Emmanuel Majebi
19 November 2008
opinion
Lagos — It is always so amazing how we Africans can claim a good thing once it has become a finished product. We love to eat a very well baked cake but we are never patient enough to go through the chores of baking the cake. Sportsmen for example practically leave these shore frustrated and they get groomed by foreign nations and as soon as a they become stars in Europe, Asia or America you hear Nigerians saying ' Oh he is a Nigerian ." Up until this very day a friend of mine insists on calling the Arsenal Football Club of London star Emmanuel Adebayor, a Nigerian, but I never fail to point out to him that Adebayor is Togolese true and through. (excuse the pun). His father may have been born in Nigeria, even he too was born in Nigeria but the country that gave him succor and made him somebody is Togo. QED.
Our leaders in Nigeria are always so consumed in their greed and manic rush to grab and grab and grab that they pay little or no attention to human development. The welfare of the Human Beings that in habit the place called Nigeria is usually of little consequence to our leaders. Once they have gouged themselves full with our commonwealth they declare mission accomplished and everyone else can survive the best they can. If you dare ask them why they neglect the people at best you would hear the time worn excuse for incompetence "government cannot do everything " or at worst you may get labeled a subversive and find yourself facing sedition or other more serious charges or simply bumped off!
If is probably the same tough survival situation in most countries in Africa and conditions of hopelessness like these probably drove Barack Hussein Obama snr to Hawaii to pursue further studies where he met Ann Dunham and they sired Barack Jnr.
Barack Jr should probably thank his stars that Barack Snr did not contrive to smuggle him back to Kenya when he was leaving the United States. If that had happened and Barack had grown up in Kenya, what would have become of him is better left to imagination.
Barack's father is of the Luo tribe a minority tribe in Kenya. And just last year a man from that tribe Odinga clearly won a presidential election but somehow the powers that be in Kenya deprived him of a clear victory and now he has to settle to for hurriedly contrived position of Prime Minister. So could Barack Jr as a Luo in Kenya have ever dreamt of ruling Kenya?? The answer to that question is blowing in the wind.
In Nigeria too we have so Balkanized our country that a man's worth is only determined by where you come from. Once you say good morning to a fellow Nigeria the next thing they are asking you is "What is your state of origin" or "what your tribe..is" And God help you if like most Nigerians he has made up his mind that people from "x" state or "y" tribe are no good; then you may as well be trying to squeeze blood out of stone to attempt to get anything from him. Barack's father could leave Kogelo a small village in Kenya and Sire a son in far away America, and Americans could accept that son as their own and accept him up to the level of electing him their President. That type of a story is fantasy in Nigeria and can only happen in America. Today, for example, with the configuration of politics in my state I come from it is practically impossible for me to aspire to be Governor of that state, because the Governorship of that State has been permanently zoned to a tribe where I do not belong. I have chosen to live in Lagos and I have so lived for over 20 years but it would also be practically impossible for me to aspire to become governor of Lagos because I am not an "indigene" of Lagos. I was born and bred in Kaduna state, but I cannot also dare aspire to be Governor of that state. It would thus be regarded as a capital offence for me to even dare to nurse the ambition of ruling the nation, when those from the majority tribes have not yet finished rotating the position? Yet I am supposed to be a Nigerian?? Not even my children who were born and bred in Lagos can claim any proprietry rights here in Lagos.
A few days after Obama won hishistoric electoral victory I came across some Nigerians who were celebrating Obama's victory wildly as if they had won a jackpot. I was able to talk to one of the delirious celebrants. I asked what the jubilation was all about and they said that and I quote " the back man has finally arrived it shows that the black man is not as backwards as the White people thought " I almost burst out laughing!! I told my new friend that I was sorry to burst his bubble of celebration and as far as I am concerned I do not see how Obama's victory can by any stretch of imagination be seen as a victory for Africa. I told him that as far as I was concerned the victory of the Obama election belonged squarely to the Americans. It is a triumph of the American electoral system not anything to do with Africans. It is the triumph of the maturity of the American national ideals! And if Barack is going to ever succeed as American President he has his American ideals to thank for that. There is nothing African about Barack apart from the blood that flows in his veins and when my African brothers finish their delirious celebration they ought to pause for a while and ask themselves some hard questions.
If we are celebrating the ideals that made it possible for Obama a black man and a member of a very minor group in America to end up as President of America, why is so difficult for us to use those same ideals to run our lives here??
- Majebi wrote from Lagos
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