Jason Osai
9 November 2008
opinion
Port Harcourt — Just before midnight on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, I retired to bed having stayed home all day and watched the US elections reports on CNN. Just before I went to bed, Obama was leading but that was still early in the election and there was room for an upset; and in my heart I honestly expected an upset.
At the onset of the election campaigns, I was certain Obama would not make it through the Democratic Party primaries; in my heart of hearts, I believed that Senator Hilary Clinton was going to get the ticket of the party. That position was a reflection of my knowledge of the US of the 1970s, especially in rural America. That was when, as students, we smuggled our Caucasian dates into our hostels or to motels aided by hooded unisex winter coats for a weekend of sharing and caring. At the time, there was still strong residue of Ku Klux Klan (KKK) or the hangover of their satanic exploits of old. So walking down the streets of rural America with a Caucasian date in tow was a voluble invitation to the neo-Klan. Even in the metropolis, it was an unusual sight at the time and it attracted attention. Never did I or anyone of that generation at that time imagine that an African-American would one day emerge president of the United States of America; at least not in our life time.
When at 4am, Wednesday, November 5, 2008, I flicked on the TV set, which was permanently on CNN, and saw that Obama maintained a very comfortable lead even prior to the conclusion of results from the traditional Democratic States of California and Washington with their huge Electoral College vote capacity, I was overtaken with trepidation. Is this real? Is this possible in my life time? I asked myself. Shortly thereafter, the results from those states came and Obama had not just crossed the magic line of 270 Electoral College votes but grossed 383; a landslide, if you ask me.
As the CNN anchorman pronounced Obama as the next president of the United States of America, at 5am, I burst into tears. Shortly thereafter, Jennifer and the kids came into the leaving room for morning devotion and where shocked to find me wailing. They were thus confused when they saw on CNN that Obama had won. "Did you want McCain to win?" They asked; and my reply was a roaring cry and of course they joined me in filial loyalty not knowing what to think. Luckily, they sighted the Reverend Jesse Jackson on TV in tears and thereafter, they also saw Oprah Winfrey and many other Americans of all races also in tears; then they concluded that I was shedding tears of joy. Jackson, as a young activist, was in the center of the civil rights movement of the sixties under the tutelage of incomparable Reverend Martin Luther King who, at that momentous moment, dreamt of a day when whites and blacks would walk down the streets of America hand in hand. Jackson was also there in Memphis, Tennessee when Reverend King was slain for his audacity. So, were my tears tears of joy? The answer is yes and no: they were tears of joy for America and tears of sorrow for Nigeria.
I spent summer 1976 at the beaches of Rio de Janeiro and observed the racial harmony, which contrasted with what obtained in the US at the time. Young men and women of all races held hands displaying their amorous intentions as they basked in the sun on the sprawling beaches of Copa Cabana. In 2002, I was back in Rio and on the beaches of Copa Cabana; what I saw was an alarming number of "zebras" (products of interracial relationships). My conclusion was that these zebras were products of the interracial relationships of the mid-1970s. Today, the US has taken the quantum leap into the future of racial harmony by electing an African-American (a zebra) as president. By this singular act, the US has taken the lead in the reversal of the Babelian dispersal as narrated in the literature of Judeo-Christian theology. To this extent, my tears were tears of joy for the US and humanity; for Obama is African, he is also of the Abrahamic Stock and he is a blue-blooded American. Therefore, there is an element of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (the three religions that sprouted from the same spiritual root) in his genealogy.
On the other hand, those tears were tears of sorrow; sorrow for Nigeria: a country that most members of my generation rushed home to and were shocked to find that what we left behind had ceased to exist; a country in which holding on to the American ideals imbibed over the years of sojourn in that country makes you a permanent misfit; a country which, over the years, things have deteriorated to the point that once in a while we ask ourselves, in our quite moments, whether we did the right thing in coming home; a country where knowing how to do your job well and insisting on doing things right is tantamount to career suicide; a country where if you do not steal in public office your family, relatives and society in general see you as an idiotic fool; a country where people are still locked in the golden cages of history; where ethnicity and religious bigotry still hold sway; a country where the law makers are the first to break the laws and the leaders connive in a colossal conspiracy of silence to loot the treasuries while the complaisant and docile citizenry applaud the charade, which the leaders call anticorruption crusade.
At the dawn of November 5, 2008, I shed tears: tears of joy for the United States of America; tears of sorrow for Nigeria.
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