When Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stood before a map marking four-fifths of the West Bank for annexation, he did more than unveil a policy plan — he exposed, with startling candour, the logic that has always driven the Zionist project: maximum land, minimum Palestinians. His declaration that it was time to “apply Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria” was not a political innovation. It was the latest iteration of a century-long campaign to erase Palestine and the Palestinians from geography, from politics, and from memory.

This campaign did not begin in 2025. It was rooted in the Nakba of 1948, when over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes, their villages destroyed, and their land confiscated. The Naksa of 1967 extended this process as Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, displacing hundreds of thousands more. Decades of settlement expansion, home demolitions, and restrictions on movement have turned the West Bank and Gaza into laboratories of occupation, testing walls, checkpoints, drones, and digital surveillance — instruments of a modern colonial state.

In September 2025, when the Knesset advanced the first reading of a bill to annex the West Bank, it was not legislating new rights but legalising an old crime. The illusion of democracy — the façade of “votes” and “laws” — merely masks the machinery of dispossession. Every settler colony has cloaked its violence in the garb of law; every empire has found bureaucrats to justify its theft. Armed settlers roam with impunity through Palestinian villages while Israeli occupation forces provide protection, sanctioning patterns of dispossession and killings. Meanwhile, the siege of Gaza, the walls that divide villages, and checkpoints that cage entire cities underscore the brutality of occupation.

Palestine is not a story of isolated calamities. It is a process — ongoing, violent, adaptive. Israel is not merely occupying land; it is perfecting control. Palestine has become a laboratory of modern colonisation — a testing ground for technologies of domination later exported to other regimes of oppression. From training death squads in Latin America to arming apartheid South Africa, from providing intelligence to authoritarian regimes to policing black and brown bodies globally, Israel’s expertise in control has become one of its most profitable exports.

Colonialism today is not only about soldiers or settlers; it is about systems and structures. Banks that fund illegal construction, corporations that build on stolen land, universities that legitimise the apartheid narrative, and international trade networks that sustain the occupation all interlock with military might to enforce dispossession. It is an economy of oppression, in which profit and power intersect to keep a people stateless. The complicity is global, but so too must be the response. The same financial and political architecture that props up Israeli apartheid also underwrites the broader imperial order — one that impoverishes the Global South, fuels endless wars, and deepens global inequality. To speak of decolonising Palestine is, therefore, to speak of decolonising the world.

Condemnations, resolutions, and rhetorical gestures are no substitute for justice. For seventy-five years, international institutions have treated Palestine as a humanitarian crisis rather than a colonial condition. Yet Palestine is not a tragedy to be managed; it is a people demanding liberation. Decolonisation is not a metaphor. It is a material, political, and moral project — the restoration of land, the reclamation of sovereignty, and the dismantling of the systems that make occupation possible. To decolonise Palestine is to affirm that indigenous people anywhere — whether in Africa, Asia, or the Americas — have the right to live free from domination.

For the Islamic world, this is not merely a geopolitical issue. It is a moral imperative. The Qur’an reminds us: “And what is [the matter] with you that you fight not in the cause of Allah and [for] the oppressed among men, women, and children?” (4:75). The struggle for Palestine is the struggle against the logic of empire — economic, political, and spiritual. True solidarity lies not only in prayer or protest but in constructing an alternative moral economy — one that prioritises justice over profit, dignity over domination, and human life over capital.

The question before us is no longer whether Palestine has been stolen — that theft is plain. The question is whether it will be decolonised. Whether humanity will continue to normalise a system of apartheid under the guise of diplomacy, or finally muster the courage to confront and dismantle it. The future of Palestine is not only about borders on a map. It is about the very meaning of justice in our time.

And so we must act, think, and speak boldly — not tomorrow, not next year, but now. To support justice in Palestine is to support justice everywhere. To build a moral economy that protects the oppressed is to reclaim the dignity of our shared humanity. The time to choose sides is here, the time to refuse complicity is now, and the time to dream of decolonisation is ours to seize — with courage, with conviction, and yes, with hope and smiles.

Footnote:

AFRIEF Webinar — “Palestine: Stolen or Decolonised?”

The Africa Islamic Economic Forum (AFRIEF) will at the end of this month host a two-hour virtual webinar exploring the political economy of Palestine, the structures sustaining occupation, and pathways toward decolonisation. The session will convene scholars, policy experts, and economic thinkers to examine how ethical finance, international solidarity, and moral economic principles intersect with the struggle for Palestinian sovereignty. This webinar underscores AFRIEF’s commitment to fostering informed dialogue on justice-oriented economics and highlights the critical moral and financial dimensions of the Palestinian struggle.

Across the continent, elections have become coronations. From Tanzania to Guinea, power is recycled through manipulation, courts, and guns — not consent. The price is paid in instability, poverty, and the erosion of public trust.

In the language of politics, democracy in Africa still thrives — on paper. Constitutions proclaim it, parliaments echo it, and electoral commissions ritualize it every few years. Yet across much of the continent, the ballot box has been emptied of meaning. What we now witness is not popular sovereignty but political theatre — a choreography of control disguised as democracy.

In Tanzania, the October 2025 election returned President Samia Suluhu Hassan with nearly 98 percent of the vote. It was a landslide that few outside her ruling party regarded as credible. Opposition figures were jailed, disqualified, or chased into exile; journalists were muzzled; protests were crushed with curfews. What should have been a test of public confidence became a coronation of continuity.

In Cameroon, 93-year-old Paul Biya — in power since 1982 — claimed yet another term amid allegations of rigging and intimidation. His presidency has now outlasted every U.S. administration since Ronald Reagan’s, a living symbol of how power in Africa often turns into private property.

In Côte d’Ivoire, Alassane Ouattara re-engineered the constitution to justify a third term in 2020, and reports suggest he may seek a fourth. Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni continues to rule through a blend of security coercion and constitutional tinkering. Nigeria’s democracy is plagued by mass defections into the ruling party and endless litigation — it is now common to hear that “the courts, not the people, decide elections.”

And now, Guinea, where a coup-born junta leader who once promised a return to civilian rule has banned opposition parties yet announced that he himself will run for president. The farce completes the circle: military seizure of power followed by civilian pretense of it.

These are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a continental crisis — a collapse of accountability masked by the ritual of voting. Freedom House notes that two-thirds of African countries have declined in democratic performance over the past decade.

“What we now witness is not popular sovereignty but political theatre — a choreography of control disguised as democracy.”

The consequences are not only moral but material. When elections are stolen, economies bleed. Investors retreat; risk premiums rise; capital flees to safer ground. The World Bank estimates that countries with high political-risk ratings pay 1.5 to 2 percent more in borrowing costs, diverting billions from public investment. In countries where opposition is crushed, tax collection averages below 15 percent of GDP, limiting funds for health, education, and infrastructure. Patronage replaces policy; loyalty outweighs merit.

Tanzania’s current growth — officially around 5.4 percent — hides deep structural weakness: a narrow tax base, youth under-employment, and rural stagnation. Nigeria, despite oil wealth, has the world’s third-highest number of poor people. Uganda’s debt-to-GDP ratio has doubled in a decade. Cameroon’s infrastructure projects stall under corruption investigations. The economics of impunity is the most expensive policy Africa can afford.

Islamic economics offers a corrective lens. Its pillars — shūrā (consultation), ʿadl (justice), amānah (trust), and maslahah (the public good) — demand stewardship, not survivalism. The Qur’an commands: “Indeed, Allah commands you to render trusts to whom they are due and when you judge between people, judge with justice.” (4:58). Leadership is an amanah, a sacred trust — not a perpetual entitlement. When rulers rewrite constitutions, muzzle dissent, or militarize elections, they betray that trust before both man and God.

“The Qur’an commands justice — yet Africa’s rulers rewrite constitutions to serve ambition, not accountability.”

The remedy begins with constitutional honesty: no resets, no endless tenures. Regional bodies must treat the manipulation of term limits as seriously as coups. Election commissions need budgetary and legal independence. Courts must be guardians of justice, not instruments of incumbency. Campaign finance must be transparent, and the security forces must serve the law, not the ruler.

Economically, Africa must delink growth from graft. Fiscal reforms, fair taxation, and decentralised opportunity can only thrive under rule-bound governance. No sustainable development is possible where fear governs the ballot box.

The deeper change, however, must come from within society — from faith leaders, educators, business people, and journalists who refuse to normalise tyranny. In Islam, silence in the face of injustice is complicity. The Prophet ﷺ said: “The greatest jihad is a word of truth spoken to a tyrant ruler.” Africa needs that word now more than ever.

Democracy, stripped of justice, becomes decoration. Economics, stripped of ethics, becomes exploitation. For Africa to heal, it must return to first principles — of justice, consultation, and stewardship — where power serves the people, not the other way around.

Sixty-five years ago, on October 1, 1960, Nigeria emerged from colonial rule amid great hopes. The world saw a promising union of hundreds of ethnicities, rich in human and natural resources, poised for greatness. But as the drums of independence sound once again, one cannot help but ask the question that burns beneath the surface of every celebration: what exactly are Nigerians celebrating?

Independence was meant to free Nigerians from oppression, but six and a half decades later, it seems the chains have merely changed hands. The average Nigerian today faces a harsher reality than at almost any point in the past three decades. Poverty, inflation, unemployment, insecurity, and corruption have combined into a suffocating grip. The green and white flag still flies, but beneath it lies a nation in distress.

A recent World Bank report reveals that 75.5 percent of Nigeria’s rural population now lives below the poverty line. Nationally, more than 54 percent of citizens—around 129 million people—struggle daily with the pain of poverty. This is not just an abstract statistic; it is the face of the market woman whose income dies under the weight of rising prices, the farmer who cannot afford fertilizer, the civil servant whose salary cannot last ten days. Inflation, which hit 34.8 percent in December 2024, is devouring incomes faster than any wage increase can compensate for. Food inflation stands at almost 40 percent, meaning that millions can no longer afford even basic meals.

Even after the rebasing of the Consumer Price Index in early 2025, inflation remained at 24.48 percent — a figure that, though technically lower, still captures the daily misery of households crushed by high prices. The result is an economy that grows on paper but shrinks in human dignity. The gap between the rich and the poor is widening, and the rural-urban divide has become a chasm: while over 75 percent of rural dwellers live in poverty, about 41 percent of urban residents do as well. For millions, electricity, clean water, and sanitation remain elusive.

The human cost of this national failure is visible not only in poverty but in death. Nigeria’s insecurity crisis is a bleeding wound. According to the National Bureau of Statistics’ 2024 Crime and Security Perception Survey, over 614,000 people were killed between May 2023 and April 2024 as a result of violent insecurity. The North-West alone accounted for over 206,000 deaths, largely from banditry, while the North-East lost nearly 189,000 to insurgency and terrorism. These are not mere numbers—they are fathers, mothers, children, and friends, silenced by a system that cannot protect them. In the first half of 2025 alone, more than 2,200 Nigerians were killed by gunmen and insurgents. Amnesty International reports that over 10,000 people have died in the past two years across just six northern states — Benue, Edo, Katsina, Kebbi, Plateau, Sokoto, and Zamfara — victims of unrelenting attacks by bandits and armed groups.

Each death is a failure of governance; each displaced family is a testimony to a government that has lost control of its primary responsibility — the safety of its people. Entire communities have fled their ancestral lands. Schools in many northern and central regions are ghostly ruins. Farmers cannot plant, traders cannot travel, and children cannot learn. What, then, is independence without safety? What is freedom when life itself is a daily gamble?

The political system, meant to reflect the will of the people, has become a theatre of deceit. Democracy, once celebrated as Nigeria’s path to stability, has become fragile and deeply flawed. Elections often bear the scent of manipulation and vote buying, leaving the electorate disillusioned. The ballot box, meant to reflect the will of the people, has become a hollow ritual — an exercise more of endurance than empowerment. Political elites recycle themselves in endless circles of privilege, while corruption continues to feed on the nation’s commonwealth. Hospitals are underfunded, universities are under strike, and roads crumble year after year as budgets vanish into private pockets. The average Nigerian has stopped expecting government to deliver; survival has become a personal project.

And yet, amid this despair, there remain flickers of light. Some economic reforms — including fuel subsidy removal and exchange rate unification — are painful but potentially corrective if properly managed. Nigeria’s GDP grew by 4.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2024, its strongest in a decade. Civil society remains defiant; journalists, activists, and youth groups continue to demand accountability. Nigerians in the diaspora excel in technology, medicine, sports, and the arts, carrying with them the brilliance that the homeland too often stifles. The resilience of ordinary Nigerians remains the only genuine asset that this nation can boast of — a stubborn, unyielding faith in tomorrow.

Still, the time for empty celebration must end. A nation that cannot feed its citizens, secure their lives, or ensure justice for the weak cannot claim progress. Independence is not about the lowering of a foreign flag; it is about the lifting of a people. We must stop mistaking ceremony for substance. Real freedom will come only when Nigeria confronts its demons — corruption, impunity, inequality, and deceit — with courage and sincerity.

So on this 65th anniversary, let us put aside the empty fanfare. Let us, instead, look in the mirror and tell ourselves the truth. We are not yet free. We have only changed our masters — from colonial to internal. But truth has its power, and nations that dare to face it can still be reborn. The hope lies not in our leaders, but in the ordinary Nigerians who continue to rise, work, build, and dream despite the odds. Until justice, integrity, and compassion define our public life, independence will remain a flag without meaning — a promise unfulfilled.