Thought Picnic: Identity Formed by Timing

Returning After War

Way back in my late teens, I had a friend, or someone I thought was a friend. We were agemates, and something interesting and significant caught my attention. It seemed that those who returned from the UK at the end of the Nigerian Civil War integrated better, taking up the growing opportunities in a recovering country, than those who did so almost a decade later.

Between those who returned well under the age of ten and those in their early teens, there was a generational difference in adaptation, a sense of being caught adrift. Staying in the UK for longer proved less beneficial to their sense of belonging or identity; though they had better English accents, they were unsettled, and sometimes having a less prosperous time of it.

A Shared Beginning

For some context, the people I write about and I were all born in the UK in the 1960s. I returned to Nigeria well under the age of ten, having barely been exposed to inner city mechanics and situations; they returned in their teens, late in the 1970s. What separated us, then, was not origin but timing. We were cut from the same cloth, yet a few years of divergence would shape us differently.

My observations are, of course, anecdotal rather than academic. Even so, I think the age-of-return hypothesis is significant, and I have alluded to it in other blogs. It is the quiet variable running beneath everything I am about to describe.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

What They Brought

What they brought into the fray was a sense of fun. They were the best chess players and had figured out how to solve the Rubik's cube, though they were not better Scrabble players. The Nigerian educational system was a challenge, amongst the other things that left them yearning to return to the UK, if only they had the opportunity.

They were a restless lot, and of the many, there were two who, on reflection, had been exposed to the race and deprivation politics and the discrimination of the 1970s into the 1980s. They carried the scars of inner-city influences, influences that would not have engendered the most positive sense of self and status, even in Nigeria.

They were suspicious before they were trusting, questioning more than listening, ready to respond with violence on a dare without first putting things in perspective. That people envied their exposure, without understanding how they were the personification of a social construct beyond their control, one that amounted to a material deficit, could make for an interesting study.

An Identity Formed at Home

Here is where the timing mattered most. My blackness was always simply part of me, and that was settled in Nigeria, quietly and without apology, long before it was ever questioned. I grew up where blackness needed no explanation and carried no burden; it was simply the ground I stood on. There was nothing to defend, because nothing had been challenged.

So, when I returned to the UK, and the racist abuse came, as it did, it met an identity that was already whole. The abuse did not shape how I saw myself; it had arrived too late for that. I could regard it as a reflection of the abuser rather than a depiction of myself, precisely because the depiction had been drawn elsewhere, at home, on my own terms.

The teenage returnees, I suspect, had that sequence reversed. Their sense of racial self was worked out amid the hostility, not before it, and so the hostility got inside, where mine never could.

A Sudden Slap

This friend of mine gave me a stinging slap after a dare, a playful situation that suddenly turned strange. It taught me a few things. I would not rise to a dare that I had no intention of acting on in the first place. I do not care if I am called a chicken; they are the hardiest and most abused of animals, and they probably possess the greatest survival instinct and resilience in the animal kingdom.

As a consequence, I have no fear of missing out. I am usually told that I do not know what I am missing, to which I would respond that I cannot miss what I do not know. A slap is a momentary event with no follow-on; the embarrassment quickly fades into irrelevance. My temperament is not conditioned for violence. I am comfortable letting things slide, because what defines me is character, not machismo. Class is always understated, never dramatic.

On Character and Circumstance

I think environments and societal settings can influence character as much as mould it, though to varying extents. I cannot speak to the sociological truth of that. Yet I am left wondering whether my own equanimity was truly character, or simply the good fortune of a gentler formative environment, a self settled before it was ever tested.

Perhaps that is the paradox worth sitting with. The returnees had the richer exposure by one measure, the metropolitan UK, the accents, the chess and the Rubik's cube, yet the more unsettled outcome by another. I had the lesser exposure, yet the steadier sense of who I was. Sometimes, it seems, less can be more.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

The Boy Born Abroad

An Unexpected Journey

When I was asked if I wanted to go to Nigeria about 55 years ago, no one intimated to me that it was a permanent move. I thought we were going on holiday. I suppose I was not that perceptive, even with my known precocity, to notice the excitement in my parents' urgings, nor the significance of that final night in England when all their friends gathered for a send-off.

The place to which my parents belonged, and which they called home, eager to return, having watched the Nigerian Civil War for years until it ended, was foreign, different, and strange. But I had no choice in the matter. They were my guardians; I was their ward. The common idea was that, as a child, I would adapt, adjust, and adhere.

A Different Reality

No sooner had we landed than the first thing I noticed was that there were more of us and fewer of them. Nigeria hits you with a kind of alternative reality. I could only wonder whether having other siblings in England might have altered the idea of taking us back before my parents had settled down. Things would most definitely have been easier than being an only child.

In the approximately two decades that I lived in Nigeria, I had assimilated to an extent, yet I was very much an alien. Even though my accent had been affected, it had not radically changed to the extent that I could not be differentiated as having some foreign influence.

Besides, something daily reminded me of being other than among. From address to observation, a middle-class bubble placed me in a kind of elite and a place of privilege. Those of us born abroad seemed to have a built-in ET beacon calling home: abroad.

Then again, we all seemed to have endured Nigeria for as long as parental or guardian influence could keep us, before we mostly took flight as soon as we completed tertiary education. Something could be written about the exodus of kids born abroad in the 1960s, once they could.

A Turning Point

I even had a kind of fantasy. I was involved in some interesting projects where I, unusually, dictated my own terms, a daring born out of earlier precociousness that had matured into a fearless tendency to assert when, typically, others might deflect and genuflect.

I walked into a visa office with enough documentation that the conversation left the idea of granting the visa for exchanging anecdotes about other applicants who might have given the consular officer a second career full of material to be a successful stand-up comedian.

He was even urging me to apply for a British passport, but the lead time from lodging an application to getting an interview was 18 months. I just did not have the time when I was travelling the next week to get kit for a company in which I owned 30% equity.

However, after a fortnight in England, during which Maggie Thatcher was turfed out of Downing Street, it took me just four weeks to decide I had had enough of Nigeria. This was exacerbated by my partner in the firm. My original idea of visiting England at will had given way to leaving Nigeria for new opportunities, and that was executed with precision.

Roots and Reflections

As I write this blog post, I would have been flying into London Heathrow on a delayed flight from Lagos 35 years ago today. I have never returned, even as I cherished the quality of heritage and stories Nigeria gave me. I was always that boy born abroad in a white man's land.

That anyone still holds the prospect of a jaunt to the fatherland or motherland is interesting to the point of amusement.

I never had the emotional, nostalgic luxury of a dreamy reconnection with my roots, as my roots were never there, even as my ancestry is grounded there. The funny thing is, I still have my last boarding card from my departure from Nigeria. It was a different time.

My boarding pass from 1990

Nigeria, some hail thee

Nigeria, off my mind

On the first of October, Nigeria celebrated its 65th year of independence; however, in my mind, I let the day slip away with a sense of the uneventful.

As the thought crossed my mind, I realised that, despite the heritage, childhood experiences, memories, and influences, these are all vital parts of my being, though my affinity for Nigeria has diminished to the phrase, ‘my parents are Nigerian’.

Thirty-five years after I left Nigeria for the final time, I have no desire to visit or revisit any part of the seemingly privileged, idyllic childhood I once experienced there.

Even so, I am as estranged as anyone can be from any of the relations and relationships that once contributed to what might be called a sense of identity. It was a place; it was never home.

Relating to Nigeria

The independence days of yore, when Nigeria was still a young nation, were celebrated under a series of murderous military juntas, whose many names and roles I still recall. How we endured the sweltering heat on parade grounds, ready to march before military governors taking the salute on a dais.

One cannot forget how the Nigerian anthem of that era, written in 1959 but replaced by socialist-themed lyrics in 1978, remained etched in the mind as more representative of Nigeria’s story, until it was readopted in 2024. Although I have not personally sung it again, it felt like a Nigeria I could relate to.

Belonging elsewhere

My sense of belonging today is to the land of my birth and a land of my dreams, along with a land of desire from where I found a love beyond compare, England, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

Nigeria is a place I view from 10,000 metres when travelling at a land speed of 960 kilometres per hour. The moving map on the aeroplane shows cities as we traverse from the middle of the north through to the southeast into Cameroon.

As I get less encumbered by detachment, I appreciate Nigeria’s contribution without acceding to any concept of being possessed by it. It was a place I was taken to, a place where I never truly belonged.

Travelling light

A state of insignificance

Here we are, over 10 kilometres high in the air, with 5 hours and 40 minutes remaining until landing. The clouds over North Africa look well below our aircraft, and you can see the shadows cast by each cloud formation, whose names I quite easily forget.

However, as recognisable names appear on my flight map, we have begun the cruise over the Northern Nigeria states, including Katsina, Kano, Jigawa, and the many hamlets that have become states for clannish gubernatorial contests.

Before you scoff, Agadez, a province in Niger, is nine times the size of Niger State, the largest state in Nigeria, which is about one twentieth the size of Algeria's Tamanrasset Province, the largest in Africa.

Many lessons aboard

I expected a bit of turbulence as we passed through these high-altitude clouds, but they soon fell behind us. The mystery of air travel is not one of bafflement but great interest.

I rarely watch films; I am more engaged by the stories, the history, the geography, and the culture of the places we fly over. There is much to learn, even on my tenth trip to South Africa.

If you have been flying since the age of five, you realise that no matter how far you are travelling, this case being 9,800 kilometres from Amsterdam to Cape Town, the world has become a smaller place.

What you need is time; the time to travel around it, at least once, and experience what makes our world a wonderful place.

The identity complex of community collateral

At cultural crossroads

Much as I try to convince myself that I fully integrated with the norms and mores of the major cultural influences in my upbringing, I am ever so rudely brought to the realisation that I am very much distant and sometimes barely belong and understand certain situations.

What is becoming quite evident is the Western influences are both dominant and defining, the Nigerian and Yoruba influences whilst giving me the benefit of experience and appreciation, my worldview only inculcates snippets rather than full concepts.

Decades ago, when my father said, “You have always thought like a Westerner.” Whilst not taking offence, I felt my quest to adapt and integrate with the culture and norms of my parents’ roots was being discounted. My years of being toughened in secondary boarding school in southwestern Nigeria were more a reinforcement of my difference than sameness.

Accented differences accentuated

Some afterwards, my brother would say, in jest and yet with more than a scintilla of truth that, “You are not one of us.” I guess even where I have challenged that presumption, I might well be in denial. My mongrel accent of various influences leaves me speaking in Nigeria as if I have an English accent and, in the UK, I have West Midlands and Estuary pretensions and pronunciation with enunciation deliberate but not received. I don’t desire a posh accent.

It is my accent that immediately set me apart in the 19 years I lived in Nigeria, and from the time we landed in Nigeria, there were people who saw me as a foreigner of sorts to the day I left. There may be instances where I try to so hard and relent when I understand that I am indeed different and I should embrace that fact.

An individual at divides

Today, I was given another perspective to contextualise my reaction to a conversation where I thought the discussion had deviated from the issue to the collateral. To a person steeped in Western individuality, the issue revolves around the individual and that is where the focus should be. At least, that is where I would naturally gravitate.

My sister however suggested another perspective, in the communitarian construct of African identity, the individual exists in a community and the issue affecting the individual has impactful collateral that the community is burdened with for which the community sees incumbent to ingratiate, intrude, and intervene to address and ameliorate for themselves, the individual and the instigating issue.

The enlightenment is I probably have been too individualistic in the things that pertain to me, my engagement in the broader community has been on my own terms alone with little consideration of who is in that community or how what happens to me affects that community. To that community, I can be radical, a maverick and a possible outcast. Unfortunately, for the said community, just by my Western outlook I have sworn no allegiance even if it is implicitly demanded of me.

A renewed acceptance

It is unlikely that my perspective will change, but I need to give the periphery some thought. Already, I find myself reviewing some of my viewpoints before publication because of these allegiances, weak as they might seem. In the quest for a better understanding of my sense of identity, rather than battle with the differences and drown in the confluence of the conflicting influences, I will just accept I am an Englishman in the main, with an inept understanding of traditions and culture of my forebears.

I am a study of the Third Culture Kid that will be found in disagreement with an ancestral community and in agreement with that in which I was born, for the good and for life. There are many like me who still face these issues, I am just surprised that at close to 60, the question of identity is still a work in progress.

Thought Picnic: Beyond conscientious objection to fighting needless wars

The summary of my views

I was asked what my position was about the Russia and Ukraine crisis by a mentor of mine, and it allowed me to find the opportunity to transcribe from the notes I took down in anger on Friday night but was unsure of how to convey in a blog.

My answer was “We need to get to a point in human civilisation when young men can refuse to battle for recalcitrant old men who cannot settle their scores with some maturity. I hope Ukraine survives the onslaught.”

Before my viewpoint was taken as uncommitted to apparent indifference, I went on to say, “In fact, my stand is it is an unnecessary war for which Vladimir Putin who has a warped idea of national sovereignty and areas of influence should be taught an unforgettable lesson.” Obviously, it goes without saying that, If Ukraine has no self-determination on what alliances it can have, is it a sovereign state or a satellite of Russia?”

Between sacrifice and slaughter

Having spent 4 years in secondary boarding school, the prospect of a regimented life has never since appealed to me. There is indeed a high calling to serve and the discipline that it entails along with the purpose that defines it, but where do you draw the line between being ready to take the sacrifice and being sent to the slaughter?

In January 1983, in a conversation with my father, he said these words, “There was a time Nigeria was worth dying for, that time has passed.” It so happens my parents were in the UK during the Nigerian Civil War and once it was over, they could not wait to get back to Nigeria to contribute to rebuilding the nation.

To my mind, all war is at its heart totally unreasonable, the inability of leaders and / or older and apparently mature men to have a meeting of minds that they are ready to send the sons of others to battlefields whilst they play war games in genteel surroundings totally oblivious of the depth of suffering on the populace is an atrocity at best.

Keeping our men from bad men

The result of this is we are called upon to honour the war dead as some greater cause of humanity has been achieved and unstoppable progress has been bequeathed to civilisation never to go to war again. It is a lie, for lives are needlessly wasted as cannon fodder with war ending at exhaustion of will, men, or ammunition. We are in terms the most uncivilised in war, like animals you have only found more sophisticated ways to kill each other to a standstill.

I would hope we would reach a point where the men who disagree should sort it amongst themselves and the young men whose blood, they are ready to exsanguinate in the remote battlefields, should say no. This is not conscientious objection but a call to common sense or order, exhaust diplomacy and continue to talk to any agreement that you can reach without having to shed blood.

Beyond conscientious objection

For I desire a time when they, the valiant and strong would say, no, we are not going to fight your dirty, senseless, needless, and unnecessary wars. Our lives matter more than to become sacrificial lambs on the altars of your maniacal devilish egos.

Keep your medals, we do not need the glory, stuff your patriotic rhetoric, your folded national flags, and grand memorials to soldiers unknown. With no men going to war, what would men do given no other option than to talk and resolve things?

Too many men have with the power to send others to their deaths not exhausted the possibilities that the maturation of human civilisation and discourse can offer. Maybe something of the idealist and pacifist in me has taken a long trek from realism, it is however not to be wished away as impossible.

It is 31 years of japa

We left and never wept

When I think of it, at this time 31 years ago, I had just arrived in the UK on a flight from Lagos which was the last time I was in Nigeria. I have since then not found any inclination or urge to return either for sentimental or other reasons, it feels like o broke free from a system and a situation and that was the end of the matter.

Even as I write, too much of what I read and hear of Nigeria is not just scary, but terrifying. If not the abuse of power by the rich and powerful, it is the menace of agents beyond the control of the state terrorising the regions that the state in attempting to arrest the situation almost always descends into atrocity and criminality.

Our hopes for something

Then again, I commend the many, especially among the youth that has been able to make Nigeria work for them after a fashion, their tenacity and resilience cannot be poohpoohed, they have shown that regardless of the circumstances, there is ability and possibility even as things could be better to expand opportunity for broader ascendancy in the citizenry.

Nigeria for me is just a place to observe and assess, my involvement and engagement is necessitated by relationships in the familial and the fraternal, beyond that, my energies and prospects are being directed to other places. Over time, I have increasingly doubted any anticipation of my return, even for the particular. We are done. Yet, my dream for Nigeria remains one for peace and prosperity for the majority marshalled by those who have a good clue of what they are doing. That alone is the welfare for everyone anywhere with a Nigerian connection.

Blog - From a Nigeria 30 years ago

Japa – Urban dictionary

That boarding pass of the 30th of December, 1990.

Nigeria: The exodus of 'I have only one life' Nigerians

Our early privilege

Around the time we left secondary school, we were children of middle-class and upwardly mobile parents who were at or approaching the pinnacle of their careers. Many of them, our parents were educated abroad where they had us, children, typically in their mid-20s.

At that time, there was no particular desire amongst us to leave Nigeria, tertiary education was of the standard that was quite competitive and engaging. That we had NYSC (National Youth Service Corps) teachers who had studied abroad did not necessarily make us yearn for an exit, Nigerian seemed to present opportunity and prospect, some of our colleagues spent the summer holidays abroad and still returned to finish their school.

The dream that died

Somehow, has the democracy of the second republic transitioned into military rule, that apparent Nigerian dream was becoming a nightmare. Obviously, the connections we had through the networks of our parents gave us access, be it nepotism or favoritism, a helping hand, and good word here or there, hurdles were smoothed away, but the incumbency of the middle-classes was beginning to shift for even more egregious corruption.

At a point, not even merit coupled with any level of preferential treatment to get you anywhere in Nigeria, the system was gummed up by bureaucracy, corruption, and rent-seekers. In the space of a decade, our accents and apparent privilege got us nowhere. Nigeria was no more working for us and there began the exodus, the exit to where at least we believed more than when our parents were abroad that we could not only thrive, but a semblance of meritocracy gave us a fighting chance.

The first mass exodus

Some of us armed with first degrees or just citizenship by birth knew that the promised land that our parents returned to was not the promised land where we could with grit, talent, and daring begin to live our best lives. Besides, the strictures of tradition, culture and control that stifled our freedom of expression in Nigeria was to be broken out of when we escaped.

From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, we left Nigeria disillusioned young people to begin new lives abroad just as the government was running a losing battle about losing us to a world that appeared to need us, or so we believed. I would suppose many of us who were born abroad in the 1960s and the 1970s left Nigeria and probably never returned.

The new brain drain

There is a new exodus in play, just as the one we can remember that those in government today were the same faces that could not convince us of the Nigerian dream then. They might not be like those of us of the other exodus, but I would suggest they are the “I have only one life” cohort. They have decided that in the scheme of things the possibility of a different Nigeria is probably remote or impossible and they need to act to provide opportunity and dreams for themselves and their children.

Many of them are highly qualified Nigerians in a Nigeria that is not working for them as they realise there is a global talent market yearning for them and the diversity in expertise they can bring to environments that allows for competition and is rarely gamed by overreach or the abuse of power, where the rule of law, at least in the letter of it appears to be respected and the powerful or influential cannot mess you up on the whim of megalomania.

It still works for some

You still have to give it to those who still believe in the Nigerian dream and seem to thrive in Nigeria despite the lack of ease of doing business, a rotten and intemperate regulatory system that thwarts rather than encourages initiative and innovation, corruption, crumbling infrastructure and the security challenges.

Many Nigerians are thinking, I have only one life and I doubt I want to waste the best part of my productive years daydreaming about a different Nigeria when there could be any other place where my achievements and abilities can find the scope to thrive. For some, even from Nigeria, the world has been their oyster, but for others, they have jumped at the opportunity to emigrate with the feeling that when pit against obstacles abroad they have a more probable chance of coming out on top than struggling in Nigeria.

Use the opportunities that come

This is not to celebrate the exodus from Nigeria of talent and brains, but I left Nigeria over 30 years ago and I know what that had given me in life and experience. It might well be that on balance Nigeria does not deserve many of its youth because the system gives little credence to what they have to contribute.

The world however needs amazing brains and Nigerians constitute a pool of talent the world cannot do without. Maybe after making it abroad, some might return to be honoured at home.

You have one life, take it to the world and make history, that is my treatise to every young Nigerian.

My second census

Counted as one of us

Two weekends ago, I filled in the census forms online even though today, the 21^st of March 2021 is Census Day in England. I did not expect my circumstances or living arrangements to change between then and now.

The UK census is taken every 10 years from 1801 with the year ending in a 1, there was one census in April 1966, I am not too sure if we participated in it. The next census, where I was indeed counted, was in Jos, Nigeria, in 1973, the enumerator arrived at our house and was in a meeting with my parents for about an hour before we all had a finger inked to indicate we had been counted.

In April 1991, my living arrangements were quite fluid that I eventually did not get counted at all. The 2001 & 2011 censuses had me out in The Netherlands where for privacy reasons direct censuses are not conducted at except for from data gleaned from other sources, so, the first census in which I have been counted in the majority would be this one, and I am 55.

Who and what we are

The range of questions I had to answer covered status, occupation, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Whilst I would normally fall under the grouping of Black British, I do prefer to identify as Black English. I found that there was a determination to peg me down to my particular ethnic ancestry and so, I have to volunteer that my parents are Nigerian.

For the first time, we were asked what our sexual orientation was and evidently, I am Gay and for now single in the UK until I get married to Brian soon. My gender identity is male, though the need for that question indicates the change times and norms as to how we identify.

More and more, many of our civic responsibilities are performed online and we are open to sanction or fines if we do not participate in the census with a possible £1,000 fine, much as well if we do not register to vote. What appears to be voluntary is not necessarily so and because of a 100-year rule, the public will not have access to the results of this census until the year 2122.

From a Nigeria 30 years ago

The outlay

I really thought I will not write a blog today, but Brian said, I could do it and it will be an auspicious thing because it commemorates the day I have not forgotten.

It was a Sunday, the 30^th of December 1990 that I took a delayed flight with Nigeria Airways from Lagos to London and that was my departure from Nigeria. Things moved quite quickly in the space of 7 or so weeks.

I was a partner in a desktop publishing firm we called NextStep Limited when we decided on updating our equipment by making a trip to the United Kingdom. The activity would have been performed by a former business partner of the principal, but at the last minute, I was added to the trip, somewhat to protect our interests.

The situation

On the 18^th of November, I had arrived in England for a business trip that was to last a week, however, that stretched to two weeks because some of the kit we had acquired was to be delivered later than our previously scheduled stay. That night, Chris Eubank beat Nigel Benn in a boxing match.

That former business partner once worked for Nigeria Airways and knew his way around, all the VAT returns for our purchases of over £4,000 went into his UK account. Laden with our kit, I returned to Nigeria on the 2^nd of December, by which time John Major had supplanted Margaret Thatcher.

Whilst in the UK, I learnt that I had the skills for a thriving computer technical support market if I ventured the idea, I got a copy of my long birth certificate as it was not obtained my parents when they got the short version. With that in hand, I applied for the Certificate to the Right of Abode which only had a 3-week processing time compared to the 18-month waiting list for a British passport.

The execution

The interview was a breeze, more the exchange of banter about failed interviews and with my special visa to hand, I bought my one-way ticket to London for the price of NGN 3,200. I was ready to go even if very few believed my plans would be executed. I had determined I was going to leave before 1990 was over.

My 25^th birthday was given prominence at the Christmas party for the staff of Deji Sasegbon Publishers, a legal publishing outfit for which I was a consultant and through whom I had the bulk of my airfare to travel to the UK, as part of our contractual agreement signed some 14 months before.

The memory

The exchange rate then was NGN 15 to £1 and though I have left for a generation, Nigeria has not left me, I am impacted and affected by many things in Nigeria, most completely out of my control by inimical policies that take no consideration for the people. I cannot report that things have improved for the majority even as some have prospered.

On the matter of returning, even for a visit, I am undecided, and the passage of time has made it quite unlikely regardless of the event or the occasion, I think and dream of Nigeria, it is not home, just a place of memories, attachments, and influence. My hope is still that Nigeria finds peace and prosperity and hopefully at the hands of people who know what they are doing and will not squander the rare opportunities to do so.

My boarding pass from the 30^th of December 1990.

Lekki! The #EndSARS innocent will be avenged

Cursed are the vagabonds in power

The voice of their blood cries from the ground,
It will not be stilled by the fear of the gun,
They took the lights for the cover of the darkness,
Then shot into the crowd that peacefully protested.

What they hoped will not be witnessed,
Was lit by the moon and stars above,
For nature in the night or day is never blind,
And justice shall come like a raging storm.

The day will not be lost to our remembrance,
Upon the Cains that ordered this carnage,
Shall fall the gnashing of teeth and sorrow,
For which no pity will come to give succour.

We can see their hands in their gilded palaces,
Wet and dripping with the blood of the innocent,
Speaking from both sides of their mouths,
Their fakes smiles and platitudes are rooted in evil.

Maggots shall begin consuming them ere their demise,
Generations after shall carry the lament of gore,
For the innocent shall be fully avenged,
The martyred of Lekki have not gone in vain.

Nigeria, we hail thee at 60

A preamble

I left Nigeria for the last time, just after her 30^th Independence Anniversary, now at her 60^th, I wonder about how the country has changed, its leadership has delivered, and her people have prospered. Sadly, I do not have much to celebrate apart from the numbers of years, the promise has not been kept, the prospect remains distant, and the potential unrealised.

Yet, I return to the speech given on the day of independence because it still holds a possibility and vision, my affinity to Nigeria is strong even if I do not plan to visit in the near future. The least I can do with the fond memories of my childhood and youth and wish all Nigerians at home and abroad a happy diamond jubilee of independence.

Nigeria, we hail thee, our own dear native land.

Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa’s Independence Address to Nigerians

TODAY is Independence Day. The First of October 1960 is a date to which for two years every Nigerian has been eagerly looking forward. At last, our great day has arrived, and Nigeria is now indeed an independent sovereign nation.

Words cannot adequately express my joy and pride at being the Nigerian citizen privileged to accept from Her Royal Highness these Constitutional Instruments, which are the symbols of Nigeria's independence. It is a unique privilege, which I shall remember forever, and it gives me strength and courage as I dedicate my life to the service of our country.

This is a wonderful day, and it is all the more wonderful because we have awaited it with increasing impatience compelled to watch one country after another overtaking us on the road when we had so nearly reached our goal. But now we have acquired our rightful status and I feel sure that history will show that the building of our nation proceeded at the wisest pace: It has been thorough, and Nigeria now stands well built upon firm foundations.

Today's ceremony marks the culmination of a process, which began fifteen years ago and has now reached a happy and successful conclusion. It is with justifiable pride that we claim the achievement of our Independence to be unparalleled in the annals of history. Each step of our constitutional advance has been purposefully and peacefully planned with full and open consultation between representatives of all the various interests in Nigeria but in harmonious co-operation with the administering power, which has today relinquished its authority.

At the time when our constitutional development entered upon its final phase, the emphasis was largely upon self-government. We, the elected representatives of the people of Nigeria, concentrated on proving that we were fully capable of managing our own affairs both internally and as a nation.

However, we were not to be allowed the selfish luxury of focusing our own interest on our own homes. In these days of rapid communications, we cannot live in isolation, apart from the rest of the world, even if we wished to do so. All too soon, it has become evident that for us Independence implies a great deal more than self-government. This great country, which has now emerged without bitterness or bloodshed, finds that she must at once be ready to deal with grave international issues.

This fact has of recent months been unhappily emphasised by the startling events, which have occurred in this continent. I shall not labour the point, but it would be unrealistic not to draw attention first to the awe-inspiring task confronting us at the very start of our nationhood. When this day in October 1960 was chosen for our independence, it seemed that we were destined to move with quiet dignity to our place on the world stage.

Recent events have changed the scene beyond recognition. So that we find ourselves today being tested to the utmost, we are called upon immediately to show that our claims to responsible government are well-founded, and having been accepted as an independent state we must at once play an active part in maintaining the peace of the world and in preserving civilisation. I promise you, we shall not fail for want of determination.

And we come to this task better equipped than many. For this, I pay tribute to the manner in which successive British governments have gradually transferred the burden of responsibility to our shoulders. The assistance and unfailing encouragement, which we have received from each secretary of state for the colonies and their intense personal interest in our development, has immeasurably lightened that burden.

All our friends in the colonial office must today be proud of their handiwork and in the knowledge that they have helped to lay the foundations of a lasting friendship between our two nations. I have indeed every confidence that based on the happy experience of successful partnership; our future relations with the United Kingdom will be more cordial than ever, bound together, as we shall be in the Commonwealth, by a common allegiance to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, whom today we proudly acclaim as Queen of Nigeria and Head of the Commonwealth.

Time will not permit the individual mention of all those friends, many of them Nigerians, whose selfless labour has contributed to our independence. Some have not lived to see the fulfilment of their hopes - on them be peace - but nevertheless they are remembered here, and the names of buildings and streets and roads and bridges throughout the country recall to our minds their achievements, some of them on a national scale. Other confined, perhaps, to a small area in one division, are more humble but of equal value in the sum total.

Today, we have with us representatives of those who have made Nigeria Representatives of the Regional governments, of former Central Governments, of the Missionary Societies, and of the banking and commercial enterprises, and members, both past and present, of the public service. We welcome you, and we rejoice that you have been able to come and share in our celebrations.

We wish that it could have been possible for all of those whom you represent to be here today. Many, I know, will be disappointed to be absent, but if they are listening to me now, I say to them: Thank you on behalf of my countrymen. Thank you for your devoted service, which helped to build up Nigeria into a nation. Today we are reaping the harvest, which you have sowed, and the quality of the harvest is equalled only by our gratitude to you. May God bless you all.

This is an occasion when our hearts are filled with conflicting emotions: we are, indeed, proud to have achieved our independence, and proud that our efforts should have contributed to this happy event. But do not mistake our pride for arrogance.

It is tempered by feelings of sincere gratitude to all who have shared in the task of developing Nigeria politically, socially, and economically. We are grateful to the British officers whom we have known, first as masters, and then as leaders, and finally as partners, but always as friends.

And there have been countless missionaries who have laboured unceasingly in the cause of education and to whom we owe many of our medical services. We are grateful also to those who have brought modern methods of banking and of commerce, and new industries. I wish to pay tribute to all of these people and to declare our everlasting admiration of their devotion to duty.

And finally, I must express our gratitude to her Royal Highness the Princess Alexandra of Kent for personally bringing to us these symbols of our freedom, and especially for delivering the gracious message from her Majesty, The Queen. And so, with God save our Queen, I open a new chapter in the history of Nigeria, and of the Commonwealth, and indeed of the world.

Courtesy of Dawodu.com

 

Nigeria: And the Oscar goes to Kemebradikumo Daniel Pondei

The art of the ill

I have watched the implausible incredulity of Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry version of Hollywood. The trite storylines of repetitive histrionics and melodrama that taxes your willing suspension of belief to the extreme. What people might not believe is how it is art that imitates life, that what you might term impossible or improbable in saner climes is everyday occurrence in Nigeria.

One such episode I could not ignore happened earlier today, when Prof Kemebradikumo Daniel Pondei, the acting Director-General of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) appeared before a Nigerian House of Assembly Committee to face questioning on his stewardship of the agency he heads.

Now, we are led to believe he might have been indisposed but against doctor’s orders honoured the invitation to appear. That is beside the point. The live feed to the event simply shows that under the assault of interrogation, the professor suddenly took ill.

NDDC Acting DG Prof Kemebradikumo Pondei appeared to have fainted during probe by House Committee pic.twitter.com/jwgRraiFG8

— BellaNaija (@bellanaija) July 20, 2020

First aid originality

He appeared stunted and slumped over the table before when heroic members of the House came to his aid if that is what you may call it after observation. I can find not medical terms for any of the actions taken. The tugging of his shoulders from behind was not anything like the Heimlich Manoeuvre, not that he was choking on anything that needed dislodging from his throat.

The person who approached him from the front, appeared to be contemplating with great hesitation whether he was going administer the kiss of life through mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but he could have had all fingers in the professor’s mouth trying to prise it ajar.

Now, miraculously, the intervention, either of discomfort or palliative urging appears to have revived the professor who from what I observed was starry-eyed and lifting his arms as if to dislodge the hands from his suffering buccal cavity. The spontaneity of the intervention made for an engaging global audience with intrigue. The professor did not die. Hallelujah!

Feeble bandits on account

Which brings me to the thought of how many influential people caught in embezzlement, malfeasance, fraud or misappropriation fearlessly and unassailably aggrandise themselves with moneys in their care with impunity and reckless abandon, when brought to account appear to fail in heart and health with the suddenness of some divine affliction.

One would not suggest it is a ploy, but too many in times past have been given the benefit of the doubt and much latitude to request and obtain leave from the courts to seek medical attention abroad. That avenue is trammelled by the Coronavirus pandemic.

Yet, I would be remiss in the duty of acknowledgement and appreciation if Prof Kemebradikumo Daniel Pondei; and don’t twist your tongue on his first name, it flows with effortless ease off the tongue, is not considered for an outstanding prize for a live-action award of extraordinary artistic talent rarely seen in highly accomplished professional actors.

Professor Kemebradikumo Daniel Pondei of Nigeria, please, step forward for the honours. A standing ovation is deserved.

Nigeria: Ibrahim Gambari caught in the arrogance of indispensability

A distinguished ambassador

The appointment of Ambassador Ibrahim Agboola Gambari as the Chief of Staff to the President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari is one of particular interest. On the matter of the appointment, he is eminently qualified and that is by the way. [Wikipedia]

I probably got a bit more acquainted with the man as a friend of mine who I met in the early 1990s was a classmate of his at the London School of Economics in the 1960s. Interestingly, this was also during the time when my father was in the UK reading accountancy.

Of my parents’ generation

My parents who are within a 5-year age range of the ambassador have had interesting and commendable careers in their different professions, my father in rose to various C-suite positions before shipping out to retirement. My mother went into education and was appointed a pioneering principal to a school that is now over 40 years in existence.

The old students’ body returns to the school to contribute to buildings, facilities and equipment, every time inviting their old principal who has been a pillar in her school community since she first took that position, in retirement, she is by no means forgotten, she is the constant guest of honour at those events and recently one class arranged a fully paid pilgrimage to Israel as thanks for her service and leadership.

My mother went on to head other schools, but the affinity the old students have towards her is unstinting and full of gratitude. I usually say to her, she has many children and for those relationships we, her blood children, are exceedingly proud.

On the side of my father, the people he has supported, mentored, tutored, advised, promoted, and recommended are innumerable, he is a community person to his bones. Many have gone one to forge enviably successful careers, he did his bit and moved on. They can still call on him for advice and guidance, but he has left the stage for the generally active life of an octogenarian in his village.

An abject failure of leadership

Now, at 75, Ambassador Gambari does have utility and usefulness, that is why he has been called upon to serve Nigeria again. However, he could have gone one better, he has had a reputable academic career and a distinguished diplomatic career, along the way he has taught and mentored people, he was recommended and brought into the diplomatic corps by others who recognised his potential, this of all times might have been one to pay it forward. [This Day – Another Testimonial on Gambari]

From his network of proteges, when the President made that phone call, it could not have been beyond the capability of the ambassador to thank the president quite gracefully, decline the opportunity and actively recommend probably two or three proteges for the role, vouching for their bona fides, qualifications, and expertise whilst giving assurances that for whatever difficulties they might encounter, he would be available to help.

Again, this is not to pull up the ambassador, but we need to address the matter of Nigerians who have been in positions of influence and in the corridors of power for up the four decades and somehow cannot find ways to call time on their service to allow others succeed them in generational capacity building that a country like Nigeria with a majority youthful population needs to launch into the future.

A gerontocracy, I observe

One could be forgiven for thinking Nigeria is hardly a democracy and closer to a gerontocracy, there are times I have wondered it is not caught in the grip of an unconscionable kakistocracy. Leaders of a certain generation marooned in the time warp of an era of bad history, fossilised somewhere in a distant past reluctant, unwilling, and impervious to considerations of the 21^st Century.

Fundamentally, they are disconnected from their electorate and have failed in the basic test of leadership, which is the ability to raise other leaders to carry on their legacy. In countries around Africa, many leaders have overstayed their welcome, they have arrogated to themselves omnipotence and omniscience to the point of delusion believing no one else of their fellow countrymen can do those jobs or even do better. They think themselves indispensable and irreplaceable by anyone else.

The arrogance of indispensability is an affliction and an addiction, I hate to think the ambassador has succumbed to this unfortunate ailment.

Nigeria: We come to bury Abba Kyari, not to praise him

Mark Anthony: I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
Shakespeare – Julius Ceasar Act 3 Scene 2. [Poetry Foundation]

A disambiguation of similarities

Overnight, I read that the Chief of Staff to the Nigerian President, Abba Kyari, had passed on. Now, I was neither shocked nor moved by the news of his death, I did not know him. It was only recently that I realised there were many unrelated prominent Abba Kyaris in Nigeria. [The Guardian]

The one I was familiar with was a Brigadier Abba Kyari who was the governor of North Central State with the capital of Kaduna from 1967 to 1975, during Yakubu Gowon’s regime.

Being such a prominent member of President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet, with an extensive portfolio bordering on a megalomaniacal abuse of power, his loss to the government would be hard felt and as one would expect, hagiographies would be posted with reckless abandon to the praise of the man. One even dared suggest he sacrificed his life to the country. The jury would never reach a favourable decision on that assertion.

The hubris of prominence

Abba Kyari had succumbed to the Coronavirus having returned from Germany a few weeks before, he had underlying conditions that would have made him susceptible to the virus if he contracted it. Whether he quarantined himself after returning to Nigeria is unknown, but in a political setting of patronage and neopatrimonialism, I can imagine that courtesy calls and visits would have greeted his return from abroad.

In acknowledging his overarching influence in the federal government, I tweeted, “His Grand Eminence Cardinal Richelieu has departed the Court of Buhari II. All flags in the empire and dominions at half-mast.” [Twitter] There are ways in which one can say he is an unfortunate victim of systems he implemented, for in other times, he probably would have rushed abroad for medical attention, but borders were closed for medical tourism, he had to face the realities of Nigeria, albeit in a private hospital.

One of the legacies of his alleged abuse of office was out of an apparent power tussle with an erstwhile Minister of Health, he transferred procurement authority from the Ministry of Health to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in October 2018 and never reversed this edict even after a new minister was installed. Invariably, this would have hampered the Nigerian preparation for a pandemic virus as the one which took his life. [Punch]

Being honest to the dead

Now, I will not at any time speak ill of the dead, but that does not mean we should deny the truth of the dead also. The truth can be spoken without it coming across as ill or the lack of sympathy. What would do the most injustice to the memory of the dead is to lie about their lives and craft falsehoods to beatify their passing, quite undeservedly. In speaking of the dead, honesty must always be the best policy or one must keep their counsel in silence.

As we were taking in the news, some people posted anecdotes of meeting Abba Kyari, his friendship, his concern, his humour, his courtesy and much else featured in their recollections. In a way, outside of his official capacity, he seemed to be a likeable everyday human being. I would concede that even the evillest people to the public quite likely has private relationships and engagements that paint a different story of who they are.

Every Caesar has a Mark Anthony

In my view, I think those anecdotes are necessary, for as the person is dead, the book of accounting is closed and trial balance is done of all accounts of who they are, what they did, how they operated, who they affected, and it all comes together in a simple biography of the person, exemplifying a broad spectrum of humanity from virtue to villainy, from good to bad, from nice to nasty.

In that vein, I would recall the oratory of Mark Anthony at the execution of Julius Caesar, for there would always be a Mark Anthony of our times to eulogise a contemporary Julius Caesar and they will only ask for you to lend them your ears, you have every right to lend your ears or close your ears, but we must allow Mark Anthony the stage to speak, not so much about the ambition of Caesar, but the humanity of the Caesar he knew.

Abba Kyari was interred earlier today, but it would appear the essential social distancing rule was not adhered to at the graveside, I hate to think this folly might presage the death of some of the attendees and others they might come in contact with. It is as if they did not realise that the man in the coffin was proof that the Coronavirus should not be trifled with. May Allah grant repose to the soul of Abba Kyari, his deeds in his lifetime, however, are for the record of history.

Nigerians, I hail you

29 years already

I wrote a blog exactly a year ago and ended it with the paragraph below without telling that other story. I do not this blog would be the space for it either, it would probably go into my story, if I get the inspiration, motivation and will to take it beyond the chapters I have already written.

On the 30^th of December 1990, I left Nigeria, on Nigeria Airways flight WT808 running almost 3 hours behind schedule. I had £15 in my pocket and a future ahead of me. That is another story.

Blog - My last 4 weeks in Nigeria, 28 years ago (The business angle)

I wonder why I commemorate the 30^th of December, it has been 29 years since I left Nigeria, it is strange that if work commitments had not necessitated my travel to South Africa in 2015, I would never have set foot in Africa since I left.

Gone but not done

Like I would normally protest on Twitter, my having left Nigeria that long ago has not meant a disengagement from the country of my forebears. I cherish and guard my Nigerian heritage jealously as much I try to be informed and well acquainted with issues and events therein.

The contention with parents, relations, and friends is whether I can be persuaded to return for a visit. I have not convinced myself of the sense of security, safety, or comfort that this would afford me. Until I can get that sorted in my head, I can categorically say, it is not on my agenda.

Blog - Nigeria: You'll keep hearing from us in the diaspora

The retiree then

We can only hope that the man who has negotiated for himself the best retirement package of his generation and peers soon moves on to a sort of retirement home. Our witness of his first regime in the 1980s is what ushered in the Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, the annulment of the 1993 elections and then Sani Abacha.

Whatever his plans were then appeared to be a systematic regimentation of Nigeria towards a North Korean style of socialist control of not just the systems but the minds of the people. Whilst we were not barred from leaving the country, the message was we shouldn’t. It is without a doubt that Muhammadu Buhari has some animus towards Nigerians based abroad, maybe because much as we can criticise him, we are beyond his junta-inspired grasp. [See the blog below.]

Blog - Nigeria: President Buhari, get to work and honestly, shut up!

The retiree now

Meanwhile with his 1980s mindset, he rules the roost, retired of ideas, policy or direction much as we can recount that after he exited national politics he was involved in no activity until he rekindled his entitlement to leadership that he fought for thrice before winning. The people beguiled with the spectre of integrity that doesn’t appear to radiate beyond the man.

Now, he lives in the best residence gets the best medical attention in London that flounces off to at a whim, flies in a presidential jet arriving in countries where all courtesies to a head of state are a diplomatic necessity whilst the country teeters on the edge of incomprehensibility, the youth unable to adequately plan a future in their country of birth, they are leaving if they can.

Nigerians, I hail you

Yet, I must commend those who have found ways to thrive in that environment, but there is another wave of the Exodus like those of my generation who left about 3 decades ago and they are not planning on returning.

In my view, you can make a success of your life anywhere in the world if you have the drive, the ambition, the skills, and the sheer determination, by God, we have spunk. Many leave Nigeria and get to live their best lives. I just hope we have enough people left to really take the country forward, even those of us who have left, pray constantly for a better Nigeria.