It feels like the unkindest cut of all. Many fair-minded Nigerians are aghast. To be sure, the odd political tiff, the occasional diplomatic shindig, is not unusual between a former colony and its former colonial masters. It is in the nature of this thing called international politics. In international relations, there are no permanent coalitions only permanent collusions. A nation is on its own and must fend for itself.

But even then, there are periods when the handshake goes beyond the elbow, particularly after persistent signals of irritation and disgust. Coming so soon after The Economist, the influential London magazine, dismissed Nigeria’s former ruler, Goodluck Jonathan, as “an ineffectual buffoon”, this week’s sharp putdown of the nation as “fantastically corrupt” by David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, shows how low our stock has fallen with our former colonial masters.

The language of diplomacy, not to talk of global statesmanship, is usually polite and coolly understated. But there are moments when the telling tease, the friendly tick off, gives way to the sledge hammer, the severe bareknuckle rap. When a European diplomat to the court of the Russian Czars was asked what he thought the Russians did best, he hesitated for a while and then grunted: “They steal!” General Alexander Haig, an American Secretary of State, once famously dismissed Lord Peter Carrington, the British Foreign Secretary, as a “duplicitous bastard”.

Phew!!! Snooper’s favourite diplomatic putdown is possibly apocryphal. It was alleged that when a serving American diplomat in Karachi finally met the reclusive, dowdy and unprepossessing spouse of the general who executedZulfikar Ali Bhutto, he crowed: “No wonder, he screws the country instead!!!” Give it at least to Nigeria’s military and civilian rulers, most, if not all of their wives, could have come straight out of a beauty pageant.

Still, it is important for Nigerians and the policy makers not to allow the import and real message of Cameron’s scarifying shellacking to be lost in the thicket of national displeasure and bitter disappointment. President MohammaduBuhari should be commended for rising heroically to the bait with his barbed retort. Coming on the eve of an official visit to Britain, the insult was in your face, an ego-deflating psychological offensive calculated to give maximum offence.

To be adjudged corrupt is one thing, but to be condemned as “fantastically corrupt” is not a funny matter at all. It connotes gravity-defying sleaze and irredeemable muck; a world-historic despoliation that is beyond the realm of actual reality; a fairy tale phantasmagoria of stealing which calls into question the very notion of national sanity.

The Brits are known as the masters of the wry understatement, not given to hyperactive hyperbole. But they are also deadly past masters of the rapier thrust in close diplomatic encounters. That their current leader should reach for this extreme metaphor to describe Nigeria ought to be a cause for national anxiety. If this is the way we are perceived by the outside world, then God helps the nation in the coming years.

The fact that no retraction was given and none was forthcoming despite General Buhari’s aura of incorruptibility and immaculate integrity shows that Britain means business. Indeed if anything the fact that usual diplomatic gnomes from the storied catacombs of Whitehall insisted that there was nothing to add or remove is indicative of how the western world might have lost patience with this gifted but dysfunctional nation.

Another way of looking at this is to view it as a typical relapse of a hard pressed Tory government to the old infamous image of the nasty Tory notorious for their lack of civic and cultural compassion and empathy for embattled people. It is this trait that often turns the Conservative Party to a political pariah in most of Northern England, Scotland and among coloured people in Britain.

Yet when all is said, we need to ask ourselves whether we didn’t bring this historic shame on our own head. Each new day brings such horrid tales of looting that the nation itself has become scandal-fatigued. You begin to wonder whether these people are human-beings at all. The daily tales are so outlandish that you wonder whether this is a nation at all or some armed robbers’ paradise straight out of the most macabre of malignant fiction.

This is the burden of shame in a nation crying for some catharsis. We do not know what information the British government have on us. But so far it seems they are not impressed by the efforts to cleanse and sanitize the system. It is possible that they feel it is too personalized for their liking and smacks of the loss of institutional ballast.

But it is also possibly an attempt to arm twist theBuhari administration and makeit amenable to western bidding. The sudden and precipitate capitulation of the Nigerian authorities to the forces of deregulation after months of stiff resistance is an indication of a well-coordinated political psych-op. If General Buhari is unable to withstand these forces, and if he is unwilling to call out for assistance, the situation may be more scary than one had imagined.

To those from whom much has been taken in the course of an unequal exchange lasting a millennium, there ought to be some charity and generosity of spirit. Britain should not join the league of Nigerian tormentors, or at least should be seen to be resisting the temptation to do so. Apart from being occasionally politically unhelpful in our hour of political distress such as during the June 12 debacle, it has found it economically lucrative to serve as a haven for stolen patrimony from Nigeria and a smiling paradise for Nigerian economic miscreants.

This is not how a parent colony should treat its colonial offspring that it ought to nurture out of protracted teething troubles. Yet despite the infractions, most Nigerians retain a certain fondness and affection for the parent country. It remains our preferred destination and our first port of call whenever the global wanderlust beckons. Despite adopting the presidential system of governance, the brilliant jousting, the cut and thrust of British parliamentary system, are a source of eternal fascination and admiration for many Nigerian political pundits.

While it is true that a section of the British ruling class exhibits a sweet tooth for filthy lucre, Nigerians always applaud when other British institutions, particularly an upright judiciary, a stringent investigative body and a truly independent press, rise to the occasion in a redemptive rally. This is the hallmark of a nation that truly functions. When one national institution stumbles and falters, others cover for the loss and lapses.

Britain should not always seek to tie its former colonies to its political and economic apron strings. This is historically counter-productive and against the longer term interests of the parent-nation. Were the great American founding fathers to listen to Great Britain and remain a vassal and underling of the old empire, it would have been impossible for the new nation, bursting with fresh and dynamic energies, to strike out in a bold and innovative direction.

Were this to be so, and without the help of this new gargantuan nation and bedrock of liberal democracy, it is quite feasible that Britain would have gone under from the fascist sledge hammer of the German military machine. America came on the world scene precisely at the moment when the liberal democratic project needed to be re-imagined and re-envisioned on a grand and grandiose scale despite the great and roiling internal contradictions of America itself. This was conceptually beyond empire hallucinations.

Ironically, the only other nation that rallied against the German onslaught and the destruction of the liberal democratic project was Soviet and socialist Russia whose emergence had earlier caused Britain so much trepidation and palpitation. The cunning of history is such that nations often mistake their natural friends and potential allies for enemies and automatic political adversaries.

The Commandist economy made it possible for the Soviet production of war munitions to outstrip western efforts and the rallying ideology which made it possible for the Russian people to forge ahead as one people proved decisive in the battle for Stalingrad. After the Germans were turned back at this site of historic and horrific carnage, the end of Hitler’s monstrous Reich became a matter of time.

For a people so deep and reflective in their ways, so alert to the contradictions of historical developments, it is quite bemusing that the British attitude to Nigeria since independence has been a classic example of how to sacrifice longer term interest and perspective for the sake of short-termism and immediate gratification.

It is in Britain’s longer term interest to help nurture Nigeria through its protracted adolescence, and to help the beleaguered nation achieve its manifest destiny as the Mecca for Black people. If Nigeria were to unravel, the humanitarian catastrophe would be unimaginable in its magnitude and seismic possibilities. Everybody, including Great Britain, would be hurt.

It is only those with a misbegotten and incurably racist mind-set who cannot imagine a prosperous and democratically vibrant Nigeria one day coming to the aid of the parent colony. For now, it is not only strategically expedient for Britain to help Nigeria overcome its cripplinglimitations, it is also politically rational to do so. A crumbling Nigeria is a death sentence for so many.

In this diplomatic duel between colonial father and son, the son appears to trump the father despite being fatally wounded. It is a profound irony that it is the man with the military background famously challenged in the department of verbal eloquence who has carried day with the political cogency of his response and its higher moral clarity and authority.

General Buhari is right.Nigeria does not demand an apology or retraction from Britain. A receiver of stolen goods is also morally compromised. What Nigeria demands from Britain is the repatriation of its stolen patrimony with or without apologies. A father must not be seen helping to rob his own child however profligate and irresponsible the son appears to be. Even in the amoral world of international politics and diplomacy, this is quite a crushing ethical burden.