بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Boris Johnson’s Nigeria Visit:
Dependency on the West is the Reason for our Underdevelopment
News:
On 27th March 2023, the former British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson delivered a speech at a conference in Lagos on “Rehumanising Human Experience”. His visit comes only weeks after the Nigerian general election, which took place spanning February and March 2023. Johnson spoke about freedom of choice in voting, good governance under democracy, equality before the law and security in Nigeria. He also spoke about increasing and improving trade links between the UK and Nigeria.
Comment:
Boris Johnson is a discredited and ousted former leader of his own party in the UK, for law breaking, corruption, malfeasance and insisting on maintaining his innocence by sheer arrogance in the face of contrary evidence. Consequently, he was removed from heading his own country.
For a man championing democracy Johnson was the Prime Minister who forcefully suspended the British parliament by proroguing it in Aug 2019 and then shamelessly clinging to power after being forced to resign in 2022. Wasn’t it under his term that companies profited in hundreds of millions of pounds from the British government under questionable circumstances? In contracts awarded during the pandemic, the companies had links to cabinet office ministers like Michael Gove and his senior advisors like Dominic Cummings, earning the government the derisory label of ‘chumocracy’ i.e. cronyism. What about equality before the law? Johnson, along with cabinet ministers and advisers repeatedly broke Covid lockdown rules while insisting the public should strictly adhere to the same rules. Cummings, like his boss, remains egotistical about the transgressions. Johnson remained adamant he was blameless about the ‘Partygate’ scandal, going as far as deriding it in his Lagos speech.
Johnson drove the call for Brexit whose unfolding impact has seen the people of Britain lurch from one economic disaster to another. Vast increases in poverty levels, inflation and unemployment across British society and a drop in Britain’s global economic standing are just a few outcomes of it. Even when Johnson tries to advocate democratic accountability in leaders by contrasting the actions of the criminal Putin, he describes Putin in terms that equally apply to himself – ‘he (Putin) does not practice a democratic system and he surrounds himself with sycophants.’ How accurately perceptive since it takes one to know one.
In essence, Johnson came promoting decrepit western values, which have clearly failed in his home country. He represents a political failed structure and an unjust economic system in the form of Capitalism. His visit, calling for improved trade links, is designed to mitigate the disastrous fallout of Brexit and is an extension of the colonial subjugation Britain continues to exert over her former colonies. The pervasive corruption witnessed in Johnson’s administration and British democracy is a feature of the system and not simply a misapplication of its precepts.
Our countries will remain colonised as long as we continue to roll out the red carpet of capitulation and embrace the likes of Boris Johnson and the values he is promoting. Our countries can only find genuine liberation by rejecting Western systems and embracing Islam in the form of the Khilafah (Caliphate); a system and a way of life brought by the Messenger of Allah (saw), built on the justice of the Heavens for the good of mankind. The Prophet (saw) said: «ثُمَّ تَكُونُ خِلَافَةً عَلَى مِنْهَاجِ النُّبُوَّةِ» “Then there will once again be a rule on the method of the Prophethood.”