It's weird that I'm more familiar with Israel – Nigeria relations through the facebook site Israel in Nigeria than I'm acquainted with US – Nigeria relations ! Where the heat is, there also the treasure.... or vise-versa
My humble opinion : this is the way I see it , briefly – and I'm even more interested in cultural exchange than in pure economics
All is not yet lost – or won either. There's the remote possibility that at the last minute Professor Ade Adefuye will prevail on Brother Obama to change his travel plans to include Nigeria. Thinking of all the security clearance that must be in place before his arrival – and assuming that he would be travelling a bit in the country, that is no easy matter. I remember that before Shagari or some other big shot visited Rivers State – the security people were there weeks in advance and eventually they even changed the date of his arrival – for security reasons.
What effect would a Brother Obama visit to Nigeria, have on the country? That the country would be inspired and encouraged by such a visit?
Of course on the law & order and the security front, President Goodluck Jonathan would probably be asking for some drones with which to combat Boko Haram. He could also be asking for some help in reversing the brain-drain to the US where a whole lot of Nigerians are contributing to further developing the might of the Mighty United States of America.
On the educational front – with the proliferation of new universities in Nigeria – perhaps at the expense of quality,a partial reversal of the brain drain could contribute to elevating standards.
There's no greater encounter with frustration than the encounter with a unemployed graduate – who is sometimes unemployable even with a degree parchment in his hands – a parchment which is almost a worthless piece of paper, even if the student doesn't know that. ( Some prafessors remember the kind of ignoramuses they were by the time they were 22 years old and think that everybody is still like them)
According to all prognoses the Nigeria economic powerhouse is all set to surpass and outperform that of South Africa within the next few years – the earlier Nigeria gets her act together the better and as far as the US is concerned that's very good news – for business. When Bill Clinton visited South Africa during his second term he took with him more than a planeload of businessmen and I heard him on CNN, addressing his folks back home that for every dollar they would invest in SA, they'd get something like $7 in return.
But, do you remember some of the sour-grapes Nigerian comments about what Brother Obama said in Ghana ? (Sour grapes because Brother Obama did not make Abuja,the capital of the most populous country in Africa, his first port of call when he visited the dark continent, but chose to visit Ghana, the Black Star Nation "with a black star in the centre, representing the freedom of Africa" instead – this also at a time when Ghana had just successfully conducted an on the whole free and fair election that John Atta Mills and his NDC won. From Ghana – still a symbol of early independence - he addressed a specific message to all of Africa. If he had chosen to broadcast his message from Nairobi which is the capital of Kenya there are those amongst us who would have probably cried " Tribalism!" Osagyefo Mwalimu Sheikh ABC of course would still be yapping his chaitanya mantra about "insulting and marginalizing Afrikans"
The tenor of some of those Nigerian comments and commentators was "And who is Obama to come and lecture us ? "Who does he think he is, to come and lecture us? Honourable Hausa Mallam like me ! Honourable and law-abiding Fulani Alim like me!Honourable Yoruba people like us!Super-intelligent and industrious Igbo people like we? Efik and Ibibio ! Almost something like the law of Jante operating in Big Brother Nigeria. And just in case you didn't know, Nigeria has a big brother complex. And some of "the smallies" live in the shadow of that complex. When Sierra Leone beat Nigeria in football in Freetown, one of the local newspapers ran the headline " Okuru dog kill lepet"
So let's be honest – and fair: Do you want him to tell us all what we already know - enumerate every item in the catalogue of errors about corruption, Boko Haram etc etc, in one long lecture?
Or perhaps he should have attended Chinua Achebe's funeral?
http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/corneliushamelberg/
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
No comments:
Post a Comment