--I quivered on reading Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju's assertion that most Africans are determined to try their luck elsewhere on account of the mismanagement of their homelands. It is a well-known fact that all public officials in Nigeria, whether appointed or employed, selected or elected, always regard and behave themselves as lucky lottery winners. Public servants, I mean all categories in Nigeria, have never considered their official positions in government, and for which they are extremely overpaid, as opportunity to serve the people and develop the country economically but to steal developmental funds for projects entrusted in their cares. Nigerian dollar millionaires/billionaires do not have factories or manufacturing industries but are very close to the centre of government power. The nearer Nigerians are to the centre of government power the richer they become in terms of raw cash. While Nigerian millionaires attribute the source of their sudden wealth without work to God's or Allah's blessings, if Christians or Muslims, the impoverished masses of Nigeria attribute their wealth to ritual offerings or sacrifices. However, the enlightened world attributes sudden wealth of public servants in Nigeria to corruption, an euphemism for treasury looting.
From the colonial days, Nigerians have been indoctrinated to believe that education is the antidote for national poverty since it would make us have full control over our environment and natural resources. As a multi-ethnic country, English is imposed on us, not only as official language but, as a means of acquiring knowledge in arts, science and technology. Yet the impostors of English language on Nigerians never accepted responsibility to make the language accessible to all Nigerians through schools. At independence few Nigerians that had been privileged to attend schools and acquired fluency in spoken and written English inherited official positions formerly held by the colonialists. The Nigerian inheritors of colonial positions in Nigeria established caco-democracy and the rule of the worst against the masses of Nigeria because they consider themselves, first and foremost, as lucky lottery winners who are free to steal the national patrimony set aside for socio-economic development of Nigeria with impunity. During almost 60 years of independence, Nigerian academics with high sounding qualifications have been employed to work in their acclaimed areas of expertise and competence in all the country's ministries, departments and agencies at federal, states and local governments. Despite the fact that our employed academics are over-remunerated to encourage maximum production and large material and financial resources are placed at their disposals, their overall performances in office have been negative. A rising tide lifts all boats. A true Nigerian expert in electrical engineering, for instance, with almost 50 billion dollars expended on power between 1999 and 2015 would have been able to teach Nigerians under him how to generate and distribute electricity. Let's leave darkness producers alone and look instead at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Nigeria is the only crude oil producing country in the world that depends on imported fuel for her domestic consumption. The 2011/2012 fuel subsidy enquiries exposed enormous fraud in trillions of naira. Those who participated in that fraud are still walking free today in Nigeria. Normally, Nigeria should be exporting fuel if its four oil refineries manned by Nigerian experts in petro-chemical engineering are functioning as they should. Two oil refineries are located at Port Harcourt, while Kaduna and Warri have one each. A total of 445,000 barrel of crude oil is allocated per day to the four oil refineries that were established to produce and supply Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG), Premium Motor Spirit (petrol, PMS), Dual Purpose Kerosene (DPK), Automotive Gas Oil (AGO), Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO), High Power Fuel Oil (HPFO) and Aviation Turbine Kerosene (ATK), for both local consumption and export. After the oil subsidy scam in 2013, the sum of three-hundred and ninety-six million dollars ($396 million) was spent on what was called Turned Around Maintenance (TAM) so that the four oil refineries could work at their various installed capacities. Despite TAM, the NNPC claimed that the refineries have been functioning between 15% and 25% per annum of their installed capacity, which implies that out of the daily allocations of 450,000 barrel crude oil/day to the four refineries, between 66,750 and 111,250 barrel of crude oil is only refined per day. What has been happening to the rest of the unrefined crude oil per day has never been accounted for. Yet, the NNPC announced that between January and October 2019 the refineries incurred a cumulative loss of N123.28 billion because the total revenue of the refineries was N68.82 billion as against N192.1 billion expenditure. No one has been held responsible for the negative performances at Nigeria's crude oil refineries supervised by academically educated Nigerians. I dare not go into details of how oil block lisenses were handed over, by every government in Nigeria since 1985, to some Nigerians who lacked technical capacity to exploit oil both on and offshore. These Nigerian oil block owners consisting of federal character of mixed ethnic, Islamic and Christian religious groups are dollar millionaires just by selling oil blocks allocated to them to foreign companies at give away prices.
Talking about security in Nigeria, the Police and the Army are very important factors in maintaining peace and order in the country. By virtue of their training, police and army personnel are supposed to be the most disciplined and law abiding in the country. Yet the insecurity that ordinary Nigerians are experiencing today is rooted in the indiscipline and lawlessness of the police and the army leaderships which have spread to the lower ranks of the two forces. Globally defined, ghosts are creepy objects that frighten people. Nevertheless, Nigerian ghosts have no faces but they are seen on payrolls, they have no legs but they walk to banks, they have no hands but they draw salaries and sign checks, and they have no certificates and appraisals, but they are promoted. If there are ghost officers in all the MDAs in Nigeria, the only place one should not expect to find ghost officers is the armed forces. Disappointedly and already in September 2010, the staff audit of the Nigerian Police Force revealed that out of the overall 337,000 members of the Nigerian Police Force, 107, 000 were ghost officers. The authentic and verifiable officers were 230,000. The salary section of the Nigerian Police, their pay officers and accountants, in all the States of the Federation as well as bank officials were involved in the ghost police officers' fraud. No one was ever prosecuted for the fraud as investigations on who perpetrated the fraud were never carried out. Almost eight years later, the former Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, disclosed to the press after the Federal Executive Council meeting of 21 March 2018, that 80,115 ghost police officers had been uncovered in the Nigerian Police Force. Till date, those who were collecting salaries on behalf none existing 80,115 Police Officers, are yet to be disclosed. Beside that, there were ghost pensioners too. https://www.tori.ng/news/123243/how-4000-ghosts-were-discovered-among-20000-police-pensiners.html
Concerning the Nigerian Army, the Minister of Defence in year 2000, General Theophilus Danjuma, announced at a press conference the discovery of about 5, 000 military ghost personnel. His successor in 2003, Alhaji Kwakwanso, announced that pension audit in the ministry exposed 24, 000 ghost military pensioners. The beneficiaries of ghost military pension payments were never identified much less being prosecuted. By the time Yar'Adua and Jonathan came to power the Service Chiefs, who were supposed to be on 24 hours duty in defence of the country had become full blown business men with private companies registered either in their names or names of their spouses or children. To the Service Chiefs' companies, funds meant for procurement of weapons, for recruitment and training of soldiers, naval and air-force personal were transferred on monthly basis either for fictitious contracts or no contracts at all. At the same time Boko Haram which began as a ragtag rebels in 2009 became stronger, leading to declaration of Emergency rule in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe States in 2013. Despite emergency rule, Boko Haram attacked Composite Group Air Force base on 2 December 2013 and the docile President Goodluck Jonathan was forced to change Service Chiefs. Air Marshal Alex Subundu Badeh replaced Admiral Ola Sa'ad Ibrahim as Chief of Defence Staff(CDS), Major-General Tobiah Jacob Minimah replaced Lieutenant-General Azubuike Onyeabor Ihejirica as Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Real Admiral Usman O. Jibrin replaced Vice Admiral Dele Joseph Ezeoba as Chief of Naval Staff (CONS), while Air Vice Marshal Nunayon Amosu took over from Air Marshal Badeh as Chief of Air Staff with effect from January 16, 2014. In the daylight of 14 March 2014, Giwa Barracks in Maiduguri was attacked by 200 Boko Haram fighters transported in 12 Hilux pickup trucks. A month later, 14 April 2014 Boko Haram struck again at Chibok in Borno State to abduct over 300 hundred school girls and transported their captives in a convoy to Sambisa forest situated 60 kilometres from Chibok. Boko Haram did not meet any challenge from the police, army and the air force in a state under emergency rule and where dusk to dawn curfew existed. After 2015, the EFCC has arraigned all former Service Chiefs in courts for stealing together three-hundred and eighty-one billion naira (N381 billion) from the Ministry of Defence. They have all been granted bail after which they requested for plea bargaining negotiations. After the murder of the former Chief of Defence Staff, the EFCC filed forfeiture case totalling more than four billion naira beside other properties against him in the court of law and obtained it. Other Service Chiefs have returned some funds which according to the EFCC are too small in relation to the actual amount stolen. In other clime, all the military officers should have been court martialed for treason because of the negative consequences of their thefts. On 25 February 2016 Lt. General Tukur Buratai announced at a public conference that Boko Haram had been defeated and the rescue of Chibok girls was under way. The Chief of Army Staff said that the military has entered mop up phase in the fight against Boko Haram. However, it was not until Friday, 23 December 2016, that Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai announced at 13 : 35 : 00 hours that Boko Haram's Camp Zero in the heart of Zambisa Forests had been captured. President Buhari congratulated the Army on the following day even though the rest of Chibok girls were no where to be found. It is very much likely that the current Service Chiefs have turned Boko Haram's war and banditry into business, especially when their predecessors are enjoying their loots from office without any consequence. https://www.vanguardngr.com/2019/08/taraba-police-killings-latest-army-captain-had-191-phone-chats-with-wanted-kidnapper/
The academic titles of Nigerians employed at Nigeria's MDAs conjure up a powerful vision and ideals of a country we all want Nigeria to be. When funds set aside for socio economic welfare of Nigerians are stolen by officials who are employed and paid to execute projects, Nigerian intellectuals keep mute because they hope it will be their turn and luck one day to steal. The leaders and officials of the white world, whose system of government Nigeria has copied, will never do to their citizens what Nigerian leaders and officials have been, and are still, doing to Nigerians since independence. Speaking at the launch of Fix Nigeria Initiative in Abuja, 2006, the Chairman of the EFCC then, Malam Nuhu Ribadu said among other things, "Without seeking to befog you with statistics, corruption has cost us 220 billion pounds sterling ($500 billion) of development funds that have been stolen from this country (Nigeria) since independence by our past leaders. That is to say that the money that past Nigerian leaders have stolen in a 40-year time could have recreated the beauty and glory of Western Europe six times all over in this country (Nigeria)." {Reported in the online Nigerian Daily Champion of Wednesday, 18 October 2006}. Huge sums of money stolen from Nigeria have been traced to the US, a country that her President described Nigeria, not only as a shit-hole country but its inhabitants, as people living in huts who would never like to return to their huts whenever they visit the US. In an article in the online premium times, Nigeria, of May 22, 2014, written by Nicholas Ibekwe, it was stated that Jonathan's government was demanding the return of $500 million stolen from Nigeria by Abacha and lodged into Banks in the US. Abacha died 8 June 1998, but now in 2020 the US is reported to be returning $308 million to Nigeria with attached conditions. That the five-hundred million dollars have been reduced to three-hundred and eight million dollars must have been due to the demand of the US lawyers for 40% of the looted fund as fees to represent Nigeria in the negotiations to repatriate the loot back to Nigeria. In the normal world, when a thief is arrested, recovered stolen property is returned wholly to the lawful owner unconditionally without any need for negotiation. In the US, Abacha's discovered loot of $550 million in 1998 was reduced to $308 million in 2020, after almost 22 years as if to say the US bank has not been trading with the looted fund since it was kept there prior to Abacha's death in 1998!! Nigerian intellectuals, both at home and abroad, are silent over the lootings perpetrated in office by their colleagues in Nigeria because they hope it will one day be their turn to loot. As it is Nigeria, so it is in every black country of Africa. Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju says homelands in Africa are mismanaged, but he does not want to admit that it is his intellectual colleagues that are committing the lootings he is referring to as mismanagements. His tacit solution to the problem is for Africans to try their luck elsewhere, especially, where they are regarded as subhuman and hated. Not understanding the racial antagonism involved in the matter, he drew inference to Toyin Falola and Nimi Wariboko's scholarly achievements which he assumed would not have been possible if they were to remain in Nigeria. Despite the tinsel, glitter and gaiety of being a professor med many published books in the USA, professor Falola cannot feel comfortable when people are being maltreated and persecuted on the ground of racial identity worn by Falola himself. He knows quite well that even if he should carry with him all the books he has authored while walking the streets of the USA, he remains an academic refugee to white Americans and he will be addressed with the same demeaning epithets as they do to all black people. What we can learn from Trump's diatribe against Nigerians is that our government should consist of the wisest and the best of us. As the Yoruba aphorism put it, NITÓRI EGBÉRÚN TÁLÍKÀ NI OLÓRUN SÉ DÁ OLÓWÓ KAN SÓSÓ. Roughly translated to : It is because of one thousand poor people that God creates a single rich person. Nigerian geniuses should be given the opportunity to display their talents which means the rhetoric of religion and ethnicity should give way to rhetoric of competence and results of stewardship. For ages now, Nigeria has put spiders in charge of her textile industries and despite the fact that the type of spinning and weaving done by the spiders have not produced a single cloth, we keep the spiders in office on ethno-religious quota basis but continue to complain of no cloths to make clothes. When the nation is enveloped in darkness, when crude oil refineries are dysfunctional, when potholes on roads are swallowing vehicles and humans etc., it is not the ethnic origin and religious affiliation of persons employed in the respective office that are responsible for the failures but their incompetence.S. Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 13 februari 2020 23:17
Till: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump!On account of the mismanagement of their homelands, many, if not most Africans are determined to try their luck elsewhere.
This listserv is run by a scholar called Toyin Falola who has lived a good part of his life in the US, publishing a small library of books every year.
What are the chances he would have been so successful if he had remained behind at the then University of Ife, in a country that has only an embryonic book industry, a country challenged by epileptic power supply?
Another scholar on this group is Nimi Wariboko.
How likely is Wariboko to have achieved what he has if he had been operating from Nigeria?
Where would he find all those books to read with which he mines his texts?
How would he be able to afford them?
Through what libraries would he be able to access them?
We need to admit it, the West is another universe.
The opportunities are so great, the contrast to the dysfunctionality in such spaces as Nigeria so huge, the choice of whether or not to emigrate is almost no choice for many.
I make these assertions while acknowledging the need to be sensitive to Nigeria based academics.
We need to be aware of the depth of our problems if we are to be sufficiently determined to change our circumstances.
thanks
toyin
On Thu, 13 Feb 2020 at 21:32, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:
All Black Africans, and regardless of their educational and economic accomplishments, have always been treated with contempt and disrespect in the US and Europe, not only because of the colour of their skin but, because of their past history as enslaved and colonized people. When shall we, Black Africans, stop pretending to be liberal and face our historical and current racial realities so that we can really be free and independent?Racial freedom and pride are never individual but collective. If prejudice were to be personalised and individualized, there would be nothing like racism either in America, Europe, or anywhere else in the world, since every mankind would be responsible for the consequence of his or her action regardless of the skin colour. Historically and hitherto, adhering to white American middle-class norms has never shielded Black people, African American or African immigrants, from humiliation, insults and persecution in the US. Why then is it so attractive and enticing for Africans to emigrate to the US where Black Americans are known to be regularly treated as sub-citizens, sub-Americans and sub-humans on the ground of their ancestral African skin colour? No one is praising Donald Trump from banning Nigerians from immigrating to the US, rather he is being back-patted for not being hypocritical for awakening Nigerian (African) intellectuals from there slumbers, by reminding them that as long as their home continent remains economically and industrially backward as it is today, in spite of education and availability of raw materials, they can never be respected as human beings in the US, Europe or anywhere else in the globe.
In the 1960s, Muhammad Ali was prosecuted for refusing to be drafted into the US Army to fight in Vietnam. During the trial, the Judge asked him if he hated white people. Replying, Muhammed Ali told the Judge that if a lion were to suddenly enter the court room, everybody would run away from the court room, not because of hatred for lions but because of the known characters and behaviours of lions. Africans do not need Trump or any European fascist to tell them not to emigrate to America or Europe when from experience Africans know who came to capture them as slaves and where they were taken to work as slaves; who declared them, the natural resources of African land and forests as their colonial possession; who are African's oppressors and exploiters; and who are the discriminators who declared Africans as inferior human beings. The agitation for independent Africa from our enslavers and colonialists was premised on the inhuman treatments being perpetrated on us, the Africans. Yet, and since independence, we Africans have been crawling back to the same oppressors, exploiters and persecutors for economic salvation even when Europeans and Americans have been telling us not to come to them while at the same time their ships anchor daily at Africa's Sea Ports to load crude oil, copper, coltan, iron ore, agricultural products, etc., to Europe and America. At moment, thousands of Africans (mostly Nigerians) are said to be perishing daily in the Mediterranean sea while trying to sail to Europe by sea. Already in September 2014, the then President of Gambia, Yahya Jammeh , speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, called on the UN to investigate the crime of genocide on African refugee boats which he suspected were being intentionally sunk at the coast of Italy by the Italian coast guards. The major problem confronting Nigeria (Black Africa in general) today as I see it, and to borrow the expression of Malcom X, is the attitude of the African intellectual house negroes that have become accustomed to the comfort of living near their Euro-American masters and imitating their livestyle and as such have come to regard racism as an individual, and not a collective problem. The African intellectual house negroes pretend as if racism began with Donald Trump's presidency even when Klux Ku klan and Black Lives Matter, preceded his ascendant to office. Mimicing Euro-American intellectuals, the African intellectual house negroes believe that being educated in fluent spoken and written English, or French, or Spanish, or Portuguese, language and wearing European clothes have transformed them into white men. Whenever African intellectual house negroes visit Africa, they give false impression to the people at home that everywhere in Europe and the US is full of gold and diamonds. Seeing the modern day African intellectual house negroes, one is sadly reminded about the observations of the first colonial Governor General of Nigeria, Frederick John Dealtry Lugard, as stated in his 1922 book, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa thus : In character and temperament the typical African of this race-type is a happy, thriftless, excitable person, lacking in self-control, discipline and foresight, …//… His thoughts are concentrated on the events and feelings of the moment, and he suffers little from apprehension for the future, or grief for the past. …//… He (the African Negro) lacks power of organisation, and is conspicuously deficient in the management and control alike of men or business. He loves the display of power, but fails to realise its responsibility. …//… He is very prone to imitate anything new in dress or custom, whether it be, …. the straw hat and trousers of the European, however unsuited to his environment and conditions of life. Perhaps the two traits which have impressed me as those most characteristic of the African native are his lack of apprehension and inability to visualise the future and the steadfastness of his loyalty and affection. …//… The Europeanised African is indeed separated from the rest of the people which no racial affinity can bridge. He must be treated - and seems to desire to be treated - as though he were of a different race (p.69-81). No normal African should like what late Lugard said and nowadays Trump say, about us, the Africans, but why are the African intellectuals within and outside the government acting to confirm Lugard's and Trump's prejudice against the Black race?S. Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Kissi, Edward <ekissi@usf.edu>
Skickat: den 9 februari 2020 02:15
Till: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Ämne: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Nigerians love Trump!
My people, What have we become?
Have we become so hateful of ourselves, one another, and our governments, that we now find favor in the bosom of those who deride us?
After many years of leaving Ghana, studying abroad, and finding a suitable job for myself in America, after my studies, my tastes and preferences have undoubtedly changed. What I once defended as an acceptable life in Ghana in the 1980s is no longer appealing to me in 2020, with the benefit of exposure to life in North America and Europe. I visit Ghana regularly, a place I still call "Home." It is not everything I see there, and have to live with in my frequent visits, that I prefer or admire. But I am also mindful that those I left in Ghana have done so much to live their lives without me. And as much as they hate their government,, they have forged their lives within and without the political environment in which they live. In fact, they are so proud of what they have managed for themselves within that context that they would not countenance any outsider's contempt for them and their living condition. Not even one of their own returning for a visit, let alone an American president who has been so fortunate in his life that he has no idea how people in Africa, who have to deal with the consequences of America's global policies, live.
So I continue to be perplexed by how some Nigerians have held up Trump's contempt for them and their country as an acceptable, even encouraging indictment, of them and their government. Do these Nigerians lack the basic sense of pride, or hate themselves so much that they find comfort in derision? Or they hate their leaders so much that they fall in love with those who find Nigerians contemptible. That is sinking to the depths of despair.
Trump has not disguised his contempt for Nigerians and Africans. That any African will find this Trump view of them praiseworthy is unfathomable to me. And the fact that some Nigerians see Trump's assessment of them and their nation as an appropriate spur is as shocking as it is startling.
My people, the antelope might not have much meat on its hind legs, but it does not live in the forest eternally hateful of what it has to run with. The tortoise would like to trade its fatty limbs for the antelope's in the brisk and risky life of the jungle. After all, pride lies not in what others have that we would prefer, but what we are struggling, even sluggishly, to achieve that we can call our own.
If there is anything that is comforting about Trump and Trumpism to Nigerians--- and indeed all Africans---it should be that Trump exhibits the stupidity, absurdity, and incompetence of many of our leaders in Africa. He has brought the once vaunted American presidency to a level of leadership in Africa once occupied by Idi Amin and Jean Bedel Bokassa. Folks, Does this in Caesar seem worthy of love?
Edward Kissi
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Toyin Falola
Sent: Saturday, February 8, 2020 5:51 PM
To: dialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigerians love Trump!
This email originated from outside of USF. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender or understand the content is safe.
Trump trashes Nigeria and bans its immigrants. Nigerians love him for it.
Tough talk, candor and resilience are admired in my country. The president is perceived to have these traits.
A busy street in Lagos, Nigeria, recently. President Trump has called for a ban on immigrants from Nigeria. (Pius Utomi Ekpei/Afp Via Getty Images)
By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is a Nigerian writer and journalist based in Abuja. Her debut novel, "I Do Not Come to You by Chance," was named a best book of 2009 by The Washington Post. Her latest novel is "Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree."
Feb. 7, 2020 at 11:28 a.m. CST
ABUJA, NIGERIA
President Trump doesn't want Africans flooding into his country. But let's be honest. Who really does? Certainly not any other world leader of this era. Trump just happens to be the one bold or uncaring enough to say the quiet part out loud. He's the rare white politician sparing us the trouble of deciphering what he might think. And Nigerians love him for it.
Nigerians are generally dismayed by his latest travel ban, which severely restricts immigration to the United States from our country and five others. The reason given for this collective punishment is our government's failure to share certain relevant security information with the United States and international security agencies. But the ban is not likely to dent the prevailing attitude toward Trump here. The data has been consistent for the past three years, and the most recent survey, published by the Pew Research Center in January, shows that almost 6 in 10 Nigerians believe that Trump will "do the right thing regarding world affairs."
My hairdresser, Yimi Kolo, a 37-year-old mother of four who speaks little English but listens almost all day to a radio station that transmits in pidgin English, told me last week that she just loves Trump for his toughness. He says what he is going to do, and he goes ahead and does it. Her opinion was unsolicited, inspired merely by the mention of Trump's name on the radio while she was plaiting my hair. The perception of Trump as tough, no-nonsense, blunt, pro-religion and entertaining could be in part why a majority of people in this deeply religious and most populous country in Africa like him. Like a fire eater, he swallows every challenge that comes his way: Stormy Daniels, Russia, Ukraine, impeachment. Each time it appears as if he's down, he rises, seemingly stronger. It's like watching an action movie, or the best reality show Nigerians have ever seen — expressions of wonderment and wild laughter can be heard when people gather to discuss him.
Utterances that make Americans cringe don't seem to faze. When he says or does something that Americans consider racist, I receive emails from American friends, most of whom proudly hate their president. They apologize on his behalf or express their embarrassment. And they expect that this will surely be the turning point, when Nigerians finally begin to join them in detesting Trump. "Hopefully his approval rating will go down over there," wrote my novelist friend James Hannaham. "This guy, we gotta get rid of him. So toxic! So unbearable!" But the 45th president of the United States has so far not done or said anything that Nigerians have not been able to rationalize. Not yet. Not even the travel ban.
Trump has spread more hatred of immigrants than any American in history
Trump once described African nations as "shithole" countries. Many Africans agree. Ask the multitudes risking death by drowning to escape to Europe. In 2017, the bodies of 26 Nigerian young women and girls were recovered from the Mediterranean Sea, following their attempt to reach Europe in a rubber boat. Out of 181,000 migrants who arrived by sea in Italy from Libya in 2016, about 11,000 women and 3,000 children traveling alone were from Nigeria, according to the United Nations. In 2015, the European Union agreed to a nearly 2 billion-euro trust fund for African countries to help stop migrants from reaching Europe. "EU development aid is increasingly being spent to close borders, stifle migration and push for returns of migrants to Africa," according to a report published by Oxfam in January. "European governments seem determined to prevent migration at any cost," said Raphael Shilhav, who wrote the report. Trump is giving voice to a sentiment apparently shared silently by others.
AD
Nigerians have never been under any illusion about the world wanting to welcome random Africans with wide-open arms, but that has not stopped us from dreaming and trying anyway. In a 2018 Pew survey, 45 percent of Nigerian adults said they planned to move to another country in the next five years — the highest percentage of any nation surveyed. On reporting trips between 2016 and 2018 to Edo state in the south, the origin of most Nigerians crossing the Mediterranean, I came across villages where the majority of the youth had left for Europe, and the people who remained were mostly elderly. I saw advertisements for church services proclaiming themes like "Abroad Must Favour My Family This Year!!!" Across Nigeria, religious meetings offer special prayers to influence the hearts of consular officials. Those seeking divine intervention in their migration plans or visa applications are invited to attend.
In the past year, Nigerians I know have had cause to pray for God's intervention, after acquiring a U.S. visa suddenly became a task more herculean than ever. People who have traveled freely to the United States for decades were suddenly being denied visas without explanation. Newspaper columns registered their shock and anger, and local media covered the alarming situation widely. Even securing an appointment at the U.S. Embassy has become difficult, with applicants sometimes waiting up to five months for a chance to be interviewed. I confess to having needed emergency prayers myself as I waited at the American Embassy in Abuja some months ago and watched as dozens ahead of me were denied visas by the consular officers sitting behind glass screens. After I stood for three hours in a queue that snaked all the way out of the building, my tourist visa was successfully renewed.
International media reports on the travel ban have described Nigeria with glittering phrases: It's "Africa's largest economy" with a "booming tech ecosystem," whose migrants are "among the most educated and successfulimmigrants in the United States." But it is also a greatly diverse country that has produced the Boko Haram terrorist group, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and now parades as its West Africa arm; the "Underwear Bomber," Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear on a flight headed to Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009; and the crowds that poured into the streets of northern Nigeria (a mostly Muslim region) to celebrate the attacks on the twin towers in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. I was chatting with a group of people in Abuja recently, and every one of us agreed that it would be unwise for Trump to pretend that threats from northern Nigeria don't exist. He needs to protect Americans from Nigerians whom even we Nigerians need to be protected from.
AD
But Trump would surely have been accused of amplifying the fissures in our country if he had banned travelers from only a particular region, we conceded. And so we all must suffer for the transgressions of some.
Most local frustrations about the travel ban are directed at the government of Muhammadu Buhari, rather than at Trump. Multiple local media reports have said that the Trump administration tried for more than a year to work with the Nigerian government to upgrade our country's information-sharing procedures and avoid the ban. But Nigeria failed to meet the minimum security requirements for verifying travelers' identities and singling out those who may pose a national security threat. "The current Nigerian administration may have its deficiencies and deep faults," said Atiku Abubakar, an opposition leader and former presidential candidate, in an open appeal to the United States on Twitter, "but the Nigeria people ought not to be punished for their inefficiencies."
As soon as the ban was announced, quick action replaced lethargy. Buhari immediately set up a committee to "study and address" the security requirements that will get Nigeria off the list. In a meeting with the U.S. State Department this past week, Nigeria's foreign minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, promised that the government would soon complete the process of making information on criminal history, links to terrorism, stolen passports and the like available to Interpol and other relevant international agencies. It's frightening to think that none of this was being done before now. Nigerians' romance with Trump may end someday, but not over this travel ban, not when it is so difficult to prove beyond any doubt that Trump's motive was simply bigotry and malice.
AD
During the 2016 presidential election, a prominent Nigerian politician tweeted that it would be good if Trump won because America would become too busy dealing with him and his drama to poke its nose into other countries' affairs. That joke went viral in Nigeria. Perhaps that is another reason Nigerians love Trump: With all the outlandishness his presidency has unleashed, he has shown that America isn't some ideal place where leaders and the media and the opposition always conduct themselves with decorum. He has exposed the "African" in all of you.
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is a Nigerian writer and journalist based in Abuja. Her debut novel, "I Do Not Come to You by Chance," was named a best book of 2009 by The Washington Post. Her latest novel is "Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree."
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220, USA
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
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You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
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