BEING a citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is a territory which comes with a daily overdose of humiliations and indignities often authored by the leadership and officials of the Nigerian state. As I have often stated, Nigerian officials get away with making indignity the foundation of a Nigerian citizen’s experience of his country because they first took the precaution of destorying education and civics. Without civics, the citizen does not know that he lacks dignity. What you do not know cannot harm you.
Often, the authors of your indignity as a citizen – your political leaders and elite – are themselves victims of their own ignorance for they are continuators of a paradigm of institutional and individual genuflection to the white man – a carryover from the colonial era. In Nigeria – as indeed in the rest of the continent – the sovereignty of the state and dignity of the citizen stop where the imperium of white Western overlords begins.
Consider President Buhari. Recently, he hosted some American visitors. It is better to hear from Mr. Buhari directly: “Today I received a delegation from the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, USA, here to assess our pre-election preparations. It was an opportunity for me to again assure that I will ensure a level playing field for all contestants in 2019.”
Let us first thank Allah that no Nigerian Institute or research and policy outfit requested such a reassurance from President Buhari. They would have gotten no response for he has a robust record of validating and engaging only foreign actors and audiences (preferably Western), expressing his mind on weighty national issues only on foreign soil, and treating his audiences at home with haughty, withdrawn condescension (worst case scenario) or galling insouciance (best case scenario).
This bespeaks an inferiority complex which makes the neocolonized African leader sacrifice the dignity and self-respect of his people through symbolic acts of constant genuflection to Western actors and audiences. Consider the mood, tone, and optics of President Buhari’s statement above. The President of a sovereign African state is annoucing gleefully that some Americans are “here to assess our pre-election preparations.” On what basis? Or, as we say in Nigeria, what for? Just who are these Americans to be assessing anything here?
Furthermore, how did these Americans gain such easy access to the Nigerian President? This is the equivalent of Nigeria’s Idayat Hassan heading out to Washington with some of her colleagues at the Centre for Democracy and Development to assess the level of America’s progress in dealing with issues of electoral corruption and challenges such as Russian interference, voter suppression, gerrymadering, and assorted practices of widespread rigging by American Republicans. While in Washington, they saunter casually to the White House for an audience with President Trump who then proceeds to announce to the American people that he has reassured the Nigerian delegation that America is better prepared for the next elections.
President Buhari likes to talk about the partnership between Nigeria and the United States. However, it does not take genius to understand that this is akin to the partnership between the horse and its rider. And if you think that this surrender of Nigeria’s dignity and self-respect to meddlesome and overbearing Americans was limited to President Buhari, you are wrong. Genuflection to the West is a sickness shared by Nigeria’s elite across every divide. It is an African disease.
Consider the case of Atiku Abubakar, the Presidential candidate of PDP. At about the time President Buhari was genuflecting to his American visitors in Abuja, Mr. Abubakar dispatched Senator Ben Murray-Bruce and Mr. Reno Omokri to the United States for consultations with Mr. Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve and one of the Archangels of a neoliberal approach to global economics through which the IMF and the World Bank set Africa back by at least three decades. Neoliberalism and its market fundamentalism gave Africa SAPs, wars, famine, disease, poverty, infrastructure collapse, brain drain, loss of hope and dignity.
From the Bank to the Fund, the owners of the neoliberal philosophy have been apologizing to Africa for wrong policy prescriptions. But Mr. Alan Greenspan is white, powerful, and very American. It wouldn’t do for Mr. Atiku Abubabakar to envisage running the affairs of 180 million Africans without the say-so and blessing of such an illustrious American instructor.
Enter my aburo, Mr. Tolu Ogunlesi, a Special Assistant to the President on social media. In a presidential media team peopled with appalling and reprehensible characters such as Femi Adesina and Lauretta Onochie, Mr. Ogunlesi has been a shining star. He has no choice. He is from my constituency, literature and the arts. He is a writer who knows that there are too many of us who unrelentingly expect the highest standards of him. So far, he has been an excellent Ambassador of my constituency.
However, he is still drinking that water they drink when they get to the Villa so one must expect mild effects. Thus, during the week that everybody in Abuja seemed to have caught the bug of genuflection to American masters, Tolu gleefully shared a video of the American Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Stuart Symington, lecturing a smitten Nigerian audience on the advantages of not stealing the money. Tolu, it bears repeating, comes from literature and has read very widely in a branch of knowledge we call “postcolonial theory and discourses”.
Unlike President Buhari and M. Atiku Abubakar, Tolu Ogunlesi has no excuse of ignorance and should know that an Ambassador representing one of the most corrupt American presidents in history, whose Foundation has just been closed for unbridled corruption, should not be lecturing in Nigeria about how and why not to steal the money. This is not denying our issues and our problems. It is just that not every mouth is accredited to run errands into our lives and issues. From President Buhari to Atiku Abubakar to Tolu Ogunlesi, last week saw the most consistent performances of submission to America, King of Nigeria, by the Nigerian elite. Hopefully, we will see less of that as people educate themselves on the significance of optics.
and then