Rising tides

Tides of suspicion and hostility are rising against Nigerians globally. Nations like the US name and shame us, creating ripples that diminish every Nigerian. Other nationals are less willing to leave their law-enforcement organizations to deal with rackets and rogues and rascals who travel to their countries and behave as they do in Nigeria: in […]

Tides of suspicion and hostility are rising against Nigerians globally. Nations like the US name and shame us, creating ripples that diminish every Nigerian. Other nationals are less willing to leave their law-enforcement organizations to deal with rackets and rogues and rascals who travel to their countries and behave as they do in Nigeria: in contempt of the laws of the land and in any way or form that they choose. In countries like Ghana, Angola, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Italy and many others, governments respond to opinions of their publics by leaning hard on Nigerians, including those that make attempts at earning an honest living. Every once in a while, they are pressed into explaining that they are only protecting their laws, and the Nigerian government’s response is muted because it also routinely receives damning reports about the activities of Nigerians from its own officials in those countries. In many countries, there are more Nigerians in prisons than there are Nigerians earning honest living.

Other citizens do not wait for their governments to deal with Nigerians. Barely distinguishable from the Nigerians themselves, these citizens adopt a direct action policy towards Nigerians, treating them all as criminals or people who by rights deserve the worst treatment possible. Lives of Nigerians holed up in the failed state of Libya is indescribable. Gangs and criminals abuse them. Rackets run by Nigerians, Libyans and an assortment of others living-off the dream of making it into Europe fleece other Nigerians. Nigerians are quite possibly the largest unprotected group in the world today.

What pains honest Nigerians, particularly those with a working knowledge of history is the pronounced hostility of South Africans against Nigerians. There  is a bewildering naivety in the manner Nigerians wonder how Nigeria and Nigerians sank so low as to be harassed, hounded and killed by ordinary black South Africans, a people whose history of struggle against racial oppression will not be complete without the mention of the distinguished role of Nigeria. There is this strong sentiment in Nigeria that South Africans have no right to treat Nigerians the way they do, owing to history. The fact that the Nigerians that stood firm with black South Africans against Apartheid did not combine honest work with rampant involvement in drugs and other violent crimes  is lost to many people.

Nor is there sufficient appreciation of the fact that black South Africans still bear deep scars of Apartheid, shown in part by unacceptable levels of poverty and a deeply-ingrained tendency to blame  easy targets. The tide of hostility against Nigerians and other Africans  is unlikely to abate, in part because the South African state  uses xenophobic sentiments to divert attention from its limitations, and in part because the Nigerian government will do very little about it. The absence of the political will to hit South Africa where it hurts most- in its massive and lucrative investments in Nigeria- means that South Africa will only pay lip service to its commitment to protect law-abiding foreigners, especially Nigerians. Other countries in southern Africa will raise their barriers against Nigerians, but all this will do is to automatically criminalize Nigerians that will move into Zimbwabwe, Botswana and Angola in larger numbers. The tide of stigma and suspicion will swamp the genuine Nigerian entrepreneurial spirit in more parts of Africa and the world. If Nigerians cannot open up shops and businesses in west and southern Africa and conduct legitimate business, a major plank of the national economy will be severely damaged. If illegal migration and criminality among Nigerians will not yield to improved legal migration which is vital to the Nigerian economy, key parts of a globalized economy will shut Nigerians out.

The rising tide of hostility and suspicion against Nigerians in foreign lands is a major threat to the image and the economy of the nation, but the barriers Nigerians erect against each other in their country are much worse. In the last few days alone, events of great significance have shaken faith in the assumption that  we have survived certain rudimentary barriers as a  politically and culturally plural nation. In Lagos State, dozen of Nigerians from Jigawa State were rounded up with their motorcycles and detained, apparently only because they are from Jigawa State. They were photographed and paraded as suspected criminals, then released a few days later without their means of livelihood. No one is held responsible, although the political damage it has caused  is immense.

Governor of Rivers State is then embroiled in a controversy over the demolition of a mosque, and massive amounts of passion and negative energy were raised to hint at  another tendency of leaders to weaken the foundations of a country unsure of its purpose. Politicians from the north jumped in, capitalizing on widespread sentiments that the northerner is now the national fair game owing to the lack of any political cover over him. While the dust created by the arguments over what a mosque is are still choking commonsense, governors from the South East rose from a meeting affirming their objection to having Fulani on two wheels carrying AK47 or machetes in ‘their’ territories. Never mind the fact that such Fulani does not announce his presence to governors, police or communities. The point is that the governors are reinforcing the not-welcome order on Nigerians of a particular ethnic stock, without any concern over their attitudes to the law or the imperatives of co-existence. These  tides that provoke other threats are rising in a country where threats and counter-threats appear to be the only language of communication between groups and interests and local champions.

While ethnic militias from two ethnic groups that had co-habited for centuries in Benue and Taraba States continue to burn villages and kill villagers, Igbo complain that they are an endangered specie in Benue State. There are solutions to endemic Tiv/Jukun conflicts, but those who should search for it have also failed to contain banditry, kidnapping and a resurgent insurgency. Barricades go up today, and are shot down tomorrow. Governors make deals with violent criminals rampaging through unprotected villages in the North, and the bandits and kidnappers merely relocate to neighbouring states and villages to continue with guns and ammunition purchased with settlement largess.

If the nation is not so desperately fighting for its survival, the quarrel over which geo-political zone should ‘produce’ the next President in 2023 will be comical. Igbo socio-cultural groups are threatening fire if Nigerians do not cede the position to the Igbo. It is tempting  to assume that at meetings where these types of earth-shaking threats are designed, no one reminds Igbo leadership that the group is standing on very thin political grounds in demanding, rather than negotiating its interests, and its leaders rely on the risky strategy of abusing their ways into the presidency. Yoruba thinkers, if such exists, appear to think their group should keep its head down and work to get major competitions destroy each other. Northerners who still cling to the idea that any northerner is intrinsically more sympathetic to northern interest than a Nigerian from the South have apparently not understood the desperate  plight of northern communities under the presidency of President Buhari since 2015.Rising tides of insecurity, uncertainty and insecurity are threatening to drown the nation, because its leadership is incapable of rising to the challeges which  it was elected to deal with.