16 Jun 2006 |
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How 'they' see us
But the dust had hardly settled on the CNN story when on Wednesday, the BBC World Service aired a special live, interactive programme on Nigeria between 5 and 6 pm. It was an open programme: "Africa Have Your Say" in which selected participants from all over Africa and Europe were required to give their impressions about Nigeria; these participants included non-Nigerians from Cameroun, Malawi, South Africa..., Nigerians at home in Nigeria (Lagos, Enugu...); Nigerians in diaspora (South Africa, Sweden...) and Nigerians who have changed their nationality. The BBC programme had not been pre-determined; the responses were spontaneous, and in fact the presenters had tried to be kind to Nigeria by focusing on her positive aspects and future possibilities. I had been invited to participate in the programme but I arrived late at the studio, due to traffic problems. The other participant had had to wait near the BBC office at least two hours earlier because he didn't want to be held up in the traffic! To arrive early for any appointment in Lagos, you have to set out at least two hours earlier because the traffic is unpredictable, and if you are unlucky, the event is on one of those rainy days, you could spend the whole day on the road. I eventually arrived and ended up simply listening. The neutrality of the presenters notwithstanding, it was the same story as in the CNN programme. I was angry, frustrated, amused and in many instances, I felt like defending Nigeria. One Emmanuel from Cameroun who had lived and schooled in Nigeria had nice things to say about Nigeria. He observed that Nigerians are "aggressive" and that whenever he is in their midst, he feels "challenged". But such positive comments were few. One lady from Malawi said "Nigeria has lots of beautiful girls but scandalous". Another fellow observed that Nigerians are famous for their "crookedness; they are not straightforward. People don't like Nigerians". Both Malawians and Kenyans complained about too much witchcraft in Nigerian movies. Text messages were sent to the presenters, also full of complaints. Some people said they know Nigeria for its oil and the arts. Fine, but the general impression is that this is a country of demons where nothing works, a country of contradictions and unfulfilled potentials. Nothing was ever more frustrating than the comments of Nigerians about their own country. So much pessimism and anger particularly from Nigerians in diaspora: One fellow called Sola, who confessed that he had changed his nationality, was very bitter. "Nigeria is like a bad marriage", he declaimed. "It will collapse", he added. He is obviously very happy with his new country. But I felt like asking him: does that change who he is? Does the mere change of colour in one's international passport change a man's true identity, background and heritage? It is perhaps pointless to debate the various perceptions of Nigeria; there is a sense in which the BBC and CNN have offered useful service by letting Nigerians know what others think about them, and what Nigerians think about themselves. There are lessons to be learnt from the continuous negative representation of Nigeria in the international media. Patriotism overflowing with emotions may be an appropriate response from those of us who live in Nigeria and are actually putting up with so much and still managing to be happy in the midst of it all, what Jenny the BBC presenter called our "resilience", but a more useful response would be to deconstruct the content of local and international responses and seek to use that to re-examine Nigeria as a brand and a country. In the past few years, the Federal Government has been working on an image project through which it seeks to improve the country's international standing and turn it into an attractive destination for tourism, goodwill and investment. The import of the programmes on BBC and CNN is in part that this has not really worked. Nigeria as a brand is a failed brand. It is rejected by Nigerians themselves and treated with great suspicion by outsiders. If we have any strengths, we have not managed to market them as advantages. The root of the problem is in part the crisis of citizenship. Nigeria works fantastically well as they say, at the individual level. Don't mind the Malawians, South Africans. Camerounians and Kenyans, this country has the greatest and the richest human resource in Africa. Nigerians have a natural gift for distinction. As private individuals, they want to excel; they want the best for themselves. They are expressive, eternally optimistic and fiercely independent. But unfortunately, we have not been able to pull all that energy together to create a country that works. We are in a real sense not yet a nation. We are all trapped in the private sphere, in individual and ethnic compartments. For us, Nigeria is an abstraction; it is a distant idea imposed through colonialism; and so we are faced with that original dilemma: can a nation be built without citizens, without that sense of commitment to the motherland? The same Sola who dismissed Nigeria as a bad marriage would never have said the same thing about his Yoruba ethnic group. He may have changed his nationality, he may have given up on Nigeria, but he is not likely to ever give up on his identity as a Yoruba man. Similarly, the fellow who declared on CNN that he is corrupt because every other Nigerian is corrupt would never say the same thing, specifically about his ethnic origin. The task ahead remains how to turn Nigeria into a nation with citizens. The pessimism of the average Nigerian derives from frustrations with the leadership and governance process in the country, rather than the Nigerian character. International media often makes the mistake of assuming that it is the Nigerian character that is the problem. Professor Kole Omotoso contributing to the discussion from South Africa had tried to make this distinction when he noted that he may have given up on Nigeria as a brand, but that he will never give up on Nigerians as a people. The truth of the matter is that the credit card fraudsters, the con artists, the drug couriers who seem to attract the attention of the international media constitute a minority. The majority of Nigerians is made up of honest, hardworking persons who are trying to earn a living. There may be problems in terms of the value system, in terms of an obsession with money for its own sake. But there is nothing in Nigeria that is so different from other countries. There are more criminals in America than there are in the whole of Nigeria. How about the ENRON scandal, the mismanagement of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, the robberies and killings on the streets of America: do these necessarily make every American a gangster? Indians and Koreans come to this country to do business and they treat our people badly but I don't consider either Indians or Koreans superior to Nigerians. If the CNN were to investigate Italians and Hispanics, its investigators would find a lot to put on air, except they may not consider it politically correct to do so. Malawians and Kenyans complain about too much witchcraft in Nigeria: they are responding to fiction not reality. Nigerian home videos are shown on MultiChoice, so they base their impressions on what they see on television. American films are full of violence but it hasn't stopped people from thinking that it is "God's own country". Nigeria is not as Hellish as they imagine. South Africans are flocking to Nigeria and setting up businesses through which they exploit the population to make huge profits! Average Americans come here and live in big mansions that they would never dream of owning in their own country. Indians, Lebanese and Koreans set up factories here and they never want to go back home. The Chinese are also flocking to Nigeria, and setting up Chinatown everywhere. Other Africans from Benin, Cameroun, Ghana, Togo, Niger and Chad struggle, illegally to obtain Nigerian passports and identity cards. Portfolio investors from Europe and the United States are all over our hotels, looking for business. It may well be that they are exploiting the country's limitations but if this was truly Hell, they wouldn't stay this long! Nonetheless, there is a lot that Nigeria and Nigerians have to do. First, we must resolve the issue of nationhood. Without a nation, we do not have a country in the real sense of it. There are too many issues that divide Nigerians. We lost it all because we have mismanaged our country. It is not enough to blame the British colonialists. Creating a nation would include setting up a rewards and sanctions system. Having lived under military rule for so long, Nigerians wherever they are believe that there is no system that cannot be compromised, beaten or cheated. And that the individual can escape sanctions after doing so. This encourages the widespread disregard for the rule of law that is common among Nigerians. When you ask a Nigerian: "where are you from?" He is most likely to look at the ground before offering an answer. Americans and the British don't look down, they look up because they have something to be proud of. Nigerian leaders now and in the future must create for the people something that they can hold up as symbols of their Nigerianness, and which will be recognised by the entire world. Oil used to be a strong symbol of our national strength, but now it is associated with poverty, violence and terrorism in the Niger Delta. Football used to be a veritable symbol as well, but it has been so mismanaged, we are not even at the current World Cup. In Liberia, our soldiers ended up as cannon fodders. The Americans came and rescued their soldiers before the blow out. Even during Holy pilgrimage to Mecca, it is only Nigerians that create problems for the Saudi Arabian authorities: they are usually the last to arrive and the last to leave. Leadership is central but the difference that we seek will not come through mere propaganda, or by junketing all over the world. The best way to sell Nigeria to the world is to transform the conditions at home, humanise the country, address the crisis of social development, and engage Nigerians in diaspora and turn them into volunteer ambassadors for their motherland. If our roads are motorable, access to social infrastructure is regularly guaranteed, and there are jobs for school leavers, the people would become less angry because they can see the value in their citizenship. Then of course, this would become another country, in our eyes and in the eyes of the world.
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The image of Nigeria and that of its citizens was the subject of much representation and examination in the international media in the last few days, specifically on CNN and BBC. The CNN on Sunday, June 11 had aired a special documentary titled "How To Rob A Bank" in which some Nigerians living in the Houston area in Texas, United States had been shown to be master fraudsters who are adept in the art of credit card forgery and identity theft. There were Nigerians on the programme who helped to confirm this stereotype, including those who confessed that corruption is a way of life in the Nigerian society. For sure, there are criminals in other nationalities, but in the international media and most especially CNN it is often so easy and convenient to present Nigeria as the global headquarters of crime. Frank Nweke, the Minister of Information has since protested, noting that the CNN portraiture of Nigeria was tendentious and unfair. Okay. 
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