I love my
country... like a mother hopelessly loves that child that she fears will
eventually give her a heart attack because he has vowed not to hear word.
I can’t run
away from my roots (no matter how many plans I make), I can’t turn a deaf ear to
her woes (even if I fill my ears with preferred news of how things ARE working
in other countries), and I can’t beat her to death with a stick (never mind how
many articles I write huffing and
puffing). At the end of the day, ‘my own na
my own…Naija na my own.’ So every day, I awake and carry my cross… “My name is Nora and I am a Nigerian.”
In this
spirit, when I see an article like the one I’m about to share, I’m torn in 2
directions. One part of me relates to what the author is saying. I have probably
said a thing or two on some issues mentioned sef. But as I progress through the
article, another part of me starts to nag and squirm. It queries my patriotism
for agreeing with someone who seem so uninhibitedly rude to Naija and its
people (never mind that she herself is one and is careful to use the words ‘us’…
‘we’…and ‘our’ in acknowledgement of the three fingers pointing in her
direction).
As I tweet
about her article I second guess my action for a second or two as I think about
the backlash I may get for not stating loud and clear in my tweet that “I AM
NOT ON THE SIDE OF THE AUTHOR!!!” But I posted my tweet any ways ‘cause I do
wonder if she is right? If we sometimes go on about the wrong stuff. I
wonder (for the first time to be honest) where the people are that thought “Chai! See what Vocal Slender and that Igbo
man…” whose name I can’t remember right now … “ had to go through to turn dreams to realities”.
Does Nigeria Have an Image Problem?
By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
Some years ago, a British filmmaker discovered an exotic site in Nigeria:
An entire community of human beings subsisting on
mountains of refuse.
And not in some remote
state, but in Lagos, the country's commercial nerve centre - a city of fast
cars, luxury shops and sleek folk, with women in Brazilian hair weaves and men
in Ferragamo shoes.
Shortly after the Welcome to Lagos series aired on the BBC in April 2010,
Nigerians around the world went berserk.
"There was this
colonialist idea of the noble savage which motivated the programme," Nobel
laureate Wole Soyinka said of the documentary.
"It was
patronising and condescending," he added.
The Nigerian just has to kick up a tornado whenever he is perceived
unpalatably.
Nigeria's High
Commissioner to the UK Dalhatu Tafida described it as "a calculated
attempt to bring Nigeria and its hard-working people to international odium and
scorn".
Online forums also
went ablaze. "They are giving us a bad image," many Nigerians fumed.
Then the Lagos State
government submitted a formal complaint to the BBC, calling on the organisation
to commission an alternative series to "repair the damage we believe this
series has caused to our image".
These patriots were
not distressed that their compatriots in the oil giant of Africa were living in
such squalor - that development had somehow eluded those Nigerians.
They did not rally
with cries of: "There are people in our country living like this? What
shall we do? How fast can we act?" No, no, no. The majority of voices were
harmonised in one tune: Anxiety over their country's image.
Similarly, Nigeria was
reluctant to accept desperately needed foreign assistance to fight terrorism,
despite the country's armed forces being clearly overwhelmed.
We were more worried about how requesting help might affect Nigeria's
image than about forestalling the wanton destruction by the
Islamist militant group Boko Haram.
In October 1960,
Nigeria was loosed from the shackles of imperialism when the colonialists
packed their bags and left. But over five decades later, Nigerians remain in
captivity: Foreigners control our self-image. What the West thinks of us often
takes manic precedence over who we really are, what we know and feel about
ourselves.
The Europeans who
first landed in Africa were unconcerned when the people they regarded as
monkeys equally assumed that the white interlopers were ghosts. The Germans can
shrug it off when they are stereotyped as humourless; the Russians can dismiss
it when they are described as cold. But the Nigerian just has to kick up a
tornado whenever he is perceived unpalatably. He is touchy because he has no
alternative image on which to base his confidence.
Like many Africans in
the diaspora, a number of Nigerians abroad have erected careers out of
defending their people's image. With indignant frowns and stern tones, they
strut from one global stage to the other like superintendents, dismantling
stereotypes and whitewashing sepulchres.
This passion probably
sprouts from a desire to blend into their host communities, to not be perceived
as savages from some nihilistic jungle. Unknowingly, they reinforce the
subconscious message that has been passed down to generations of Nigerians and
other Africans: That the West's opinion of us is paramount; that enlightening
and convincing foreigners matters more than discerning who we are and who we
want to be. And so, when the West claps for us, we get excited. When they tell
us off, we get upset. When they applaud one of us, we automatically join in
applauding the person. We frantically monitor foreign opinions and we panic at
the slightest hint of a negative perception of us.
We fret about the many
uncomplimentary stories from our land making the rounds on international media
circuits, more than about the actual negative circumstances that birth those
narratives.
From politicians to
intellectuals to entertainers to terrorists, Nigerians have been socialised to
rate themselves in the light of Western perceptions. And as some of us have
discovered first hand, the most effective way to draw the attention of our own
people to any issue, is to speak to them through a Western medium.
It is unhealthy for a
people's self-image to be hinged almost entirely on outside forces.
Nigeria expends too
much valuable energy on sweeping dirt under carpets and stuffing skeletons
inside closets. Consequently, we deny ourselves the opportunity of frank
dialogue, cultural criticism and self-examination—processes that are vital for
a society to advance, by which the imperious West itself has developed thus
far.
Nigeria can lead the
rest of Africa in freeing our people from this image bondage.
Adaobi's article and the pictures were culled from here
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