Heritage Without Nostalgia

Observing Heritage from a Distance

Two events this month should have created a kind of nostalgia in me, but I seriously failed to be excited about either. I had become an observer of sorts of elements that have formed part of my identity.

Whilst in Cape Town, there was the Commonwealth Day Service at Westminster Abbey on the 9^th of March, and then yesterday came the conclusion of the first UK state visit in 37 years by a West African head of state, the Nigerian one. [The Royal Family: State Visit by The President and First Lady of Nigeria]

The first event gained significance through someone I follow on Twitter/X who had been invited to a reception at St James's Palace, though he could not attend because he was indisposed. As an activist for Nigerian immigrant causes, he had become prominent enough to be noticed and recognised as an important Nigerian diaspora figure.

For the state banquet at Windsor Castle, several people of Nigerian heritage were invited to represent the Nigerian community, many of whom have stronger roots in the United Kingdom than in Nigeria.

An English Identity

My living parents are Nigerian, but I was born in England, and though I have strong influences of Nigeria in my identity framework, I do not identify as such. To any question about where I am from, I respond that I am an Englishman, and I am originally from England.

This is reinforced by the fact that two-thirds of my life has been spent in Europe. Even for ethnic purposes, I would describe myself as Black English rather than the typical Black British or Black African.

This distinction matters to me because Black British functions as an umbrella term that groups together vastly different backgrounds and experiences, often implying a hyphenated identity or connection to a diaspora narrative.

Black English, by contrast, centres my English identity as primary. It asserts that I am English who happens to be Black, rather than suggesting divided loyalties or perpetual newcomer status.

The choice is deliberate: it reflects where I was born, where I belong, and how I understand myself. It challenges the assumption that Blackness and Englishness are somehow contradictory, and it refuses to accept that “English” is synonymous with “white.” For someone like me, whose connection to Nigeria exists more in memory than in meaningful attachment, this specificity matters.

The Outsider's Accent

I can reminisce about aspects of childhood and development that have served me well from having lived in Nigeria, yet for the simple reason that I had an accent, I was always an outsider.

That accent was no affectation; it was the sound of my formative years, the linguistic imprint of the England where I first learned to speak, to think, to understand the world. By the time we moved to Nigeria, my identity architecture was already established.

The English pronunciation I arrived with immediately identified me as different. In the playground, in the classroom, even within extended family gatherings, the way I spoke became a constant reminder that I did not belong in the same way others did.

Children would mimic my speech, adults would comment on how I sounded “British” or call me “Òyìnbó,” and I became known as “Ọmọ ìlú Òyìnbó,” the boy born abroad, or more literally, the child born in white-man’s land.

The accent was an audible barrier that no amount of time or adaptation could fully erase, a daily declaration of otherness that shaped my understanding of where I truly belonged.

The irony, of course, is that this very accent that made me perpetually foreign in Nigeria was simply part of the spectrum of English voices from the West Midlands. In Nigeria, I was told daily through reactions to my speech that I was foreign; in England, I simply was.

My parents, who moved from Nigeria to England and back, could navigate both worlds with the fluency of belonging. They spoke the languages without pronounced accents, understood the unspoken rules, carried the cultural memory in their bones. I had none of these inheritances.

Where they were returning home, I was simply living abroad. This distinction, between inherited belonging and biographical accident, crystallised my understanding that identity is not a matter of bloodline but of lived experience and genuine connection.

The experience taught me something fundamental: identity is not about where others place you, but where you place yourself, and where you are recognised as belonging without constant explanation.

Detachment and Memory

In terms of identity, whilst I am interested in what goes on in Nigeria, I am more detached than ever. The closest association nowadays depends on whether my flight between France or the Netherlands and Cape Town flies over the Nigerian landmass, where place names trigger some memory or recognition from more than 50 years ago.

In general, I have determined there is no reason to visit Nigeria since I left over 35 years ago. I have the name, I have the influences, I have the memories, but the nostalgia has fully settled into obsolescence and insignificance.

Gratitude Without Nostalgia

Yet I love that Nigeria was part of my upbringing because it strengthened elements of self-identity, self-esteem, and self-respect. For that alone, I am grateful for the Nigerian experience, as it reinforces the context and sense of who I am.

God bless Nigeria, for when things are going well in Nigeria, there is less anxiety for all of us associated, even in the remotest sense, with Nigeria.

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

Flags Don't Make Patriots

Two Cities Changing

As I stepped out for a walk traversing the cities of Manchester and Salford, I noticed many changes in places I had not visited in quite a while; I'm talking a couple of years.

However, what was more interesting were the Union Jack flags flying on lampposts in some performative display of what some might think is patriotism.

The Absence of Historical Understanding

Frankly, I am quite unimpressed because patriotism requires a keen understanding and sense of history that would suggest learning and study. I cannot ascertain that some of the agitators in this cause have acquired such knowledge.

For instance, I am an Englishman as I am British. My parents were born in Nigeria when it was part of the British Empire, and hence they were, into early adulthood, subjects of the Crown before Nigeria gained independence in 1960.

By the good fortune of providence, I was born in England, and at that time we automatically acquired citizenship by birth.

When Ignorance Meets Aggression

One man, because I looked different and had an accent, had the temerity to question my status in an aggressively racist rant on a train some years ago. Other fellow citizens called the police on him, and after spending the night in a cell, he was prosecuted, convicted, and paid fines totalling £750.

If he had had a basic appreciation of British history and the context of the brutality of the British Empire happening abroad, whilst the profits built stately homes here, he might have been restrained and saved himself the humiliating consequence of baseless assumptions. But that expectation is like casting pearls before swine.

True Patriotism Requires No Flag

I do not need a flag to be patriotic. I do my civic duty by voting, and if called for jury service, I will attend. I belong in a society of values: fairness, justice, respect, and the consideration of others, knowing no one is above the law.

I believe we should treat each other with dignity and courtesy, seeking to live harmoniously with others regardless of race, creed, class, gender, ability, orientation, or status.

Identity Beyond Symbols

In all those situations of understanding and celebrating our Britishness, it is not flags that matter, but our sense of identity expressed in our humanity towards having a common purpose to make our world a better place.

That is why I think hoisting flags is an empty gesture. It is not representative of any particular value; it is, in essence, patriotism misguided and probably informed by a position of ignorance.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Is Kemi Badenoch suffering a midlife identity crisis?

Kemi’s Nigerian baggage

Once again, Kemi Badenoch, the Leader of His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition, is in the news, not for policy ideas on how she intends to lead His Majesty’s government, if she becomes the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but by defining herself against her Nigerian ancestry.

Her new tirade is about how she no longer sees herself as Nigerian, while how you identify is quite left to the individual. One can only wonder if our principal is suffering an identity crisis in trying to situate herself comfortably in the minds of the electorate she desperately needs to appeal to. [The Guardian: Kemi Badenoch says she no longer sees herself as Nigerian despite upbringing]

Gosh! A baby girl

The difference between her and me? I did have a childhood I vividly remember in the UK, born of parents who were students and residents rather than of a mother gaming the system for pecuniary advantage, the likes of whom forced the government of Margaret Thatcher to change the rules of birthright citizenship.

Kemi might protest until she is blue in the face that her mother was not engaged in birth tourism and consequently she herself was not an accidental anchor baby, but let us speculate on how having a medical doctor father in Nigeria, it was expedient for her mother to travel to the UK for medical treatment, and then she pops out in a maternity hospital, how convenient.

On the other hand, my mother was heavily pregnant with my sister, as anyone would have noticed in the last picture we took before boarding the plane on our departure from the UK. How things might have been different if someone had counselled my mother about the need to anticipate the opportunities Kemi now has for her then-unborn daughter.

Embracing all influences

I identify with Nigeria by heritage and influence through some of my formative years, but now, I have spent about 40 years living in Europe, and I do not define myself through the denigration of Nigeria as she does. When I was in primary school, most of us Black kids had foreign accents, and our schoolmate children of immigrants or expatriates in Nigeria mostly had Nigerian accents.

I am broadly European, even though I have a mastery of Yoruba and an understanding of Hausa. I do not pretend to know Nigeria that well, and I spent more time than Kemi in Nigeria, but left 35 years ago.

I'm affected daily by Nigeria because I have family and relations there, and a thriving and prosperous Nigeria is a comfort for all of us of Nigerian heritage in the diaspora. Yes, there are bad memories as there are fond memories, but it is in the UK that I have experienced muggings, racism, prejudice, and all sorts of attacks on the person.

I didn't live in the Netherlands for 13 years, trying to please the Dutch by putting down England or Nigeria, I embraced all influences that make up my third culture kid identity.

She needs a better narrative

In Kemi’s case, it is both political and personal, the need to constantly redefine herself in the context of Nigeria. If we set aside the circumstances of her birth through her mother for some unforeseen benefit as the story gets told, her pronouncements framed in a negative mindset about Nigeria are becoming unfortunate.

Eventually, someone is going to ask her what she intends to do in government and whether she can drop the Nigerian baggage she lugs around as a chip on her shoulder and see herself as just a black English girl who happens to have Nigerian parents.

I have no problems saying I am an Englishman with a Nigerian heritage and European influences, accent and all. More importantly, I am comfortable in my own skin; I dare say, she exhibits a form of self-loathing with an eagerness to belong and please.

Nigerians getting agitated by each outburst by Kemi are missing the point. The issue is not Nigeria; Kemi is still struggling with who she thinks she is, and well into midlife, she has not found a clearly positive narrative to embrace all the influences that make up her multifaceted identity.

Trooping the Colour of emotional attachment

Some emotional points of self

There are certain things that carry an emotion and sentiment for which there is not suitable articulation of words to describe, these are deeply seated in the person we are and how we express ourselves.

Watching the Trooping the Colour on playback at this moment, I reflect on those things for which I have not found adequate expression yet can be found dotted amongst my writings that give me a sense of pride, being, and identity. My spirituality, my Englishness, and the institution of the British monarchy.

Where one stands

On the first, I share occasionally, in which I determine to find the reality of divine intervention in every sphere of my existence and much of which leaves me conscious of the fact that there is much more to learn and understand of the mystery it entails.

The second is controversial to some as much as it is significant to me, and though the debate might rage about Britishness or Englishness, I am quite originally an Englishman of Nigerian heritage, and no apology is made of understanding that this sense of identity is reinforced by so many influences, experiences, and places. Sometimes, it is just the inability to appreciate the individuality and uniqueness of someone else that fuels the disrespect for how we choose to be identified.

I say the institution of the monarchy rather than just the monarchy for it does not matter who peoples the offices that pertain to the monarchy, yet the weight of history and tradition bears heavily on the shoulders of the monarch who through life is conditioned to certain discretions to maintain the mystique of the said of institution.

Love of a great idea

Though most of our lifetime this institution had the face of Queen Elizabeth II, there is a generation of personalities that have passed on with a wistful sense of loss as the new Carolean era of Charles III takes hold. The ease with which the machine of state transitioned occasioning amazing pomp and pageantry that no other people than the English can muster is one that imbues one with a sense of loving and patriotic adoration.

The love of fatherland without it being mistaken for political or royal adulation, England is my land, it is my country and from this land I have explored many places including that from which my parents came to study here and witness a country in radical transition and bruising change.

When it comes to ceremony and music, something in me wells up in full agreement that this land, and it being Perfidious Albion to some still exudes history, beauty, wonder, excitement, amazement, and pluck. In every nook and cranny, you find England is a place in many people’s hearts. God save the King!!!

A Black Englishman? He laughed

An Englishman he is

He scoffed on the verge of derision; the thought of a black Englishman of Nigerian heritage was beyond him, 'How is that remotely possible?' He remonstrated. A docket for which he could not find a pigeonhole as the more common black British of Nigerian heritage would have gone down better with him.

Obviously, I was being asked to follow him down the classification of Black British, which broadly, I might be, but particularly, I am not. Great Britain comprises the three nations of England, Scotland, and Wales. The identities being English, Scottish, and Welsh, the United Kingdom is of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Whilst I can understand there are elements tending to hijack the English identity for nationalist purposes, what we cannot allow is for them to rob us of how we choose to identify just because some have deployed that identity to nefarious ends.

An Englishman I am

That I identify as an Englishman is quite fundamental by reason of birth and with an appreciation that the British influences that moderate my sense of being are exclusively English and quite different from if I were born and bred in Scotland or Wales.

I became acutely aware of this when I lived in the Netherlands and between the question of where I was originally from and what my heritage was, people still found it difficult to understand that in the last century or so, with much travel, immigration, emigration and settlement, the question of identity is rarely fixed by parenthood alone, the congenital elements notwithstanding, the rest can be so radically different from your forebears.

And a black man too

Living in Nigeria, I looked like everyone else until I began to speak, as my accent was not typically local. It set me apart in advantageous and sometimes disadvantageous ways, what they call a British accent is anything but, accents are regional, and they can also be influenced by teaching and conditioning; that mine became a smorgasbord of Black Country in the West Midlands, a bit of Received Pronunciation in school and Nigerian hearing, it has become literally nondescript whilst tending to an accent you might hear in England than anywhere else.

I now find that depending on where I am certain aspects of identity projection breakout more than others. My being black has never been in dispute though I could remember the shock of arriving in Nigeria to see that there were more black people than white people, until then, I knew a different world, but that sojourn in Nigerian solidified my black identity, I am comfortable in my own skin.

European to the core

Returning to England, there was a time of adjustment, whilst I was fully aware that I had every right by birth and by the law to live and work here. However, my sense of identity was in flux, I was in a phase of just being Black British until I found that I could be broadly European too and with that, I emigrated to the Netherlands, and there, I was an expatriate rather than an immigrant; an Englishman abroad. Funny, the issue of identification tags.

I guess the dominant side of my European identity came to the fore when I went to South Africa, even though the complexities of racial identity still bedevil interactions, you begin to see the intersections of identity and propriety in how where you are, what you do, how you speak, and so on puts you in the system whilst setting you apart again. That I can understand Afrikaans and nothing of Zulu leaves people questioning and a long story if I could be bothered. Yet, I have felt more European when in South Africa than anything else.

I identify as my identity

Now, where were we? I am a black Englishman of Nigerian heritage; I think that portrays a keen sense of identity with a lot of detail and no need for extraneous justification. That one chooses to identify as such is one’s prerogative and whatever anyone thinks about it is totally irrelevant.

Yes, I always tick the ethnicity box of Black Other or write in Black English. I am sure the Scots or the Welsh would take umbrage at being classed as broadly British when they have a keen sense of their primarily national identities, why does it have to be different when you are Black or any other colour for that matter?

Finding my safety in a cultural chasm

Invisible until I speak

One subject of personality development that probably needs study and research is one of cultural invisibility and this is a somewhat complex topic that is coming out in stories of third culture kids. I first broached this subject when a friend highlighted her cultural identity issues being mixed race Nigeria.

In a comment to her article then, I talked about looking like everyone else until I began to speak, my natural accent had become an amalgam of being born in the West Midlands, though without a strong Brummie accent and the influences of spending a later childhood in Nigeria, first in the north and then the south. This to the Nigerian ear was a British accent, yet, to the British ear, it was not clearly English, yet to a degree well-spoken in grammar and diction.

Cannot find a longing to belong

This set us apart, the moment we spoke, we were different, separate, excused, or exploited. There was no sense of belonging for that which set you apart and inadvertently it came with labels that identified you as the one born abroad. Caught between these conflicts of identity, when my father said I always thought like a Westerner, and then my brother said, “You’re not one of us.” I realised my quest for identity would be defined by what I am comfortable with rather than my progeny or ancestry.

In a conversation with my mother some time ago, she relayed a time when I returned home from foster parents and I was stealing food from the fridge. She could not understand why I had taken to thievery until she learnt that I was being starved. These were people entrusted with my care and paid for the service who abused that trust without scruples.

The scars of cultural schisms

From what I was told, my mother travelled the length and breadth of the country looking for suitable nanny parents and I still ended up in the hands of reprehensible and nasty people. I do not think they realised I carried the emotional scars long after the situation.

For when we moved to Jos in the early 1970s and I was attending Corona School, Shamrock House, the pupils left their lunch packs on the floor outside their classrooms, it was open season just before school started for some of us to raid the food packs. I did not need to, I was well fed at home, yet, it happened.

There are many more aspects of being caught in the middle of cultural divides and finding a way to exist in that complex. I think my agreement with my identity is set in the context of being an Englishman of Nigerian heritage, whilst also a European. The story of understanding and refining identity along with the stories is in progress.

Opinion: We are not Khalid Masood

The surfeit of names

His name was Khalid Masood at the time of his death, aged 52 and meeting his end having mowed down innocent people on Westminster Bridge and then running into the grounds of the Palace of Westminster where he stabbed an unarmed police officer to death before he was shot by an armed policeman and there he died, whilst receiving first aid from someone more human than he had ever been.

Khalid was born someone else, he was born Adrian Elms to a mother who was 17 at the time, when he was 4 years old she married Philip Ajao who became Khalid’s stepfather and the Adrian Elms became Adrian Russell Ajao. [Telegraph]

None of this would have been significant apart from the fact that a religious extremist had taken on a form of religion that in his mind gave him licence to commit senseless murder on the streets of London towards a goal that leaves one begging about the suicidal exploits of these mentally deranged people who think they get nearer to some deity by unmitigated evil, nothing could be further from the truth, if they and their handlers are visited by the truth.

The complex of identity

Janet Ajao, Khalid Masood’s mother lives a quiet and idyllic life in a Welsh-speaking village of Trelech, making bespoke cushions and until this terrorist attack perpetrated by her son upset the balance of her life with Philip Ajao, her husband being ill in hospital. They have been married since 1966 and have two boys who seem to be doing well. [Telegraph]

It was the Ajao surname that immersed me into this narrative because it is of Yoruba origin from South-West Nigeria and I am of Nigerian heritage.

Within the complex of identity and community, it is very easy as a minority to find issues to relate to and identify with. As a black man, I would celebrate the successes of other black people just because they are like me, and there is no link between us apart from that. It is a subconscious response schooled into our sense of identity and being that we should be ambassadorial and representative, we carry a mantle for the identity that we have.

Of subliminal identification

Breaking it down, you begin to find affinities with race, with nationality, with tribe, with clan and any element of diversity that differentiates you from the majority in the quest to retain some form of identity even when you find that you need to integrate with other cultures, communities and societies to be of relevance.

Therein lies the conundrum, we live in societies predicated on individuality and separateness, responsibility is rarely imputed on broader communities of the majority, but once the majority finds a collective by which you can be identified, it is easier for the majority to address the collective and individual and vice versa.

Stereotypes are the Shibboleths that we inadvertently lend ourselves to, that in celebrating the good amongst us, they are seen is individual but the criminals amongst us give licence to label all of us the same.

Of individual responsibility

Khalid Masood, Adrian Elms and Adrian Russell Ajao were one and the same person, in various stages of his life that was completely and essentially British. That he had a Nigeria stepfather did not make him Nigerian by any stretch of the imagination, he was not radicalised by a Nigerian construct, he charted his own path and must be held responsible for his own crimes.

Khalid Masood was a home-grown British-born terrorist, radicalised by anything from disaffection to persuasion within a frame of reference that is entirely British. His stint as an English teacher in Saudi Arabia was a projection of his Britishness, maybe not of British values, but that is debatable.

The association of his terrorist criminality with Philip Ajao is at best tenuous and even though there is some affinity with Philip as possibly of Nigerian heritage, he has spent a good deal of his lifetime in the United Kingdom, so it begs the question why we allow the mischief of depicting Khalid Masood as having anything to do with Nigeria.

On the crisis of identity

It is very likely that Khalid Masood’s conversion to Islam was related to a crisis of identity in a society that can be institutionally racist. Some disaffection about who and what he represents in the British society might have given impetus to his decision to murder people in broad daylight, that it was done in the name of religion is completely beside the point, a criminal is a criminal and a terrorist is just that, a terrorist.

However, within the forming of our core identity which is heightened in a different cultural setting and host society, as we celebrate successes we find ourselves conflicted and afflicted by the failings of some amongst us, we coalesce in trying to understand what has gone wrong in our communities rather than with the individual, because in our home cultures, we are brought up within a village construct of family, extended relations and society at large. To be individual is to go rogue.

We are not Khalid Masood

Yet, we need that essential individuality linked with purpose to thrive in societies outside our native ones, in that, we must conserve identity more to the individual and resist the temptation to identify easily with groups such that when the majority is looking for someone to blame, we get lumped together, blameless as we are.

Our identity is significant and must be constantly refreshed with wholesome community activity, but we must cultivate how we identify before we are consumed in a guilt complex brought on by no other association that the remotest tenuous links.

No, we are not Khalid Masood, he alone must answer for his crimes, not the black community, not the Muslim community, not Nigerians, not the Yoruba, not his stepfather, not his mother, not his half-brothers, not his wife, nor his children, except where they as named individuals have been co-conspirators or accomplices to his crimes.

Essential Snobbery 101: Poshness tests and being British

Equally unequal

The underlying issues of Britishness and class reared their head, and you will note that I did not qualify that head with ugly in a number of situations that I read of this week.

First, it was the news that social mobility is still a myth, that much as we have striven for a more equal society, with the equality of opportunity pushed by a form of egalitarian meritocracy, people still fall short by reason of progeny and background.

A ceiling for many

There is apparently a “poshness test” that prevents qualified people from other backgrounds from accessing top jobs in Great Britain. You still need to have attended certain schools, gone to certain universities, speak a certain way and have parents who did not have to buy their own furniture; a point once made by Alan Clark about Michael Heseltine, to be eligible for consideration for certain jobs.

The fact is, you cannot eliminate the elements of class from British society; it appears in so many ways, just as some confuse the issues that separate the men from the boys on matters of taste, expression and bearing.

Irksome privilege and opportunity

In a number of book reviews, I found myself laughing as I read this week’s edition of The Week in the Review of reviews: Books section.

In Peter Conrad’s review of Jeremy Hutchinson’s Case Histories, he had to get his personal animus out of the way first, because Jeremy Hutchinson, the Baron Hutchinson of Lullington, QC, is ridiculously well-connected.

One could see why, son of a King’s Counsel, his mother a Strachey, his first wife was Peggy Ashcroft, his nephew, Jacob Rothschild, his inherited advantages were topped up by windfalls, according to the reviewer, as he bought his first house in Hampstead off the proceeds of a Monet bequeathed to him by an elderly friend. He attended Stowe and Oxford, majored in PPE. He just oozed privilege, and one could understand the typically British animus to this.

A different Britishness

He made a legal career of cocking a snook at the establishment, defending lovable rogues, including Christine Keeler of the Profumo affair and art thief Kempton Bunton, whilst also challenging the hypocrisy championed in the Lady Chatterley trial and Mary Whitehouse’s morality activism. This book must be a joy to read.

This led to the review of Michael Bloch’s Closet Queens, which is a basic study of how the establishment tolerated and sometimes accepted homosexuality at the top of British society. Notable was the case of Ian Harvey, who was discovered in the bushes of St James’s Park with a guardsman in November 1958, thereby losing his political office.

It is reported that when Winston Churchill heard of the scandal, he quipped, “On the coldest night of the year? It makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it?” Stephen Fry narrates that story here.

Poshly enunciate

To end the book reviews, we have Brian Sewell, the art critic of whom it is said his accent is posher than the Queen, who, whilst recuperating from an operation, wrote his first children’s book, The White Umbrella, at the age of 83.

According to Sewell, he avers, “I never came out... but I have slowly emerged.” He also prefers to be identified as queer rather than gay, which only shows how times have changed. Yet, going back to the poshness tests and the last paragraph of that article, it is 2015, and this is how Britain still works. Social mobility? All it takes is the “wrong” accent to put the working class back in their place.

It makes you say with a sense of wryness, “It makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it?”

UK Elections 2015: This election needs a human face

Some background

In 1968, my father then training to be an accountant and working for the NHS went to a pub with some of his English colleagues whereupon he met with his local MP and an exchange ensued.

This MP was Enoch Powell and the encounter was soon after his Rivers of Blood speech, the content of which traded on the fears and insecurities of the electorate by demonising selected minorities for political advantage. Immigration!

Populist demonization

This was a populist and sometimes right-wing campaign strategy, it is not new, and today we see the same elements of demonising minorities all around the world for political capital.

Be it minors, womenfolk, the poor, the different by race, tribe, religion, custom, beliefs or sexuality, the disabled, the powerless or the voiceless, some opportunistic politician has found something to excite the basest of our instincts to garner votes.

In this general election season in the UK, the leader of the UK Independence Party in debates decided to aim the crosshairs at refugees with HIV he falsely claims costs the NHS £25,000 for treatment.

This is sensationalist bunkum, but it gave impetus to a malevolent listener to this reprehensible invective to take the picture of an innocent man and make him the face and person of Nigel Farage's rotten lies.

It’s about real people

Bisi Alimi, whose story we know as the first Nigerian to come out on national television, who suffered personal and institutional persecution then had to flee Nigeria narrowly escaping death was the target of the atrocious besmirching.

We granted refugee status to Bisi Alimi and he has been of the most exemplary conduct, contributed immensely to the cause of LGBTI minorities and many human rights issues all around the world. If he remained a refugee, he is one we want amongst us as an inspirational figure and more, but Bisi does have a British passport, he is not a refugee.

However, that is beside the point, this attack was aimed at those who have sought refuge in our country with the devilish intent of persuading us to put cost above our humanity. That has been the bottom-line of the UKIP agenda, making cost the issue at the expense of our greater humanity and tendency to compassion.

The heart of who we are

When people come to the UK seeking refuge on humanitarian grounds, we have had a tradition of welcoming them and helping them thrive in our communities and society. This has been the case for centuries and long may we continue to set the standard for compassionate relief and humanitarian consideration.

The personal attack on Bisi Alimi was not only contemptible but completely unrepresentative of who we are. Yet we must know that this campaign strategy is shocking and awful, one trading on our fears to put wedges of division and difference within our communities.

Nigel Farage is a canny politician and he knew what he was doing by sowing seeds of suspicion and anger in the hope that some amongst us might act unconscionably and irrationally, along with his intention of shoring up support for electioneering purposes. We must repudiate this kind of talk completely.

Taking the fight to Nigel

However, under the auspices of the Thanet Trade Union Action, the irrepressible Bisi Alimi is taking the fight to Nigel Farage in the constituency where he is contesting to be the local MP and you are invited to Meet Farage's Tourist.

My hope is by the time Bisi Alimi has finished speaking we would see Nigel Farage for who he is and give him and his kind of populist rhetoric the heave-ho.

Nigel Farage is not the face of our hearts and minds, I believe Bisi Alimi more represents who we are and the example we want to better be to the world - open, empathetic, considerate, helpful, fair, just and truly British.

Please attend if you can and share with your friends.

Meet Farage’s Tourist

Thursday 30 April at 19:00–21:00

Odd Fellows Hall,

142 High Street,
Ramsgate, Kent.
CT11 9TT

Thank you.

Thought Picnic: My Identity

To the point

“What is your birth country?” She asked. That for me was a different way of asking that question and probably the best way of asking it. She sat next to me on a flight from Paris to Manchester, she being on the last leg of a long journey from South Africa.

I have always has to tackle the rather bizarre question of where I am from or rather, where I am originally from because a majority of those who ask that question probably have not concept of the kind of origination I belong to.

My identity is related to my nativity as it is to cultural influences that are as a result of where my parents took me and where I have myself gone.

I come from many places

In essence, I do not have the traditional constructs of roots and definitions people expect me to have. I am proud of the product of the parts that constitute my identity and can conveniently espouse the many strands of who I am with pride and no sense of lacking a heritage.

My birth country is England, my parents are Nigerian; my mother-tongue is English, my mother’s tongue is Yoruba; I have spent more than half my life in Europe, and I identify more strongly as an Englishman than I do British, I find common cause with Nigeria because some of the fondest memories of my childhood were in Nigeria.

A multicultural construct

Besides, having lived outside England and Nigeria by living in the Netherlands for over 12 years, I have found both my Englishness and my Nigerianness accentuated and heightened as I appreciate more the profound influences of both my birth country and the country of my ancestry on my outlook to life and things.

I belong to that growing exclusive group of people called Third Culture Kids, we celebrate rather than repudiate who we are, we are a new kind of world citizen, well-travelled, quite exposed and difficult to fit into conventional identity pigeon-holes.

This group is growing

The more there is global mobility, there more you will see people like me and the sooner you begin to realise that we can choose to belong anywhere we choose to belong by reason of birth, heritage, residence or passport, the easier it would be not to have to ask where we are originally from.

That is because, we are originally from, anywhere and usually not where you think we should be from.

For the record, I am an Englishman of Nigerian parentage, when I have the choice, I am Black English than Black British, I do not have to explain why I feel I have more in common with the English than I do with the Welsh or with the Scots. That is just the way things are.

The UK: Caressed by the dead hand of government protocols

Fill the will

Forms are what I encountered this afternoon, a meeting with officialdom that started with a convenient, but extraneous data-entry on my laptop just two days before.

Yesterday afternoon I received a text message on my mobile phone scheduling an appointment for today, just a 10-minute walk from where I now live.

On arrival, I was greeted and asked to take a seat and expect Irene attend to me, but instead a gentleman came round to get me a good 40 minutes after the appointed time without apology.

Sign and whine

After introductions and a number of printouts I had to proofread and other questions I had to ask, I scrawled my signature at least 15 times on all sorts of documents to gain access to a support framework.

He said there was a form I had to fill in; the instruction was everyone had to fill the form in especially if you had lived out of the UK for more than 13 weeks in the last two years.

However, logic escaped its function because out of 12 questions, there was none I could answer because I am British citizen and every option it presented pertained to Mainland European citizens and beyond.

Where I was to present an identity document, there was no requirement of a UK passport, yet, I had to bend the logic to complete the first part and the sign it before he registered me for another needless meeting with some other official.

Bureaucracy to make you crazy

It was the dead hand of government; forms aping formula without function, exercises that exercised your patience into frustrated resignation as apparatchik automatons gave the zombie of government exhausted of life, long before we were born purpose for existence.

I will not suffer too much in this, as I am on therapy, and I engage my hospital in my holistic well-being, anything untoward I will offload unto them to resolve. My mental state remains sacrosanct. I will not entertain the attempts of the state to sap every will out of the person in what they term encouragement to purpose by negative inducement.

Yes, bureaucracies are there to make you crazy, not if I can help it.

Thought Picnic: The Little Things

Too means more

The question I seem to hear frequently pertains to how I am settling in back in London. I decided when I tweeted a few days ago about returning home to England that there was no point explaining to people why home could by ancestry be Nigeria and home by reason of birth and many factors of my upbringing and outlook could be England too.

The operative word being too to indicate a shared allegiance rather than an abandoned one, as one person engaged me during the closing ceremony of the Olympics – I had tweeted that I was proud to be British too even though I identify more as English and rarely if I could help it as Black British – my race whilst it is used for identification purposes to help others is hardly a function of my expression or projection – I rarely see it until someone points it out.

Missing the little thing

The little things in their subtlety are quite significant in their import; too implicitly meant I was not only British but I had another which my almost too smart assailant missed in his determination to denigrate my person, it presented an opportunity for giving an education but I doubt he had the competence to assimilate the fundamentals.

Leaving the Netherlands has literally closed one chapter in my life and offered me the opportunity to open a new chapter. The return offers a new beginning and prospects are coming in just as I have seemingly gotten a new lease of life.

The little effects

The little thing is a just a SIM card, a number in the UK, a temporary address in the UK and the CV looks like freshly baked bread still warm hardly minutes out of the oven; a perspective realigned is an opportunity within grasp – who knows what might come of this?

Two days ago, it was a little pin connector on my laptop AC adaptor and that was the end of its useful life an urgent replacement was sought and by happenstance a call came in and my good friend of 26 years replaced it. The replacement died within 30 minutes and there wasn’t too much little talk at the shop for it to be replaced without quibbles.

A little touch

With that came the other little bit of knowledge about the smartcard travel-cards known as the Oyster card, I have been overcharged a few times because the system assumes I have not completed my journey which is crazy else I would have been marooned within the transport network rather than getting to my many destinations – each entry and exit point is gated and I have not taken a leap of fatality bounding over any gates.

No one will for now admit that some of the algorithmic logic encoded in the system is bilking us but it is a gathering storm. I dare say when the system fails there is not automatic reset mechanism to restore the overcharge, for all the technology at play we are back to filling forms – it is so much an inconvenience, no one bothers.

Many little ends

Yet, the little things are remarkably wonderful, a little detour and you bump into a friend, a little sideways glance and you see something that has always been there but you never noticed, a little spice and you break out in sweats, a little more and the scales are tipping that you cover your eyes in horror and why is it that I can read the littlest print without my glasses and cannot make out the features of a face hardly 2 metres away?

A little spot of bother for eyeing the bigger picture.

Meet the Adebanjo's - A British-Nigerian Sitcom

Hilarious! She said

Somehow, there are certain trends I do not react to or acknowledge until it catches the eye of certain members of my social network at which point my curiosity might be engaged to have a look just to appreciate what might have piqued their interest.

This topic had been around for over a week until it came up on the status of a Facebook friend with the text “Hilarious!!!” so I clicked on it.

The first minute presented jocular hilarity and elicited my comment - Hilarious indeed but looks like the over-acting I see on Turkish soaps.

Usually, after such a comment, I would have looked for other activity to engage myself but there was something familiar about the plot, the characters, the script and the setting, I was drawn in.

A British-Nigerian sitcom

Meet The Adebanjo’s [1] according to its website is a feel-good upbeat scripted sitcom, in reality whilst it seemed to be written in similar context as Desmond’s [2] which had a mainly West-Indian influence depicting the life and struggles of immigrants and their children, it was difficult to claim any real affinity with that situation comedy apart from the fact that it shared an immigrant subculture.

In Meet The Adebanjos, it is essentially Nigerian and quite particularly representative of the Yoruba predominantly from Western Nigeria but with the standard fare of one generation of parents who were born in Nigeria that have settled in Britain who now have teenaged children who are essentially British and the traditional, cultural, societal, religious and economic ructions that break-out as the family unit attempts to thrive with extended relations who take liberties and the parents maintain a semblance of harmony and success to the wider community.

The stereotypes are obvious in the roles and the attitudes of the cast; the father whose notion of headship of the family has hardly shifted from one-time traditional expectations that he is unschooled in contemporary romantic engagement of his long-suffering wife who now demands “All I want is one day when you will quality (sic) me.”

A familiar subculture

That is a quintessentially Nigerian line and usage where a noun or adjective can become a verb carrying its meaning with it when there is a more appropriate word, such malapropisms to the facetious are accepted usage within the community that everyone fully understands the context – in this case quality is used for appreciate with emphasis.

The children are caught between the cultures of home, school and the street, the domineering influence of the parents almost always becoming a source of familial conflict until they become wily enough to work around the sometimes absurd restrictions.

However, the genuineness of these depictions must not be lost and needs to be discussed because this British-Nigerian construct is a subculture that is neither fully representative of the Nigeria the parents left decades before nor fully integrated in the Britain where their children were born and buffeted by nostalgia, aspiration and circumstance to the point that it appears ghettoised.

Typically Nigerian

As objective decision-making and reasoning succumbs to subjective community ties that trust is misplaced and taken advantage of as it extends to relations, friends, religious circles, fellow countrymen and other cohesive forces; you have the makings of what can be termed “typically Nigerian” that could be set up anywhere in the world but in Nigeria itself.

I digressed; this is a nicely written script with usefully engaging plots all addressing serious matters with humour and hilarity that it is certainly and definitely more watchable than Nollywood at its pretentious best.

The 1^st episode is built around the man forgetting and at loss at what to do for their wedding anniversary, it aired on the 26^th of June 2011, the 2^nd will air on the 10^th of July 2011 and the last on the 24^th of July 2011.

Altogether funny

There will be 8 episodes in all available for purchase as a DVD box set at some later date.

From what I have seen of the published episodes, the team behind this venture are talented, creative, interesting and fun, I would expect that this sitcom would find a good primetime slot on television or at the least with a cable or satellite channel with an ethnic audience - a few tweaks and less over-acting can make it mainstream enough to put the Channel 4 reality TV Series 3 of The Family [3] featuring the Adesina’s playing to the gallery in the shade.

Episode 1 is required viewing and if you surf the website or follow them on Twitter or Facebook, you might get to watch parts of Episode 2, which at the time of this review was password protected but compulsive viewing, I got to see it.

I do not know what else I should write to get you having a belly full of laughs. One line I cannot forget. “Will you insult the Lord?”

Sources

[1] Meet The Adebanjo’s

[2] Desmond's - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] The Family – Series 3 – Channel 4

Night cycling

The nostalgia of food

The fact is nostalgia runs thick when you have left home for another place. The degree to which you might feel nostalgia might however differ for all sorts of people.

Whilst I have no particular inclination to return to Nigeria, I do enjoy Nigerian food that I either get to cook for myself or order from the gradually improving Obalade Suya in Amsterdam South which seems to have exceeded the African Kitchen in organisation, sophistication and sense of service by far – they even have a website.

Also there is fare from England that you cannot find in Amsterdam supermarkets, from the ordinary things like sliced white bread, through certain cereals and then pork pies amongst other goods – teas, biscuits, puddings, soups to name but a few.

The British shop (Absolutely British) in Amsterdam moved to Amstelveen over a year ago and I usually get there by tram and metro, a journey taking about 45 minutes.

Getting the bike out

This time, I thought I would get on my bicycle and ride out there, the estimated distance using Google Maps was about 11 kilometres from my home but that was using the pedestrian calculation, the journey by car could not be afforded bicycles and the directions by bicycles have not been fully integrated.

So, I thought I had to go due West, then due South keeping a general idea of Amsterdam’s cartography in my head, I did not really miss a turn though I could have made my journey more efficient.

I avoided a mishap where a car that had passed the traffic lights but had been caught in a tailback that was at an intersection, the road cleared in front of the car just when the traffic lights gave me right of way and it was just half a metre from broken bones or a dented bonnet.

The journey took just short of an hour and the ride was leisurely enough not to leave me panting and I stocked up on home goods.

The sleight of lights

On my return journey I got to a sign pointing to Amsterdam Centre but in opposite directions, to the right I could have a river-view ride with less vehicular traffic but it was getting dark.

I pedalled gaining a rhythm that was not too exhausting but met with my pet peeves again and again, the lawless cyclists of Amsterdam.

I would that the police conducted more checks on cyclists at traffic lights who ignore the signs and most especially the ones that ride at night without lights.

It was bad enough that you could not see oncoming bicycles approaching at speed or those coming up from behind so as to take them into consideration, then there were the ones in front who rode oblivious of other road users without high-visibility clothing.

Rules for cyclists broken

The worst situation was with cyclists riding up the wrong way without giving way to those who had right-of-way and I met up with many as I cursed under my breath at the irresponsibility and carelessness of the riders.

I remember that it was my care and concern from a lady cyclist in front of me on a foggy night without lights that held me up the day I got beaten up by drink-and-drug fuelled Moroccans.

It is utterly unacceptable but in Amsterdam cyclists ride as if there are no rules, no laws and they had right of way in all circumstances against cars and public transport.

There is this underlying vice of impatience that pushes them on, they just cannot been seen to stop but some to get stopped and wheeled away, then between the feelings of sympathy and indifference you realise that no matter how fast you are, you are not going beyond your destination – so why the rush?