with official sanctions, when the National Assembly passed a law against same-sex marriage. The Obama government also refused to sell arms to Nigeria to fight Boko Haram. It also discouraged other countries from selling arms to Nigeria; even as thousands were being slaughtered every day. The argument, then, was that the Nigerian government was not respecting the human rights of the terrorists! …The Obama Presidency stood out in its promotion of gay relationships under the LGTBQ+ movement.”
The same piece raised the following questions: “Why are world leaders, especially of the nations classified as “developed,” desperate to “level humanity” and deny any core values? Why are many “globally significant” individuals working towards the globalization of all manner of lifestyles and a values pyramid with a controlling few at the top holding sway with skewed values? Why are most world figures speaking of freedoms and rights, but not of knowledge and true humanity? Why are they talking of making people happy but saying nothing about the true meaning of happiness?” Does Biden’s Presidential Memorandum, wherein he seeks to “… further repair our (America’s) moral leadership…” which also seeks to “reinvigorate our (America’s) leadership on the LGBTQI+ issues internationally…” not showcase a national megalomania that verges on the incomprehensible?
My Exclusive Commentary of December 5, 2020, in the Houston-based USAfrica, titled “Will Biden Impose Alternative Lifestyles on Africans?” spoke of the “dangers” of a Biden presidency for non-enthusiasts of gay marriage and anti-gay advocacy. The publication began thus: “On January 2021, upon being sworn in as president of the United States, Joe Biden will begin to reconnect with many “globally significant” individuals towards the globalization of new (alternative) lifestyles and values pyramid. ‘The Return of all the freedom enjoyed under Barrack Obama’ is already the mantra of many who are cheering the November 2020 election of Joe Biden as president. The Obama administration – where Biden served as vice president for eight years, 2009 to 2017 – threatened Nigeria with sanctions for passing a law against same-sex marriage. That presidency diligently promoted the same sex agenda and Gay relationships with the LGBTQ+ movement and created a new world for the exercise of those ‘rights’ when in 2016, Donald trump barged in bared teeth and all.”
Continuing, the write-up in question said: “I believe that the Biden Presidency, itself a reincarnation of the Obama Presidency, will still use soft and strong tactics to deny any core values. They will speak of freedoms and rights, but not of knowledge and true humanity. They will speak of making people happy, but say little about the true meaning of happiness… Welcome to a world that will provide much funding and orchestrated media support for every endeavour that promotes and protects all manner of rights, without asking whether the rights in question add positive values to our humanity.” No matter how innocuous and uncoordinated it might seem, it is all well planned and well-choreographed.
Speaking in predictive terms, and this is being confirmed as I write, the article under reference here noted as follows: “Biden is likely to drive the growing insistence that LGBTQI+ be allowed in the military service of many nations. He will catalyze the progressive inclusion of LGBTQI+ history and themes in public education, as well as the deliberate projection of new identities and lifestyles that encourage heterosexuals to go into homosexual relationships…
His plan to seek and obtain special treatment for homosexuals and interfere with gender distinctions, which are all in line with the LGBTQI+ campaign spelt out in Marshal Kirk and Hunter Madsen’s 1987 Essay, “The Overhauling of Straight America,” is well known. This work, which urged Gays to project themselves in ways that would make the world to think of them as normal people who prefer to do certain things differently, was updated years later, in the book “After the Ball: How America will Conquer its Fear of Gays in the 90s.” The latter work mapped out a public relations strategy for the movement. And it is working.” Yes, it is!
Which is why, as I said in the USAfrica article: “Oklahoma Senator, Tom Coburn, in 2004, saw the gay movement as a more pressing danger than terrorism. In 2005, James Dobson, Director of Focus on the Family, described the homosexual agenda as including “universal acceptance of the gay lifestyle, discrediting of scriptures that condemn homosexuality, muzzling of the clergy and Christian media, granting of special privileges and rights in the law, overturning laws prohibiting paedophilia, indoctrinating children and future generations through public education, and securing all the legal benefits of marriage for any two or more people who claim to have homosexual tendencies.” Watch out for those tactics. Wait a minute, they are already here with us!
The concerns raised in the aforementioned USAfrica article include the following: “Can someone wake up one day, declare himself a camel, and demand that we accept his new identity and allow him to graze in the public park; or in his neighbour’s garden? Was the Obama Presidency guided by a fundamental distortion of the very concepts of human nature and human freedom? Does a redefinition of what it means to be human, and of what “gender” means, not also mean a redefinition of the notion of “human” rights and new notions of right and wrong, etc.?
