Please go and read Jaafar Jaafar's update on the epic presidential gaffe of Buhari in the interview with the Telegraph. There is no need to comment on the substance of the president's assertion about Nigerians' criminality and eagerness to claim asylum abroad when conditions at home are, according to him, not bad enough to warrant emigration. Jaafar has already spoken my mind. I agree entirely with his take. Instead of projecting a positive image of Nigeria to the foreign press, which is part of his job as the chief salesman of Nigeria, the president reinforced the ubiquitous Western media stereotype of Nigerians as criminals. Completely unpresidential. But go and read Jaafar's update for a full analysis.
The only thing I'd like to add is a question that has been boggling my mind regarding a habit of this president. Why does he always save his most striking and controversial pronouncements for foreign audiences, especially when he is on foreign trips? With the local press he is either tongue-tied or haughty, almost angry that they would dare ask him certain questions. With the foreign press and foreign audiences, he is loose-tongued and appears to be under a spell. They are always able to goad the president into making big revelations or statements that are controversial or embarassing to Nigerians at home. Why? Is he that desperate for the white man's validation?
Yes, I have read the Telegraph interview in full and I still feel that the President goofed, misfired, misspoke (take your pick). He needs to learn diplomatic speech. It is a prerequisite for being president. You do not go to another country and badmouth your own citizens. Even our traditional societies and cultures have proverbs and rules condemning the art of joining others to disparage your own family or kinsmen. There is a place and time for candid talk about the moral failings of some of your citizens. That place is home and the time is when in private company.
What makes this gaffe egregious is that what the president said is not even entirely true, if it is true at all. Is Boko Haram, the premise of the question, not a real danger to many Nigerians? Is it not a legitimate ground for fleeing the conflict zone and claiming asylum abroad? Moreover, what he said about Nigerians can equally be said about the citizens of many other country who migrate abroad. There are thousands of Americans in foreign jails, but you'll never hear their president mention that on his foreign trips. He would even feign moral outrage and push back against the premise of the question if asked about it. He won't agree and confirm it. Ditto for Britain and the British prime minister about Britons abroad. Do Britons and Americans in foreign jails "make it difficult" for Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans to "accept" their compatriots? Is such a stereotyped response ever justified by the sins of some?
What makes it even more grating is that it was Buhari who volunteered the information about "the number of Nigerians in different prisons all over the world," not the interviewer. And, statistically, Nigerians do not even make up the majority in Western prisons or the majority of asylum seekers. So both the premise of the question and the president's response legitimizing it are wrong. Here, for those who have not seen the President's controversial remark, are his verbatim words from the interview:
"Some Nigerians claim is that life is too difficult back home, but then again some Nigerians have also made it difficult for Europeans and Americans to accept them because of the number of Nigerians in different prisons all over the world accused of drug trafficking or human trafficking. I don't think Nigerians have anybody to blame. They can remain at home. Their services are required to rebuild the country. If their countrymen misbehaved, the best thing for them is to stay at home and encourage the credibility of the nation."
Ola,This isn't about the verisimilitude of what the president said; it's about the reckless, boneheaded misuse of his symbolic power to perpetrate a stereotype. As president, Buhari has disproportionate symbolic powers to define and redefine national identity--and to entrench and exacerbate hurtful stereotypes.Because immigrant Nigerians in the UK are already on the social and cultural margins of their new host communities and don't fit easily into the dominant, prevailing imagery of the society--like other marginal groups elsewhere--the infractions and transgressions of their compatriots tend to be unduly magnified and, worse, externalized to all members of the group. That's why it's dangerous and irresponsible for the president to lend symbolic imprimatur to superficial stereotypes about his people.If a Briton, for instance, were to commit a mass murder this moment, his crime would be individualized to him. No one would be suspicious of all Britons. Britons won't lose sleep over the heinous transgression of one them because they enjoy a symbolic social and cultural privilege that normalizes and individualizes them. Not so for members of marginal groups; they always have to bear the vicarious burdens of the transgressions of their members.That's why Muslims almost always have to apologize each time a Muslim perpetrates a terrorists act. That's why members of the Korean community in America had to apologize and live in ice-cold dread after one of them perpetrated a detestable mass murder of innocents at Virginia Tech some years ago. The examples are legion, but the point I am making is that marginal groups often feel a heightened sense of insecurity and vulnerability when any member of their group commits a crime because such instances often provide a vent for bigoted people in the host community to exteriorize their pent-up prejudices against them.Members of of dominant, mainstream groups never have to deal with this. They never have to apologize for the crimes of people who share their incidental primordial identities.I am saying all this to make the case that when the president of a country goes to another country where some of his compatriots have reterritorialized--and often on the margins--it is profoundly hardhearted, even conscienceless, for him to call attention to negative stereotypes about them. The only thing such ill-advised statements do is to ossify the stereotypes against his people and authorize the mistreatment and injustices the people may suffer as a consequence of the stereotypes.This is all the more painful because in spite of Nigeria's reputation for crime and fraud, it isn't even in the top 25 most crime-infested countries. This is not to say, of course, that there are no Nigerian criminals in Nigeria and elsewhere. There are--just like there are American, Malaysian, British, French, Senegalese, Chinese, etc. criminals.A 2014 story shows that Poland has the highest number of foreign prisoners in British jails. This is followed by Ireland, Jamaica, Romania, and Pakistan. Nigeria is a distant 6th. There is no record of any president from Poland, Ireland, Jamaica, Romania or Pakistan going to the British media to talk about "some" of their citizens being criminals.Buhari's utterance was irresponsible and out of line. There is no way to sugarcoat this.Farooq KperogiFarooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media
Kennesaw State University
402 Bartow Avenue, MD 2207Social Science Building 22 Room 5092Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogAuthor of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. WillOn Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 10:24 AM, olakassimmd via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:Dear All:The Nigerian protesters are not criminals;their only problem is they can't comprehendwritten or spoken English language very well..President Buhari did not refer to Nigerians residingand working abroad as criminals.What he did was to acknowledge in open forum thatthat there are too many of us in jail in foreigncountries. This is an undisputable fact.Even though one can protest and refuse to acknowledge the truth,such denial is unlikely to change the truth into falsehood.The first step in the healing process is to accept that one hasa problem. The rest follows in a short order!Instead of protesting Diaspora Nigerians should be acknowledgingthe truth and brainstorming amongst ourselves to find solutions to apervasive problemwhich is giving Nigeria a bad name throughout the world.Bye,Ola---- Original Message ------
From: Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tue, Feb 9, 2016 10:10 am
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - fwd : 'We are not criminals' Nigerians tell their president
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