“Man is a god in ruins. Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men and pleads with them to return to paradise.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
The close proximity of St. George’s Cathedral to the Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, is not only very symbolic but most instructive.
Dubbed “Paris of the East” and derived from the extinct Canaanite Semitic language – “Be’rot” means (The wells) descriptive of the high-water table around one of the oldest continuously habited cities in the world. The earliest mention in recorded history of Beirut dates back to the 15th century BC.
That ancient Phoenician city has seen civilizations come and go; Egyptian, Greek, Persian, and Roman all before the Arabs, then the Ottomans and eventually French.
Now a bloody battlefield for Iran against Israel in an existential war seemingly with no end within sight unfortunately the human and material toll incalculable.
St. George’s Church was first built in 1753. Next to it came a “Zawiya” – a prayer corner in the 1800s, which did not become a full-fledged mosque till 1950.
By 1894, the neoclassical St. George’s was expanded Basilica style with its campanile (bell tower) attaining the height of 72m dominating the Beirut skyline for 126 years before the minarets of the Ottoman style mosque also known as Blue Mosque next door attained the same height of 72m in 2020.
It would have been higher as many had demanded but the Lebanese preferred to exemplify not only a sense of national parity but solidarity and harmony in a nation that was once of Christian-majority at the epicentre of the Middle East conundrum.
I have seen churches and mosques along the same street in Sabongari of Kano, “Cikingari” of Kaduna, and on Lagos Island.
The scenario of Beirut is, however, the closest in harmonious proximity, perhaps with the notable exception of Abebayo Street near Terminus on Jos Plateau.
What does Emerson mean by “A man is a god in ruins…” in 1836?
Here, the 19th century American essayist reminds us of the innate human potential of our collective capacity for greatness and critical thinking, often hindered by societal constraints.
My interpretation is that we all suffer from a self-imposed Zugzwang bind due to the absurd way we view issues through the distorted lens of primordial sentiments.
Point being the manner most of us are currently doing whilst interpreting the escalation of events in the Middle East cauldron.
The obvious moral here is;
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” – Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
Chances are that if you are Christian in Nigeria, you are more likely to be more sympathetic to the Israeli cause regardless.
Likewise, Nigerian Muslims gravitate towards the Palestinian cause irrespective.
If so, where does that leave the full-fledged Israeli citizens that are Muslim and Palestinian Christians caught in between the crossfire?
My findings show that while all Palestinian Christians are Arab they constitute 56% of the Palestinian diaspora, 2% of Gaza and 3.5% of the population in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, Arab citizens constitute 21% of the bona fide Israeli population, with 84% of them Muslim with 8% each Christian and Druze respectively.
A Zugzwang bind is the precarious position in chess that a player’s position is continuously weakening with every further move.
The other attached image to this post shows that the current hostilities in the Middle East beyond primordial fault lines might not be unconnected with the fundamental issue of scrambling for natural gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea.
While there is apparently enough to go around particularly between the Palestinians off shore of Gaza and in the territorial waters of Israel why can’t Lebanon be allowed a piece of the action as shown in the shaded disputed area shown?
The answer is obvious. International rivalry by proxy, in this case, Iranian involvement in not only Gaza but Israel using Lebanon as a main battlefield.
Yes, there are no doubt issues in downtown Beirut. They are, however, not irreconcilable without competing foreign interests.
But as Nigerians shouldn’t that remind us of our own political crisis back in 1967 that culminated into the unavoidable Nigerian Civil War to 1970?
Recall that the casus belli was crude oil (not tribalism as we have always presumed) against the background of the Six-Day War fought between Israel simultaneously against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan
which, as a result, the Suez Canal was shut till 1975.
Have we ever wondered how Western Europe got its crude oil supply from the Arabian Peninsula in those ensuing years?
Through the Suez to the United Kingdom, for instance, it took tankers 10 days for a return trip. Meanwhile, after the closure through the Cape (South Africa), it took 68 days.
Yet, in comparison from Nigeria, it is just 20 days. Therefore, British support for the General Yakubu Gowon regime was predictable particularly as the French had been behind the scenes pulling the strings of breaking apart Nigeria with the main objective of wrestling to the ground the entrenched British monopoly and control of our Niger Delta region’s hydrocarbons industry far back as 1963.
Prof. Jibrin Ibrahim explains the background;
“In February, April, and December 1960, France exploded three nuclear devices in the Sahara, in spite of the vehement protests by many of the then newly-independent African countries.
In retaliation against the unfriendly act, Nigeria gave France 48 hours to close down its Embassy in Lagos and to pack out of the country in early January 1961.
The French Embassy in Lagos was to remain closed until October 1965. Nigeria also banned French ships and aeroplanes from calling at our ports.
Exactly a year after the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, a new area of conflict was to arise: the Nigerian civil war.
Pierre Pean (1983: 71-83) reveals that, as far back as 1963, General de Gaulle and Jacques Foccart, his African affairs Professor Smart, had dispatched Lt-Col Bichelot, a French secret service officer, to Abidjan where he was to work with Houphouet-Boigny on the Nigerian desk, under the close supervision of Jean Mouchean-Beaupre, a close de Gaulle aide. Thus, by the start of the war, the French were ready.
(Professor Smart is a famous Nigerian do-it-all magician known for his “the more you see the less you understand” antics)
In July 1967, the French army dispatched a B-26 bomber to Enugu. In October 1967, Maurice Delanney, the French Ambassador to Gabon, sent Ojukwu four secret service advisers under the command of Col. Fournier.
On July 13 1968, the first French plane loaded with arms and ammunition landed at Uli air strip via Gabon, and this continued for months at a daily rate of about 20 tons.”
See details in Towards a Nigerian Perspective in the French Problematic in Africa: The Paradox of Nigeria/France Relations (1992)
“If Nigeria had been left alone by other countries and their nationals, especially the developed countries, the Nigerian crisis might not have developed into a civil war.” – Olusegun Obasanjo in p. 208 My Command (2015 reprint)
For me, the erstwhile Chicken Farmer of Ota now Abeokuta hilltop resident summarizes the lesson for Nigeria from downtown Beirut – Beware of meddlesome foreign interference in otherwise reconcilable local dynamics!
