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

Out, yet about

I have been out of Nigeria for a long time, 29 years in 3 days and I have my reasons. However, my absence from Nigeria has not become isolation or disengagement from Nigeria. I have a Nigerian heritage, I share elements of my identity with Nigerian, and I have significant members of my family, parents, and siblings in Nigeria.

What gets me agitated is when people assume Nigerians abroad have abandoned the country and by that should have no say in what happens there. There is a trope of othering that is becoming the mainstay of some influential commentators n social media who expect us to shut up and slink into insignificance rather than be heard or seen.

Fossils endure still

I had to deal with this way back in 2007 when a son of the then President of Nigeria working for Microsoft visited home and regaled us with pictures of servants at the presidential palace of Aso Rock sleeping in atrocious penurious conditions without any sense of appreciating how unreflective that situation was.

He went on to say, “I like how Naija (jargon for Nigeria) people who have abandoned their country like you carry on as if they are more Naija than anyone else.”

Blog - Did I abandon Nigeria?

In my addressing this issue in the blog I wrote then, I gave reasons why I might have abandoned Nigeria, it was however rich of him to suggest those in the diaspora were carrying on as if we were more Nigerian than anyone else, considering he is of great privilege and his father was still around 3 decades after he first left power in 1979.

See us here

Then, I do not presume to suggest that Nigerians in the diaspora should arrogate to themselves primacy in the affairs of Nigeria, but they can neither be ignored nor be seen as insignificant. A few months ago, a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers averred that Nigerian migrants remitted 6.1% of its GDP in 2018 at $23.63 billion which was a 17% increase on 2017, with estimates expected to rise in the next three years to US$25.5bn, US$29.8bn and US$34.8bn respectively. [PwC Report PDF]

The Central Bank of Nigeria disputes the estimate suggesting it is closer to a tenth, what is surprising is how nothing is said to account for the sudden downward trend that had been growing linearly for over a decade. [CBN – Vanguard]

I have used the case of the volume of remittance to propose the idea that like as taxation might spur a popular demand for government accountability, leading to better governance. The contributions of the diaspora cohort should earn them a right as stakeholders to have a say in what happens in Nigeria.

We’re all affected

The truth is everyone who has a Nigerian heritage is affected by the situation in Nigeria whether at home or abroad. The prosperity of Nigeria is the prosperity of all of us and the less of a burden on those who sometimes have to cater for the absence of a social welfare system and other social services and infrastructure deficits that hold progress back in Nigeria. Beyond that, we should be able to have a conversation on the political, economic, social and human rights situation in Nigeria towards affecting and improving outcomes.

Last night, I had to tackle another of those myopic and reductive views of Nigerian in diaspora and their contributions to the Nigerian system in all its ramifications. We might have left Nigeria, we are still involved, engaged, affected and contributing in varied measures to address issues that concern family, friends, strangers, charities and any other sphere we can find to influence for the better.

I left Nigeria for the last time on a delayed flight with Nigeria Airways on the 30th of December 1990, I am part of that pontificating lot that remitted over $25 billion to Nigeria in 2018, we've earned the right to pontificate whether it is liked or not. https://t.co/mCMivYFbXb

— Akin Akíntáyọ̀ 🏳️‍🌈 #FBPE (@forakin) December 26, 2019

Our voices will be heard

We are not going away and those who cannot stand other Nigerians abroad having a voice would have to lump it or leave it, we all have a stake in the country and earlier we begin to realise we need each other, the better it would be for us to create the unity of purpose to bring the change, we desire to see in Nigeria.

Our silence will not be bought nor will our contributions which arrive as remittances but permeate the full-body polity of Nigeria be considered insignificant as to render us voiceless.

In brotherhood/sisterhood we have to stand to make a difference, we the unwitting ambassadors of Nigeria in our respective foreign communities creating the impressions that help positive views of the country along with the hardworking hands and minds in-country making a direct and effective difference in the lives of their localities.

Editorial: Friends of Nigeria are welcome

The security risk of ambassadors

A United States Ambassador to any country is in essence a security risk and in some cases a national security threat to the countries to which they are posted as envoys to protect American interests and elicit the workings of the system in which they find themselves.

The WikiLeaks diplomatic cables showed how ambassadors with their status gained access to the powers that be and teased out state secrets, modes of operation and details of governmental activity which they relayed back home for analysis and processing by the State Department.

The each cable does not in and of itself spell the complete truth but taken together forms a perspective from which the government of the United States could be ahead of the curve in their dealings with any counterpart state.

Getting their quarry

In Nigeria, Ambassador Robin Sanders appeared to have credentials that made for a smiling ruthless interrogator that served you tea and walked away with the brains of her guests fully informed of everything she wanted to know.

In the early 90s, it was Ambassador John Campbell who as a fellow of the Council for Foreign Relations projects himself as an expert on Nigerian issues.

Now, there is nothing to besmirch his esteemed scholarship and analytical skills, Nigeria has had no end of problem analysts, the fact is we know the problems and the issue is no more about identifying problems but the need for solutions that are well thought through, maybe radical, maybe visionary or maybe just insightful.

Nigeria is too big a behemoth for the radical but step-changes and tweaking in different areas of the polity might begin to seed the clouds for a torrential downpour that starts the sweeping away of many of the issues that plague Nigeria.

A foe almost vile

Unfortunately, Ambassador John Campbell for all the knowledge and insight he gained about Nigeria has not put himself within the solution seeking school of thought, rather he has become the herald of its problems, its failings, its catastrophes and its impossibilities.

In essence, his well-constructed and authoritative analyses are hostile, damaging, unfairly critical and can be used to instigate the prophecies of turmoil, discord, carnage, division and hopelessness that has become his core narrative.

Nigeria needs helpers not lepers, it needs friends not skeptics, it needs solutions not reminders of our problems and the role John Campbell plays to the world about Nigeria is patently unhelpful as he has refused to use his expertise accentuate the positive about Nigeria.

Within rights

That is not to say that there are no problems and we are reluctant to brook criticism but his actions have become inimical to Nigeria’s possible progress that the decision of the Federal Government not grant him a visa to visit the country and find a platform at the university founded by the president’s bitter rival to spew his vituperations is apt and acceptable even if generally uncalled for and possibly reprehensible.

Nigeria has simply exercised a right that other countries like the UK or the US exercises when they are worried that some personality with contrary and atrocious views might create a public nuisance and a security situation.

If anything, Nigeria’s friends are welcome, so are those who bring solutions to many of the problems we have found insolvable and insurmountable; those who seek to weaken the already fragile state of affairs cannot be considered friendly – at first the refusal of a visa might be a warning but they are on the slippery slope to being cited as persona non grata.

Acknowledgements

I wrote an analysis of WikiLeaks pertaining to Nigeria which was termed NaijaLeaks on my blog. Robin Sanders biography speaks for itself as for John Campbell his biography to the point he became ambassador is hosted on the embassy website.

His views as the Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations are aggregated here.

A columnist called him out on his views with a write-up for Business Day Online titled Between John Campbell and Goodluck Jonathan (2) and the news about the government’s refusal to grant him a visa appeared on many news outlets and reference the on offered by CBS News.

Thought Picnic: My Nigerian Philosophy

Where I am from

Certain events over the last few days but in process over decades have presaged my writing this blog about my Nigerian philosophy, my tweets have sat in Nigeria as if I was resident, feeling the heat of the sun and hearing the sound of the drums, my blogs even more so.

I was born an Englishman; I had an amazing Nigerian childhood that developed into a turbulent Nigerian adolescence and a rather disillusioned young Nigerian adulthood.

I left Nigeria, the country of my formative years to become an Englishman again and met with the baggage of besmirched Nigerian reputations that had me working harder, speaking louder and showing more clearly that Englishmen of Nigerian heritage and by extension a majority of Nigerians are honest, trustworthy, able, capable achievers.

Ambassadors of Nigeria

The Nigerian-ness followed me by name though there are times people reading my profile have though I was a well-travelled Japanese man, it had its benefits for me and disappointments for those who learnt differently.

I believe that there are many like me, who in past couple of decades have worked to change the impression of Nigerians amongst our local communities, we are unwittingly ambassadors of Nigeria; we are inadvertently helping people decide if we and by extension again Nigeria can be treated with respect, allowed the benefit of doubt and given access to opportunities that were once closed to us.

Nigerians at home may not necessarily see personal ambassadorial pressures as those in the Diaspora do but the truth is we live in a global world, first as our government and their policies; then we as the people inter-connected no more as disconnected from the world because of the Internet and through many other works of endeavour. Our image is simultaneously shaped at home and abroad.

The old narratives of Nigeria need to be discarded and retold to find the truths from the half-truths to debunk the conjectures that make for fact and destroy the stereotypes that dog us each day.

We build and some seek to pull down for their own selfish and hedonistic ends but that is hardly the Nigerian narrative as I concur with Chiamanda Adichie about the danger of the single story [1].

We are not a single story

Nigeria is not a single story of divided, corrupt, ungovernable and failed – those are the easy epithets that make the Nigerian story understandable to the unschooled and the outsider, we risk making it our own story if we hear it long enough.

When we search within ourselves as individuals, we know what we are capable of and there must be a whole range of like-minded and driven Nigerians in Nigeria and around the globe that have the ways and the means to make that change happen for our country.

The recent presidential vote shows that we are not as divided [2] as it once was the single story of North-South or Muslim-Christian fault-lines, we all have aspirations as Nigerians and are working to wrest power from the hands of those who have not served us well for the last 50 years of our independence.

A ship without a rig

We have passed a particular threshold, a president has been elected as some cling to that old single story of the elections being rigged again – they probably were but would the absence of rigging have changed the lay of the land that gave the ruling party the presidency again after 12 failed years? Unlikely.

The reason being, another single story of an opposition, weak, unprepared, selfish and egotistical, unready to put country before self and without the essential national footprint to match the ruling party in all regions of the country to wrestle power from them.

One is found having to make the argument that it is not the job of the ruling party to build its opposition, it is for those who want change that the ruling party does not offer to want it bad enough to start from the grassroots from every corner of Nigeria and build a movement for change that fights for the change we want.

They need to tell a compelling and convincing story that would move the thumbs to the right party spot on the ballot paper.

2011 was definitely not the year for the opposition at the presidency, but they have seized some ground and prominent ones too in the national legislature and they can do more in the gubernatorial and state assembly elections.

The need for government

Government is about being connected to the people, even from my libertarian perspective of individual rights of self-expression Nigeria still needs strong government to facilitate infrastructure issues as power and transport, socio-political issues as education and health, reputational issues as separation of powers, rule of law, corruption and strong institutions and a civil society that believes in the good of their country.

A lot of this is aspirational and there is no clear path to some promised land, there are many who do not believe Goodluck Jonathan is the harbinger of the change Nigeria seeks, that may be the case but if he is going to President for the next 4 years we had better start thinking up how to make him do the work even if he cannot seem to talk the talk.

Only those who have the reins of power can make things happen in government, it is bane of our democracy where the winner takes all and the loser is left standing almost bereft of purpose or fight.

Where we must place ourselves

Nigeria cannot afford to stagnate for the next 4 years whilst we wait for the opposition to get their act together and form a credible united front that can challenge for the greater prize, like a poker game, we have been dealt a bad hand already, we can either fold or bluff.

The bluff should not be taken literally but this is the case to make; this is the first president to be elected with a somewhat credible election, that is new story; it probably means he can face down the usual political jobbers, that is a possible story; an elected president might be better than an accidental president, that is an interesting story.

There are many stories to write about Nigeria as we open this new chapter and in the words of the President – a new dawn – it is however left to us Nigerians if our story will remain the single story that has been told so many times we know the words by heart or it would be a new exciting, interesting, adventurous story that takes Nigerians all to a new place of planning, purpose, progress and peace.

Sources

[1] Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story | Video on TED.com

[2] Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review IX - Analysing the Presidential Results

Nigerian scammers will always be a minority

Those rotten Nigerians

One is saddened to read that 87 Nigerians have been arrested in Spain on suspicion of defrauding at least 1,500 in a postal and internet lottery scam.

In the light of my last blog, these are the kind of people who make our inadvertent commission of being ambassadors of Nigeria a very difficult job.

They put us in inappropriate spotlight that many who do not have an alternative identity have to try harder at proving honesty, capability, eligibility and trustworthiness.

Be smart about scams

I have received many letters saying I have been put into some lottery and I have won a prize but for me to gain access to the prize I have to pay some administration fee to some agent engaged by the lottery firm.

I do not think you have to be too smart to see that there is something fishy about such a proposition, the news story indicates thousands of these letters and emails are written in ungrammatical English.

The question would then be why a “reputable” lottery organisation would engage an unprofessional outfit to manage lottery winnings that probably would reflect badly on their enterprise.

In it to win it

My view of lotteries is simple; you have to be in it to win it, and every lottery I have won has been because I consciously entered in that competition with the hope that my numbers or ticket would come up and win the grand prize or some other prize.

Where lotteries are managed on the Internet, especially in the Netherlands, you have the option to include both your address and bank account number so any winnings go directly into your bank account without the need of an agent.

In fact, the whole scheme of this scam looks quite wrong headed, whilst the administration of winnings might be a costly exercise, informing the winner directly of their winnings should not be too cumbersome.

Most people who register in competitions have the option to opt-out of having their details passed on to agents, if a lottery firm outsources this service, one would expect that the letter or email informing a person of winnings would bear all the official hallmarks of the lottery organisation at first.

No need to pay

Then, the lottery organisation would have paid the agency to handle the winnings, the agency should not then have to charge the winner any administration fees because a percentage of the winnings should have gone to covering the cost of administration – a winner should never have to pay administration costs.

Another question is how a lottery expects to break-even if it randomly chooses non-contributing participants from an email list, I do not believe there is some bottomless cash pool somewhere where someone derives joy from giving money to unknown strangers and then requires them to pay up to get paid.

The Caribbean for one

I remember one prize I won in 1992 before the Internet was popular which was for a 1-week cruise in the Caribbean, but living in the UK I had to pay a fortune to get to the Caribbean and then probably end up as a stowaway on some pirate’s vessel.

It did not take long for me to realise I was being taken for a ride and about to be scammed, I do not do stressful lottery wins, much as a Caribbean cruise for one could never have been any fun at all, the devil is always in the detail processed by a logical brain. The same scam is now rehashed for another medium.

The logic usually does not add up, eventually, the old saying catches up on the deluded or desperate that has been cajoled into a despicable enterprise – it only takes 1 out 1,000 fools answering to make a profit.

The old saying is – A fool and his money are soon parted – if you have not expressly entered a lottery you cannot seriously expect to have won anything and you should not believe you have won anything.

We are good Nigerians

Meanwhile, shame on all those Nigerians, I do hope that the full force of the law is visited upon them and we who keep on the good side of the law continue to prove that those shameful miscreants are the exception rather than the rule.

Most Nigerians abroad are engaged in meaningful activities that build economies, communities and relationships, we who take our ambassadorial jobs seriously would not relent in being the good and exemplary Nigerian.

My final thought on the Nigerian Elections

Nigerians abroad

This is the final post I would write in the aftermath of the Nigerian Elections.

There is a garland of pride or burden of ignominy that accompanies every declaration of being Nigerian in Diaspora.

The early 90s were a difficult time to be Nigerian abroad, your passports were checked many times over, your word was not taken as given, our bodies violated in search of drugs and our certificates and degrees treated with contempt.

We had to do that extra thing to prove ourselves honest, reliable, capable, trustworthy and responsible.

This was as a result of both the attitudes people who had besmirched the name and honour of Nigeria here and the happenings in the fatherland.

Say you are Nigerian anywhere and the easiest thing to recall is one of 419s, a footballer or endemic corruption. At that point we all go into auto-pilot trying to prove that Nigeria is a lot better.

Ambassadors of Nigerian to the world

Every time some news comes out of Nigeria we become the point-person, the de facto ambassadors of Nigeria to the people around us.

We might be the only Nigerians they ever get to meet and we are the yardstick by which they assess Nigerians abroad against the happenings in the country.

If we ever dare to perform and excel at what we do here, they wonder why our country has the problems it has and sometimes share our disappointment or deride our misfortunes.

Many are convinced of what they see of us out here that Nigeria has talent, ability and prospects all wasted and probably better exploited abroad.

I had most of my education in Nigeria, it was based on a serious work-ethic, excellence and performance, that principle still influences my ability to be a consultant in a non-English speaking country and still thrive, hopefully, I excel in all I do.

Schizophrenic images of Nigeria

However, my colleagues all read about the elections in Nigeria and wondered aloud why that could still be happening.

I cannot explain why, but the epithet of corrupt Nigeria would be reinforced, any person entering the market as a project manager would have to elevate the discussion beyond the shoddy planning of INEC.

It would appear many in Diaspora have already accepted their lot dealing with the schizophrenic impressions of who we are in Diaspora and what we reveal as a nation.

Having spent a total of over 22 years in Europe, I am still quite passionate about Nigeria and what happens there even though by birth it is more convenient to be English and forget about it all.

What came out of Nigeria in the last two weeks would implicitly or explicitly reflect upon Nigerians wherever they are, it would also make one wonder if any of us had had the honour or even poisoned chalice of running the INEC if we would have been proud to associate ourselves with the events of the last few days.

Nigeria is not some Bantustan in the middle of nowhere, we are a country that exerts considerable influence in the world by reason of our size, our resources, and our talent and dare I say our democracy.

It is obvious which ones shine through and ones which we have refused to allow our resourcefulness to address with purposeful resolve.

Nothing new here

Finally, let us take the drama out of this issue of handing over to another civilian regime, the man at the centre of this is the same man who was at the centre of the issue 1979, he handed over to a regime that plundered the country under the seemingly benign leadership of Alhaji Shehu Shagari after the challenges in the courts that ended up in that interesting 12 2/3rds ruling of the Supreme Court.

Basically, it would appear nothing has changed, we are simply reliving history 28 years on.