How to build a fake Nigerian

During my service year in the East, one of my fellow corps members, Ade, returned from the market with a ponderous expression. We asked what the problem was and he told us he had seen the most shocking thing ever.   While strolling through Ariaria Market, he said, he had seen a man walking with rather […]

During my service year in the East, one of my fellow corps members, Ade, returned from the market with a ponderous expression. We asked what the problem was and he told us he had seen the most shocking thing ever.  

While strolling through Ariaria Market, he said, he had seen a man walking with rather awkward movements which he stood up to demonstrate—a twitchy, jerky uncoordinated shuffling of body and limbs, like a broken machine. When he asked what was wrong with the man, he was told the man was perfectly fine, he was just made in Aba. 

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We hissed. And then the laughter began. Ade smiled, impressed by the joke he had just told.   

Years later, I find myself pondering that joke in light of recent developments in Nigeria. You see, Ade was not being derisive at all. He was genuinely impressed by the inventiveness of the Aba craftsmen who, with limited resources, fabricate hugely notable products. What often lets them down is the finishing, and the overall quality, and the tacky cheap “Made in Italy” badges they stick on their products. (What is wrong with taking pride in your own work?) Ade was so enthralled that he argued that the artisans of Aba could fabricate a human being.  

I don’t know if they can, yet, but it would seem Nigerians are being fabricated elsewhere. The process appears not to be complicated. Since we have not yet acquired the technical competence and resources to build some Nigerians in the lab or an Ariaria Market workshop, we could just steal into another country, see people walking on the street and just stamp them with NIN numbers and voila! make them Nigerians. Magic. Or charlatanism. 

Last week, the director of the Defence Media Operations, Major General Musa Danmadami, announced the arrest of a couple of “fake NIMC” officials, who somehow acquired the assets of the National Identity Management Commission, travelled north across the border to the Republic of Niger and proceeded to register some non-Nigerians as Nigerians.  

I know Nigerians have been quite prolific in reproducing and the World Population Review projects that by 2036, Nigeria’s population will hit the 300 million mark. Going by Danmadami’s revelations, it would appear not all these Nigerians will be born. Some of them will be manufactured in neighbouring countries. 

The implication of such a breach in our data management system and the inclusion of people who do not qualify to be citizens have consequences for the country, not least in terms of security. 

When Boko Haram started its insurgency, a big deal was made about how the perpetrators did not “look like Nigerians” and “spoke foreign languages” as if Nigerians are incapable of the savagery we have been witnessing since then. The same thing happened with the “killer herdsmen” phenomenon and even Fulani groups stretched their imaginations to come up with claims that the attackers, who were clearly Fulani, were of the foreign variants. The same narrative was peddled when kidnapping for ransom became ubiquitous until the kidnappers’ Nigerianness could no longer be repudiated. 

In March, when terrorists shot up the Kaduna-Abuja train, killed and abducted dozens of victims, Fatima Shuaibu, an eye witness, speaking to Channels TV on her hospital bed insisted the attackers were “not Nigerians at all.” They looked like “Nigeriens or Chadians” she said and they spoke a foreign language. It was possible that in the heat of the attack, she was completely befuddled by the events playing out before her and the actors involved. She appeared to be the only one with that opinion though as another eyewitness confirmed that the attackers spoke Hausa and the Fulani dialect common in Nigeria. Events since then have proven that to be the case. 

What we are seeing here is in effect a double conflation. The faking of Nigerians and the faking of non-Nigerianness. It depends on what narrative is being served. In both instances, the trend is dangerous and should not be happening. Nigeria’s porous border is so leaky that even President Muhammadu Buhari proclaimed that only God can secure it. 

The arrest of these two fake officials faking Nigerians raises a handful of questions. Ostensibly, they had gone to register Nigerians in a refugee camp in Niger. Danmadami did not tell us if these fake officials were misled to register non-Nigerians as Nigerians and if it was deliberate, to what ends? Why go through the effort to steal a NIMC computer, generator, printer and scanner, and travel all the way to the Niger Republic to fabricate Nigerians?  

For the elections? Perhaps. Or maybe not. Voter registration has since closed. An impending security breach then? Danmadami did not reveal any of their motives. It is quite possible that, as is the nature of such things, nothing else might be heard about this case. And that should not be the case. 

The complicity of government officials in manipulating situations to create fakes is rather rampant and is not limited to fabricating Nigerians. It has also not been without consequences. 

In 2009, security operatives faked reports of the killing of Abubakar Shekau, only for the man to resurface later riding a beast of terror we are still battling today. Reports of his death will be fabricated a few more times over the years until his suicide in May 2021.  

We also faked the “technical defeat” of Boko Haram in 2015, yet our lives are still dictated by the terrorists’ mood swings. Only last week, Nigeria was embarrassed when the US Embassy issued a credible security warning about an impending attack in Abuja, forcing the Nigerian government to scramble to address a situation they would otherwise have never acknowledged in the first place. 

Following my column last week on the floods, I received feedback on the sorry state of the victims and how public officials manipulate the situation and create fake flood victims. 

In one state, I gathered, some government officials conscript a handful of indigent women and men, and sometimes charlatans too, have them posed before a handful of Ghana-must-go sacks containing measures of rice, gari, a few packets of instant noodles, some cheap textile and blanket for photos. These photos will appear in the papers or the website of NEMA, claiming to be distributing relief material to victims. Next year, the same “professional victims” are invited for a repeat performance. 

First, those bags being handed out do not justify the billions these agencies claim to have spent in caring for victims but that is the narrative being faked. 

The depravity that permits the faking of victims, when the real victims languish, is one of the reasons that some officials would rather these avoidable tragedies happen—to justify the funds they would loot—than actually work towards avoiding the disaster in the first place. 

We have perfected the art of faking everything. Once in Jos, a member of the House of Representatives cobbled together a shabby borehole to alleviate the water shortage in his constituency. For months the contraption stood like a witness to a Zombie apocalypse until the “Honourable” was seeking re-election and decided a commissioning ceremony was in order and the construct was repainted.  

On commissioning day, a faucet was fixed and when the tape was cut and ‘Honourable’ turned the faucet, a few drops of water trickled out like a dying man’s piss. The shock! Even more shocking was when in his speech, ‘Honourable’ implored members of the community to contribute money and buy a generator to power the borehole. Even more shocking still was that the moment the paid journalists and photographers had packed up their cameras, the ‘assistant honourables’ removed the faucet to use to commission the next borehole in his constituency. 

In this country, we fake everything. From fake Nigerians to fake victims and fake “officials.” Fake soldiers and fake police officers are just as common as fake made-in-Italy shoes. Fake “Nigerian princes” have given the country a bad rep with email scams. We fake entire schools or hospitals built and commissioned on newspaper pages. We are faking our way into troubles that are anything but fake. The suffering and the deaths, and the tragedy that Nigeria has become, the victims of it all are real Nigerians losing real lives. That, unfortunately, is something that cannot be faked.