Dear Sir,
Samuel
I do not know whether this is true or not. I have not been following the news recently because of tight schedule. I hope he did not feel so carried away to make such a statement. For certain reasons, I find Trump more seriously entertaining than a serious politician. But who knows, he may be our next president. With regard to Nigeria developing assuming he forced all Nigerians back, you are right, but I will say viewed some certain perspectives, the whole of Africa (not just Nigeria) has the potential to develop if we do not reduce development to its narrow conception in some Western quarters.
But my concern would only be that the problem is not whether any African country has enough people with the potential for creativity innovation. We can create conditions nurture that. I do not believe Africans are inferior. During my NYSC, we visited The Nigerian War Museum or something like that, and there is one place where we saw the technologies that were created or re manufactured in Southeastern Nigerian during the war. Surely, if that innovative and creative capacity was nurtured, Nigeria would have made progress. The issue is what is the context for innovation and creativity? It is available among large numbers of people and often such people are not necessarily Ph.D. holders too.
My major concern though about your suggestion is that development theory is saturated with ideas about complementarities. It is not just one thing that needs to happen (e.g., Nigerians go back home) or be present but so many things need to be there and at the right or same time to complement each other in order for development to take place. We may all agree on this listserv to meet in Nairobi, Kenya, but when we arrive there, unless there is someone to coordinate things, we may end up not figuring out the places i.e., coordination failure.
Some elites in Africa are not patient to look at how the different pieces come together or should be brought together for positive results to be achieved, just like certain drugs that need to be taken in doses and at certain times for them to really work. I was shocked when I found out that in an Abuja hotel, they thought I was a foreigner and they were going to charge me special rate. I encountered the same in Ghana at one point. I did not know what was happening in Ghana then but I pondered in my mind that if this is the cost of the hotel and given the average income in Africa, how can the hotel survive i.e., it is too expensive. Hotels are cheaper and have better quality in the U.S. than in Nigeria. Well, I did not know that I was paying a foreign charge in Ghana. Yet, if an African will come here and he or she is told that his charge is special because he holds a foreign passport, many will accuse the hotel of something else. That feeling of being discriminated against is not good.
It did not feel good to leave the U.S. to return to your continent and be discriminated against for no other reason but where you come from. It is too expensive to do business in many African countries. We do not need foreigners to tell us that, and yet, that should be our advantage. The institutions that should support all without discrimination on the basis of one's ethnicity, religion, language, region of region etc, are not working well -- a point that Professor Mbaku has emphasized on this forum. It is hard to get appointment in a Nigerian University that is located outside your region of origin even if the person is qualified. And the university is administered by highly and well-educated people who went to school in the West. Not that the U.S. is a perfect place by any means but many of us would not have gotten teaching positions here without knowing anyone, if the Nigerian logic is to be applied. In the short run, people feel it is alright to discriminate against others because of their ethnicity, region of origin or religion, but in the long run, this in my view would lead to the "tragedy of the commons." In the world we live in today, building a modern society on primordial sentiments will only take you so far.
In the past I came across a book that contained the names of Africans arranged by country of origin, who have received scholarship from the U.S. government to study in the U.S. They went to great schools and received an excellent education. But when I saw how their presence back in Nigeria did not create the "miracle" many expected, I wondered then as a graduate student whether my scholarly enthusiasm was in vain in the sense that there is nothing I will learn that this great men and women did not. But see where our continent is. A country in Nigeria is still asking questions that ought to have been resolved long ago.
Well, even if Donald Trump did not say that, let us try something and see how our brothers and sisters in Africa will react. Why not have a campaign that will mobilize all Africans in Diaspora to hold a convention in their countries of origin in one same year and more or less at the same time. The goal will be to send a message about the potential and relative failure of Africa. Long ago, I read that there are more than 30,000 professionals of African origin working in the Western world. Now it may be 100,000. Even if they do not return to Africa but there is a serious effort to uplift the standard of living of everyone in the continent, it will make a huge difference.
But as Carl Jung argues, what we know and how we know it is an intellectual question and process, but what we decide to do with it, is a moral and ethical one. No matter how many educated people we have in Africa or Nigeria in particular, we need to add to that some kind of moral and ethical commitment which will guide how we use our privileges or education. Otherwise, many will just use their privileged education to take care of themselves. I was shocked when I saw the name of Professor Ayu, former Senate president among the Dasukigate Benecifiaries because he taught me political sociology at the University of Jos and he was a fine scholar with Leftist commitment then. I remember asking him so many questions in class and he said that my questions were good but to really get some of the answers, I need to join a political organization to see how things work.
We need to serve humanity in humility. It bothers me to remember my youthful hope for Nigeria, let alone Africa when I started my undergraduate studies, and now see the pain many of our people are going through. We then had a lot of hope that working hard will take us somewhere. And the desire was to help others.
But now it is even worse to think of dying and leaving Africa as the region with the highest concentration of poverty. I believe with honest and servant-leadership that is committed to serving the people, our problems in the continent are not insurmountable. Why we cannot get our heads together as people still bothers me and gives me sleepless nights.
Let us pray Trump is wrong and let us hope that with or without his statement, we Africans will unite to move the continent forward especially the lives of those that are treated like "non-persons." Thank you very much.
Samuel
On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 5:41 AM, Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi.opara@gmail.com> wrote:
If Trump becomes POTUS and makes good his threat to expel Nigerians living in the US(assuming he actually said so and assuming it is possible), Nigeria would become a developed country in two years.
CAO
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