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For a country with a reputation for abandoning its
citizens whenever they get into trouble abroad, Nigeria surprised the
world with the news, on Thursday, of the evacuation of 500 Nigerians
from Egypt. President Jonathan deserves our commendation for the
promptness of the action taken. The government should make every effort
to ensure that all Nigerians who wish to return to Nigeria are
airlifted as soon as possible.

We sympathise with all the Nigerians who were
caught up in the crisis, and who have had to leave their homes and
friends behind in Egypt. The reality for many is that making the
decision to quit is never an easy task, and one imagines that Egypt is
home for them as much as Nigeria is.

As the standoff in Egypt enters a second week, and
as a hitherto largely peaceful uprising degenerates into violence and
bloodshed, we urge President Hosni Mubarak to heed the voices of
reason, and the clear signs that he has outstayed his welcome, and
immediately relinquish power.

From his comments Mr. Mubarak is no doubt trapped
in that dangerous state of delusion common with tyrants and dictators.
On Thursday he told reporter Christiane Amanpour: “I was very unhappy
about yesterday. I do not want to see Egyptians fighting each other.”
We therefore see a man who has, without any sense of irony or shame,
decided to award his own ‘unhappiness’ greater importance than the
overwhelming unhappiness of the people he has lorded it over for thirty
years. He doesn’t seem to realise that all those Egyptians who have
kept vigil in Tahrir Square since January 25 are determined to fight
him, the tyranny he represents, and his mass of diehard supporters, to
the very end.

Mubarak also told Amanpour: “I don’t care what
people say about me. Right now I care about my country, I care about
Egypt … You don’t understand the Egyptian culture and what would happen
if I step down now.” That is an argument that is as silly as it is
unoriginal. Every dictator from time immemorial has predicated his
continued stay in power on a similar reason. We recall the attempts of
the late General Sani Abacha to transform into a civilian president;
the desperate attempts to convince Nigerians that Abacha was the only
person “whom the cap fit”. And had President Obasanjo gone on to
publicly acknowledge the existence of a third term bid, we believe he
would have made a similar argument: ““I don’t care what people say
about me. Right now I care about my country, I care about Nigeria…” If
Mubarak really cares about Egypt, he should respect the clamour of its
frustrated citizens, step down at once, and immediately rein in his
bloodthirsty mobs that have since stepped up efforts to regain control
of Tahrir Square at all costs.

The recent happenings in Egypt also raise certain
questions about Nigeria, beyond the rather simplistic debate over
whether those uprisings we have seen in Tunisia and Egypt can happen
here or not.

Crises like the one in Egypt, and the Ivory Coast
debacle, are opportunities for Nigeria to (re)assert itself on the
diplomatic stage. At a White House press briefing on Tuesday President
Obama’s remarked that he had communicated to Mr. Mubarak “my belief
that an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and
it must begin now.” From Nigeria it has mostly been silence so far,
apart from the triumphant announcement of the evacuation by the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

President Goodluck Jonathan should speak loud and
clear, and declare Nigeria’s position on the crisis. As Africa’s most
populated country, and one of its largest economies, and current
occupier of the chairmanship of regional body ECOWAS, Nigeria cannot
afford silence on this issue.

There are many who believe that the golden days of
Nigeria’s diplomacy, when we spoke with boldness and conviction
regarding our position on global affairs, are long behind us. President
Jonathan should realise that a time like this, is an opportunity to put
some verve into the distressingly quiescent diplomatic profile of the
giant of Africa.