If France has again become a regional gendarme by default, it is largely for three reasons.

This expert prepared another report showing that explosion did not occur by a bomb and claimed that the report prepared by the gendarme experts was unacceptable and not scientific or trustworthy.

Nigeria is not Africa s equivalent of what China is for Asia. And post apartheid South Africa, for all its progress, has not fulfilled the expectations placed on it, and remains unlikely to become the continent s gendarme.