Muhammad Al-Ghazali
16 November 2009
analysis
Soon after the National Assembly confirmed him as the new Nigerian High Commissioner to the republic of South Africa, I asked the retired Brigadier-General Mohamed Buba Marwa about what he thought the main challenges would be at his new duty post. I posed the question with the firm belief that that the volume of trade was tilted hopelessly in favour of the former apartheid enclave. The retired general agreed with me and promised that it was among the issues that were high on his agenda.
Several months into his new office, however, the situation still had not changed for the better. At a time leading South African companies such as the communications giant MTN, and others in banking and hospitality industry like Stanbic Bank and the Protea Hotel group - to name only a few - are doing brisk business in Nigeria, it seemed to many South Africans that we could only export scammers and drug dealers to the rainbow nation! Apparently, such vices were the only expertise we possessed in abundance that the South Africans did not have.
The combined activities of such mean-hearted criminals in South Africa, across the Americas, Europe and Asia, along with the cumulative damage on the image of the nation and its honest citizens, was what prompted the Information and Communications Minister Dora Akunyili to embark on her still-born rebranding project to prove to the world that Nigeria was not all bad news.
But where Dora Akunyili's efforts at image restoration has attracted flak from all directions because it involves more rhetoric and razzmatazz than substance, what Marwa did penultimate weekend in South Africa was to provide sufficient proof that Nigeria should actually be envied for the quality of gifted and resourceful people it was capable of producing.
And if I got the drift from the events that unfolded correctly, for now, the efforts of the High Commissioner is not so much about addressing the huge trade imbalances between Nigeria and South Africa for now. Nigeria, with its collapsed social infrastructure and acute energy crises, has absolutely no hope of exporting finished goods to South Africa. With its massive industrial capacity, the nation is already a fully developed country located only on the African continent.
That perhaps explains the Nigerian High Commission's emphasis on creating a suitable and accommodating environment for Nigerians with sufficient skills and expertise to thrive in South Africa by highlighting the genuine efforts of our compatriots who have chosen not to follow the crooked road to infamy taken by a negligible few who continue to ridicule the nation's image abroad. It was a brilliant way of giving a human face to the 'good people' hinted by the 'rebrand Nigeria' slogan.
What therefore occurred at the Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand, Johannesburg, a few weeks ago, was not only an audacious attempt at advancing the economic interests of the nation by shoving the resume of a brilliant group of Nigerian professionals, intellectuals and entrepreneurs in the faces of a skeptical South African public. It was also a bold attempt at improving the image of the nation to whom Nigeria had become synonymous with bad news.
And there were many awards to go round on that day. The packed hall was informed that for every award given out there at least ten other deserving Nigerians resident in that part of the continent. One of the speakers even said that if all the Nigerian-born health workers in South Africa were to be withdrawn overnight the healthcare delivery system in the country would experience a crisis!
It was yet another brutal reminder of the extent of brain drain the country has experienced on a daily basis in the past three decades due to the paucity of suitable opportunities locally. And the problem is not restricted to South Africa alone. Nigerian doctors and medical professionals are also among the best in America and most of Europe.
Therefore, whether we accept it as a fact or not, the fact that our nation presently lacks the wherewithal to retain our best intellectuals and professionals is yet another damning indictment of the quality of leadership we have experienced in the past several decades.
For the nation to achieve anything meaningful, we must be prepared to address the drift, by putting in place the kind of social infrastructure that will enable all those Nigerians who have lost faith in the nation to bring their expertise home. The Ghanaians succeeded in doing exactly that several years ago and are now reaping the benefits in abundance.
For now though, General Marwa may have moved mountains to reverse the negative image of Nigeria among South Africans, but we can have few illusions that the situation is the same in other parts of the world. In that sense, it is not only the information and Communication Ministry that has a few lessons to learn from what transpired on the outskirts of Johannesburg on that day. Our Embassies in Washington DC, London, Paris, and Beijing can certainly take a cue from the contents and intention of the Nigeria Achievement Awards held in South Africa.
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