Nigerians, who lost their lives or property in South African attacks over the years, deserve our sympathy. So do Nigerian professionals, who are engaged in legitimate businesses there but who are being negatively stereotyped by some South Africans as sponges on their state. Special sympathy also goes to Nigerian children, who are bullied in South African schools.
The culpability of the South African government lies in its complicity in those attacks, as exemplified by (a) occasional hate speech by some South African officials; (b) the look-away attitude of the police in the course of the attacks; and (c) the unwarranted airport investigation delay of Nigerians being evacuated from South Africa last week.
True, as Professor Bolaji Akinyemi pointed out recently, the South African attacks violate international charters, including the African Union’s, and must be addressed as such. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that the Nigerian victims are paying dearly for for their country’s inability to create a suitable environment for them to thrive, leading them to seek livelihood abroad.
Accordingly, a two-throng approach must be adopted. On the one hand, the Nigerian government should assess the damage to the lives and property of the Nigerian victims and pursue diplomatic and possibly legal means of ensuring appropriate compensation for them.
On the other hand, as discussed below, special attention must be paid to our own domestic policy, which should focus on creating a suitable environment for all citizens to realise their potentials.
Given the long history of the South African attacks, it could be argued that the Nigerian government should have intervened much earlier. Nevertheless, its prompt three-prong response to the recent wave of attacks is commendable.
First, the government promptly stopped the reprisal attacks, which would have replicated the South African actions being condemned, while also disrupting local South African businesses, such as Shoprite and MTN, in which Nigerians are franchise owners or workers. Second, the government sent an envoy to South Africa to intervene and verify the nature and scope of the attacks. Third, the government offered assistance to Nigerians, who were willing to leave South Africa.
While the voluntary evacuation of Nigerians from South Africa might be good as a short-term solution, the prevention of the dispersal of Nigerians abroad is the most desirable solution.
However, before outlining the long-term solution, it is important to comment briefly on two trends in the ongoing discussion of the South African attacks on Nigerians that are not necessarily helpful in solving the underlying problem of a country that is unable to nurture the aspirations of its citizens.
The first is the don’t-they-know argument, which focuses on the contributions of Nigeria to the liberation of South Africa from apartheid. The category of South Africans involved in the attacks knew little or nothing about the Nigerian contributions. They were either unborn, too young, illiterate, or had limited access to information during the apartheid years.
Those in the political class, who should have known, are now too consumed in their newfound power to remember those who got them out of the woods. It is a lesson to the Nigerian government to desist from playing Big Brother and refocus its foreign policy in aid of its domestic agenda.
The second not-so-helpful trend in the discussion is the nostalgic reference to a glorious Nigerian past. This reference is useful only to the extent that it reminds us of that era. However, the goal now should not be to return Nigeria to that past, because the world has moved far beyond it. Rather, the goal is to make Nigeria competitive in a world of rapid socio-economic and technological changes.
The first step is to strengthen our institutions and make them work. Those in need of modification, such as the constitution and electoral laws, should be modified as appropriate. We have all the institutions of a modern state but they are disrespected and continue to be weakened by the political class and public servants. This downward slide should be reversed.
We need to move from governance failures to governance successes, by respecting the institutional framework of our democracy, including the rule of law. Achievable agenda to make Nigeria competitive in, say, 2050, should be set and implemented according to world standards.
In order to discourage the continuing exodus of Nigerians, we must fill the huge gaps in our infrastructure, especially roads, power, housing and necessary public utilities. The huge gaps in education, healthcare, and the agricultural value chain also have to be filled. These steps must be taken in order to create the necessary environment for industrialisation and manufacturing and to generate meaningful employment opportunities.
It is also necessary to fill these gaps in order to strengthen the country’s security architecture, while also making kidnapping, banditry, robbery, and cyber crimes less and less attractive. Retrieving guns and policing or militarising the roadways offer only temporary solutions. These crimes thrive in the face of high unemployment, increasing job losses, and abject poverty.
It must be realised that there are crucial gaps in our development. For example, we’ve been trying hard to take advantage of the fourth industrial revolution, characterised by the Internet and digital technology, without maximising the advantages of the third industrial revolution, characterised by the rise of electronics, telecommunications, and computers. This failure is due in part to the inadequacy of infrastructural facilities. Consequently, most of the few industries and manufacturing plants that came with the third industrial revolution collapsed before the fourth industrial revolution dawned on us.
Jobs disappeared with the collapse of the industries, while job seekers increased with population explosion. Some Nigerian youths responded by seeking financial succour abroad, while others embraced various crimes at home and abroad. At the same time, the disrespect for professionals by successive military administrations and the stifling of work environments led to gradual brain drain.
The result of these developments is a large number of Nigerians dispersed across the globe.
True, occasional mention is made about the exceptional contributions of Nigerian professionals abroad, Nigeria remains negatively stereotyped across the globe for cyber crimes and drug peddling.
This brings us back to the South African attacks, blamed on high rate of unemployment, job losses, drug peddling, and fraudulent activities associated with Nigerians and other foreigners. These problems also exist in Nigeria and must be addressed before the anger is turned on the government.