Why Buhari Stayed Neutral at The UN Vote on Srebrenica

Two days ago at the United Nations Security Council meeting which Nigeria is a non permanent member of, there was a vote. This vote was to decide if the Srebrenica massacre of 1995 during the Bosnia war should designated a genocide or not.

The US and Britain were the proponents of this vote while Russia, ally with Bosnia was always going to vote against it. The vote held, the majority was for naming it genocide but Russia vetoed -rolls eyes.

Well, our president, Muhammadu Buhari chose to dodge this vote. I have read in local papers different opinions on this matter, especially as it is the first real foreign policy action of the Buhari administration and so many of us are plain eager to see what direction he would go.

By now, rather, before the Security Council vote, we know this adminstration will always most likely fall on the side of the US and UK in every matter internationally. Buhari's pre and post election romance with these world powers tells us that much. But why did he not vote at all?

Let me begin by explaining why in my opinion President Buhari did not vote for the motion before I go on to say why he stayed neutral instead of voting against it.

First of all, the vote was a difficult sell. The term, genocide is unclear enough to keep one undecided on it. The definition of genocide as recognized by the UN is as:

"any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such":
Killing members of the group.
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

It is hard to strictly on the grounds of this definition label the Srebrenica massacre a genocide. Even if one agrees to call it genocide the question then will be, to what ends after twenty years? What we know is that any success in officially accepting it as genocide will without doubt raise tension in that region but one will struggle to pick out one outstanding benefit of it.
That is one reason why Buhari wouldn't bother to vote for it.

Second one is the most interesting. Just as the Srebrenica killings, the question too is still open in some quarters whether the Nigeria civil war did not have its own cases of likely genocide. Voting to call Srebrenica a genocide will be placing same tag on the killing of Biafra babies, the Asaba massacre, and the blocking of food supplies to Biafra during the war. As a former military general who fought on the Nigerian side of the civil war, it would be unlikely for President Buhari to vote for that motion.

So why did he not vote against it? You should have figured by now, the US and UK are his friends and you wouldn't vote against your friends, would you?