NewStats: 3,263,180 , 8,179,332 topics. Date: Wednesday, 04 June 2025 at 11:20 PM 686r3z

They are part of a new trend of anti-western sentiment, seeking to indigenise heroism. This new leader projects youth and vigour in his red beret, pullover and camo tros.

Above all, he exudes an African nationalism, as though he were a rebirth of the negritude movement with quite a few French thinkers, from Senghor to Diop, in its wake.

Looking at once like an athlete and a soldier, he wants to claim a hero from a past. Thomas Sankara, that is. An untested Burkinabe leader, Sankara has grabbed myth out of martyrdom.

Even then, he was a martyr of hope. That is, people dress him up as a martyr because of what many expected of him. He did not live long enough to be a hero or villain, or neither.

In Sankara’s days, the boys of Karl Marx incarnated his profile. The idealist’s song grew dark when his fellow traveler and traitor swept him aside in a stab-in-the-back coup that squelched not only him but also his dream. Even his executioner, known as Blaise Compaore, also has eventually vanished in a blaze of populist revenge.

Enter Traore. The man was nearly removed in a coup, and that set him into a fever. He has made himself a hero by default.

When he and his French colleagues in Mali, Niger and Guinea fomented coups to power, they stirred up two contradictory emotions. They fed an anti-French imperialism. But a worldwide democratic impulse was up in arms against a military return to power.

These two are resolving themselves in his favour for two reasons. One, the coup that failed to oust him but lionised him as a hero. Two, a charm offensive from Russia. Traore is taking advantage of a fear of the West. The French have looked down on their black West African for generations.

They were their colonial subjects. During that era, they imposed a system known as assimilation. It was a racist ideology that meant the French did not govern but assimilated them into French culture and way of life. It was a delusion of equality, a throwback from the failed French Revolution.

They assumed the French had a superior civilization and they planted it after using their colonial force known as the Senegalese Sharp shooters to mow down resistance from valiant kingdoms in the region.

Their assimilation system guaranteed them free access to the wealth of the region. But it implied that the people were not capable of deciding anything for themselves.They treated them like children. Paris dictated every part of their life.

Algeria resisted this in the days of De Gaulle. Guinean leader Sekou Toure, in the Loi cadre episode, also asserted Guinean independence.
The average French has resented this post-colonial slavery but had done nothing about it. A set of soldiers, with no idea how to govern but how to hold on to power, saw their chance.

They plotted a coup, and have used French tyranny as an alibi. It is a cynical view of power. It is them versus us. But they are heroes without spine. Rather than stand as African nationalist, they are switching one master for another.

The Russians have seen their opportunity. They have swathed the social media with pictures, videos and narratives that brandish Traore as a hero. For them, the man lives in a humble home, whereas it is fiction. He turned down IMF loans, whereas it is false. That he turned down American offer of visit, another lie. Traore is making his myth on the go.

They have turned the opportunist into who he is not. The Russians, on the other hand, have been doing deals and posting their outfit known as Wagner Group to provide army, materiel, and propaganda.

The Russians are building schools, hospitals, etc as tokens of empathy. More like tokens of contempt. Immediately, after the failed coup, Traore signed a sweetheart deal for gold mining.

This is the making of an exploiter, in the mould of cynics we saw during the Cold War when the Soviet Union and the United States carved spheres of influence in Africa. History has also told us that leaders tend to look to the past as a refuge.

They hide in the shadows of men of quality. In Nigeria we have had small men who wanted to be like the big men. For instance we have had little Awolowos, little Ojukwus. In the United States, Ronald Reagan birthed Lilliputians known as Reagan Republicans. Reagan Democrats, the most unlikely, emerged as well.

Napoleon lit up young ions all over Europe that Ralph Waldo Emerson described as Little Napoleons. Napoleon III arose and saw himself as Napoleon reborn. The novelist Victor Hugo wrote a pamphlet that put him in trouble. He mocked the fellow in the piece Napoleon, The Little.

It was a writing that turned into a mathematical formula in showing how a people can be sold any lie. Hugo asserted that in trying to distort the truth about the stature of Napoleon The Little, two plus two equals five.

It was an idea that other writers took up to poohpooh how leaders turn realities upside down, including Dostoyevsky, Samuel Johnson, and of course George Orwell in his famous Nineteen Eighty Four. In his short novel of ideas, Notes From The Underground by Dostoyevsky, “Two plus two is no longer life but the beginning of death.”

It is indeed a battle to the death from a man like Traore, who must secure his position by subterfuge, by living in the disguise of a hero. What they are exploiting is, as Ebenezer Obadare demonstrates in a recent piece for The Council of Foreign Relations, a cult of personality.

They are exploiting the hunger for a hero who would transform their lives. That yearning for a hero makes them easy preys to adventurers in power. They are not only exploiting Russia. They are turning their fellow African leaders who run democracies as foes of their good fortune.

Yet, for us, the danger signal is that the radicals among us who bow to his phony profile are not different from those who had a vigil at the Defence Headquarters over a year ago asking for military rule.

They are not different from the underage kids in the North who never witnessed an army rule but asked soldiers to return. It is the bastardisation of the heroic concept.

Hence in his play Galileo, Bertolt Brecht said: “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.” Need is the operative one. It implies mass surrender to fate. Such surrenders yield phonies with combat pullovers, red berets and sweetheart deals with Putin.

https://thenationonlineng.net/phony-traore/

See as one deadbeat zombified asslicker is trying in futility to demonize a hero and a country. Meanwhile, he is a er of the most despicable man to ever rule a nation in the same Africa.

Burkina Faso people are happy with their president and there is nothing you can do about it. It is not easy to eat ewa, cassava, garri and think straight o.

Isn't this the old f0⁰l who wrote a damning article about Peter Obi to discredit him?

Such a shame that an old man has sold his integrity for peanuts. Highly unfortunate. So sad.

It's even more unfortunate that unfortunate APC ers are whining and crying over Traore, while their own backyard is on fire. Lol. Such a very big shame. Absolutely pathetic.

In recent days, APC has sponsored daft think pieces against every other person but they've failed to introspect and it that they are a bunch of empty failures.

Imagine the temerity of APC to poke their long noses into Traore but they choose to turn a blind eye to the rot, corruption and terrorism that's eating Nigeria.

I feel so ashamed for APC ers. It's sad. May they heal, and may their brains be restored.

Under APC, the labor of our heroes past have gone in vain. Sighs.

Nigga is 1000 times better than the so called democratically selected fraud in Aso rock 😅
Make una rest! If he continues in this pace at which he is developing Burkina Faso, excess joy is sure for his citizens!

A females Nigerian living there recently came online to testify that there is constant and Uninterrupted power supply for almost 30 days in the that country!

Has Nigeria as a whole or any state in Nigeria ever boasted of 7 days Uninterrupted power supply ever?

At least he has something positive to be tagged with.

Please what good realistic visible thing has been tagged with Tinubu of the so called giant of Africa?

Traore a true Hero

Racoon:
See as one deadbeat zombified asslicker is trying in futility to demonize a hero and a country. Meanwhile, he is a er of the most despicable man to ever rule a nation in the same Africa.

Burkina Faso people are happy with their president and there is nothing you can do about it. It is not easy to eat ewa, cassava, garri and think straight o.

choi

What is this ediot saying?

Ain't no fan of Traore, but his singular act of cutting ties with the French would liberate his people from decades of second-level colonialism the French have been subtly doing in Francophone countries.

Despite independence, the French still have control over these countries and have been f*cking them doggy and missionary without any form of restriction.

Please visit, Dakar, Bamako, Ouagadougou and other capitals of all these French colonies, you'll see the damage that the French did them. Apart from poverty, the level of backwardness the majority of these people exhibit is mind-blowing.

The photos below were taken in the capital of Senegal, Dakar in 2025!

Let them manage their affairs and resources abeg!

This one na lapite's new mandate after traveling to

Sam should find new job

He is suffering mentally
What is thenation’s newspapers problem with traore.

What’s happening in benue alone is enough news for the decade.

Let me check something, Which country is currently enjoying good leadership?
Likes for Nigeria Tinubu
Share for Burkinafaso Traore

Many are mad, few are roaming.

Abeg face your country and leave others alone.

E dey pain dem.

During the slave trade era, these were the kind of people that were catching their fellow black man for the slavers. The irony is that after everything, they still catch them and throw inside the slave ship.

This article is spineless. The people are not complaining but a foreigner is crying catarrh over another nation's problem.

We have our own issues and they won't go away in the next 15 years. But there's a very realistic possibility that Burkina Faso will overtake Nigeria in the next 15 years. The reason is simple:

I'd rather have a ruler who's hungry for glory than another who's desperate for power.

History is full of appropriate examples

You are minding him He forgot that good leadership is not rocket science. Infact his principal is a terrible president

Racoon:
See as one deadbeat zombified asslicker is trying in futility to demonize a hero and a country. Meanwhile, he is a er of the most despicable man to ever rule a nation in the same Africa.

Burkina Faso people are happy with their president and there is nothing you can do about it. It is not easy to eat ewa, cassava, garri and think straight o.

Indeed, searching for a hero.

I won't say more. Apparently in the eyes of some people, heroes are too important

All these bitter and envious zombified creatures, is it that they are so high on highness that their attacks on one person isn't enough for them....which makes them wanna expand their tentacles of hate and disgust to progressive people?.....

Once they see someone loved by many ; someone that exudes so much of a positive vibe, their third leg tends to stand like something that has detected a landmine!!.....

If Nelson Mandela of blessed memory were to still be alive, believe me, these so called descendants of Gollum would have still want to talk trash just to vilify him....

Ok

Traore is a propaganda president

Racoon:
See as one deadbeat zombified asslicker is trying in futility to demonize a hero and a country. Meanwhile, he is a er of the most despicable man to ever rule a nation in the same Africa.

Burkina Faso people are happy with their president and there is nothing you can do about it. It is not easy to eat ewa, cassava, garri and think straight o.

Yap,.after the reggae always comes the blues

A

jiz:
You are minding him He forgot that good leadership is not rocket science. Infact his principal is a terrible president

Well replacing a hero in civillan uniform always gives a hero in army uniform.

But heroes are the stuff of legends

Tinubu and traore are alike. We just haven't known by how much yet.

Sadly this article was written by someone who essentially sings the praises of tinubu so message missed

All I know is, if traore was on the seat here,many nairalanders including op would be willingly volunteering their services to fight the great patriotic war against the Sambisans.

At the end, we can say that snakes and rats are equally vermin.

Lobola
Another tinuboo anti traore campaign yoruba and apc influencers have been focusing on traore for the last few weeks. Sensible Nigerians know Nigeria is currently under a dictator. The president's son kidnaps at will. And dss and efcc are used like Hitler secret police in this istration.
A military government has squandered 400b in rivers state in less than a year. And you want to paint traore black. Is Nigeria better at anything. Ordinary light you don't have

Hahahaha this agbadorian sympathizer and er ..what does he know about hero ...his master has drug and criminal cases hanging around him for decades and his government has out the poor masses in agony as they can not even afford agbado..traore is a hero

Racoon:


https://thenationonlineng.net/phony-traore/

why do you just mind your business and celebrate your failure here in Nigeria.

Traore is a big scam. only obidients are singing his praise