What does Xenophobia mean to Nigeria?
Nigeria and South Africa are two important countries to the continent’s economy and development, especially against the backdrop of the recently signed African Continental Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA).
The Gross Domestic Products (GDP) of both account for an estimated US$725.583billion and when this figure is measured against Africa’s total GDP of US$2.2trillion, Nigeria and South Africa alone holds about 30% of the continent’s GDP. Succinctly, out of every ten dollars spent in Africa, about three of those flow from and between the two countries.
Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili reiterated similar fact when she spoke to a group of Nigerian professionals and entrepreneurs that met her on the sideline of the just concluded World Economic Forum (WEF).
She had mentioned to the delegation that one percent growth on each side of the economies of Nigeria and South Africa translates to half a percent growth for the whole Africa. And if you place this data side-by-side the fact that Nigeria and South Africa have over thirty bilateral agreements – one of the highest bi-national agreements between two African nations – only then can we appreciate that the destruction of businesses owned by investors and entrepreneurs from both Nigeria and South Africa amount to retrogression.
South Africa brings strong corporate footprint into the African economic landscape, whereas the peculiar circumstances of Nigeria make the citizens stronger in informal and semi-formal sectors. MTN and DSTV might have the technologies and infrastructures to provide their services, but Nigerians have a way of creating a retail chain around them to ensure that cash-flow trickles into personal pockets. South Africa can create a system but Nigerians know how to work with and around a system to have a bite from the pie.
Nigerians cannot be boxed; they are disruptors of a system for good. They know how to trade; they know how to find the missing links in any economic chain. They have a never-say-die spirit. While South African businesses are anchored on innovations, Nigerians are creative and adventurous and both approaches are relevant to the movement of goods and services in the continent. What South African companies create; Nigerians will distribute to places beyond the widest consideration of those who even created them.
Consequently, xenophobia, no, Afrophobia, or, better still, Nigeria-phobia, does not need to be taken with levity. The army of critics who came out last week to attack Mrs. Ezekwesili for attending the WEF ignored these vital facts. They did not see why it was important to have a Nigerian strong voice at the WEF for the protection of Nigerian owned businesses. They ignored the fact that we in South Africa are part of the group of Nigerians who make remittances home – we bring back part of the money that South African companies take from Nigeria through our small corner shops.
Nigerian Community: What have we learnt?
By some kind of coincidence the violence this year occurred about the same period as the one in 2008 around the week of the WEF. I remember vividly that in 2008, I was sitting in the office of the Ogoni Solidarity Forum (OSF) in Cape Town. The news of violent attacks and looting of shops belonging to foreigners was announced by three activists that rushed into the office.
My wife and I had been apprehensive for days as we saw images from violent scenes on television. It started in Johannesburg; we prayed for days that the law enforcement agents will be able to stop it. The day that it started in Cape Town, we were about to close when three of our comrades came in. They told us that violence has finally broken out in parts of the city.
It saddens as l look back and realise that Nigerians missed opportunities to organize and strengthen their community in South Africa since 2008. The feeling amongst the South Africans that foreigners must leave their country has increased and very prevalent than it was in 2008.
Worse still, is the subliminal message that other nationalities but Nigerians cannot be tolerated. The current attacks in Pretoria started because a group of taxi drivers erroneously believed that a Nigerian drug dealer had killed one of their members. It turned out to be a Tanzanian that killed the South African.
Also, the 2008 attacks were mainly in informal settlements and townships where Nigerians are not conspicuous, compared to 2019 where looting of shops occurred in the main city of Johannesburg – where foreign owned shops are predominantly owned by Nigerians – the attacks for all intent and purpose was targeted at Nigerians than others. On this ground, the voice of Mrs. Ezekwesili at the WEF for Nigerians was relevant and timely.
But Ezekwesili did not only speak for Nigerians, she also asked the Nigerian Community delegation that met with her a lot of questions around how much are they organised. It is the questions that she had raised at the interactive session at Southern Sun Hotel in Cape Town that prompted me to reflect back on how the community organisation which started in 2008; reactionary to xenophobic attacks has still not fared better. The process of organizing Nigerians in 2008 started in my office at the Community House.
The three comrades that came to my office to notify me of the attacks later grew and became an intervention group. They were concerned. They were worried about how my wife and I felt. It was agreed we should stay back in the office that night. Our security was paramount to them. They got us food items, sleeping materials and access to the shower in the building.
I was asked to reach out to other Ogonis and Nigerians in the city: they should come over to the Community House for shelter; the activists brought more food items to cater for the group that had taken refuge in the building. The attacks intensified and within 72 hours, a crowd of Nigerians and other African nationals had converged in the premises. I was asked to put together a report. Two reports were written, one on the situation as it affected different nationals. The second report focused on Nigerians.
The camaraderie which the Nigerian only report elicited was the impetus that gave birth to the Nigerian Union Western Cape (NUWC). There was a seeming epiphany amongst Nigerians that they cannot continue to be loosely organised on the basis of ethnic, local government and state enclaves. Leaders from different groups converged regularly to discuss the welfare of their fellow citizens and the way forward.
While we were busy organising ourselves, news of the coming of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Dua to attend the WEF inflamed the passion for an organisation for Nigerians. An advance team of ministers arrived to see things for themselves ahead of Yar’Adua. The ministers wanted a written report which would inform Nigerian government position; that is how the Nigerian only report came about. I recall this background to highlight that after ten years; Nigerian community has not been able to take steps to change the narrative about our nationality in South Africa.
But there was a plan for Nigerians in Cape Town
So much could have been achieved in the last ten years if not for clannish politics that bedeviled the community. Great ideas and plans had been thrown out of the window because of those who propounded them even without thinking twice. The meeting with Ezekwesili was also a rude awakening that Nigerians in South Africa must wake up and organize themselves. The delegation to meet the former minister was led by Mr. Cosmos Echie, the Acting President of Nigerian Community Cape Town (NCWC), an umbrella organization that transformed from the NUWC formed in 2008.
The meeting with her was good but what was missing was our inability to provide enough proofs for her to make stronger case during the WEF. The WEF became a platform to trumpet the case of Nigerian citizens. There couldn’t have been a better platform for the voice of a Nigerian global citizen to show our contributions to South Africa.
At a time that the host country was busy demonising Nigerians, Mrs. Ezekwesili used the platform to defend us. If I were part of the Nigerian government, I would ignore partisan differences and congratulate her for leveraging on her personal profile to state the case of Nigerians. It would have been more productive if the Nigerian government had reached out to her to speak in stronger voice.
She spoke on our behalf. But she also spoke to us as a group. She told us that Nigerian entrepreneurs and professionals must make themselves relevant in the economic mainstream of South Africa. She stated that if Nigerians could be known to be adding value to the country, the negative perception fueling hatred against Nigerians will abet.
She admonished us on the need for our entrepreneurs and professionals to make collective footprint in the socioeconomic landscape of South Africa. Our meeting with her took us back to the main argument of Mr. Austine Kedi-Ewroh and Mr. Cosmos Echie who contested for the offices of President and Vice-President of the NCWC in July 2018. Both canvassed for a change of the narrative over Nigerians through socioeconomic activities and professional visibility.
For the first time in the history of our community; a plan was articulated in a manner that Nigerians clearly saw projects that would elevate them through collaborations and a collective.
Their plan had two components, namely; (a) providing community services and, (b) building a socio-economic active community. They told their compatriots that the first part was not enough to change the narrative around Nigerians. Their approach was to bring together Nigerian entrepreneurs through crowd-funding.
They planned to promote Nigerian owned businesses and to strengthen them with resources collectively raised so that Nigerian businesses can employ at least two Nigerian each. They planned that each of the businesses would be aided to expand; in turn these businesses will make monetary contributions into a trust fund for community services.
The funds contributed will be used for the training of Nigerians who did not have the skills needed to make them relevant within the South African formal sectors. They also planned to raise funds to buy a building which was to be designated Nigerian house; it was to serve as an event center and provide shelter to vulnerable compatriots.
Mr. Kedi-Ewroh failed in his bid to head the NCWC on the 29th of July 2018 by less than 50 votes for two reasons, the first being that the over 100 academics and intellectuals who had come out to vote for him could not endure the disorganisation and long queues. Secondly, due to sympathy and loyalty to tribal sentiments and hegemony. The man who became president of the NCWC jettisoned the plans.
He argued that the organization does not need to follow the route of socio-economic involvement. He believed that the plan was too idealistic for an “ordinary community” organisation. He told people that none of the ten point agenda which Kedi-Ewroh and his team developed to position Nigerian entrepreneurs was necessary.
True to his words, he went about pursuing mundane activities, organising social gatherings that have no significance to the well being of his countrymen and women.
The aforementioned is not recalled to vilify anyone, except to say that as we sat around the table with Mrs. Ezekwesili, we intellectualised and pontificated without substance. If the plan that was presented to Nigerians in 2018 had been allowed to see the light of the day, when Mrs. Ezekwesili inquired about our organisational blueprint there would have been projects to affirm our ideas. She asked us about the population of Nigerian professionals in the Province, we could not give an accurate figure.
The team of Kedi-Ewroh and Echie reached out to Nigerian academics and intellectuals in the four different universities in Cape Town, besides hundreds of Nigerian students, they reached out to the Nigerian doctors, information was collected to ensure that a profile of Nigerians professionals was captured and published on a website. The plan was that at the touch of a button one can see the number of Nigerians in different professions and careers in Western Cape.
We sat at the table with Ezekwesili but there was no way to give the accurate amount of shops owned by Nigerians, how much they are worth, how much tax they are paying, how many franchises are ran by Nigerians and how many South Africans that are employed by Nigerians.
We could not tell exactly how many Nigerians are studying in each of the universities in Cape Town let alone South Africa; we relied on old information and facts acquired individually from other sources.
We elected to be conservative even though we know that we have serious footprints in every sector of the country. We were a reflection of Nigerian football; blessed with lot of quality players but unable to make a strong team.
