Strategies Behind Tinubu's Snub of African Envoy: How S'Africans' Hatred for Nigerians Started (Nigeria)!
Xenophobic Attacks: South Africans attacking an African immigrant during (Courtesy, Google)
You just don't send your foreign minister to meet with a president!
That is what Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, did when he hurriedly dispatched his foreign envoy to Nigeria to plead secretly in Aso Rock while boastfully gallivanting about putting Nigeria in its place openly in South Africa. Like his predecessors, minus sublimely cerebral President Nelson Mandela, had done.
President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria kept them cooling their heels over the weekend of immediate past Friday, July 25, when they unceremoniously arrived. On Monday, July 28th, without meeting them, sent his aides to communicate to them to meet with the minister of state for foreign affairs,, Ambassador Enikanolaiye, who gave them the hint of the marked shift in Nigeria-SA affairs with a blunt reprimand. As he should.
Firstly, Level-to-Level reciprocity is the rule in foreign affairs'. Most especially, in cases like this where there's tension and disputes between nations, presidents meet with presidents, envoys with envoys, governors with governors and so on.
What a breach of protocol What unbridled arrogance! Arriving unannounced no less.
What does that country have no name, South Africa (SA) takes itself for? A United States Of America and UK? Even those show respectful courtesy.
I applaud the president's scorched earth apt power move. The proper response.
SA should show respect. That nation is a mere paperweight without us propping it up economically. I recall President Mandela made diplomatic shuttles to Nigeria, begging for human capital to help drive the economy faced economic decline if its skilled manpower shortages were not plugged quickly. SA had near zero skilled workforce to drive the nation towards increasing economic gains.
Unequivocal objection: only Madiba spoke out against SA xenophobia in his lifetime (Courtesy, Google)
Mandela panicked because the Boers withdrew their manpower from critical sectors (minus diamond mining) of the then new nation to precipitate an economic downturn which will force the blacks largely gloating at their independence back to begging them to come to the table, to indirectly rule over them through financial means. Madiba ran to Nigeria, his long standing friend and support system he could depend in, for help. An immigration route opened for skilled Nigerians in finance/banking, education, health and investors to emigrate to SA with work visas in order to help avoid that booby trap the stull-seething blacks laid for the first independent and entirely black-dominated Mandela administration.
Cornered! Another black immigrant being attacked by South Africans during the xenophobic attacks (Courtesy, Google)
Nigerian workers bailed that country from decline at that crucial time.
Now... "Go beck to you country...go Beck to your country ..you're stealing our opportunities... and stealing our women". Killing Nigerians.
Nigeria is not SA's contemporary on the diplomatic global arena. No!
We made SA. Nigeria did. The federal government's huge financial donations, scholarships to desirous black SA students in Nigerian schools and universities. Civil servants, churches, even school kids and University students contributed weekly monies to piggy banks across all Nigerian schools for them. I did too. Every week "for our brothers and sisters suffering 'apartheid' in South Africa". There were prayers held on school Assembly grounds nationwide for them too.
Now, they feel we are recolonizing them because helped them at their hour of need.
No. Without any patronizing, we are merely helping them. Nigerians can survive and thrive anywhere in the world. As they currently are foing worldwide. They do not need to recolonise a nation to do that. Facts.
If they engage in criminality, arrest them, give them "fair" trials and punish them accordingly.
Not hounding then for being Nigerians and successful.
The arrogance and exaggerated sense of self importance stinks. We should keep applying ALL punitive diplomatic measures till these are redressed.
Why kill our people? State was complicit in those protests and killings of Nigerians.
They should fish out those killers of our Nigerian brothers in SA during the attacks, try them and jail them with stiff penalties. No lax penalties.
Properties and businesses of Nigerians they left behind in SA as they scurried out of there must be returned to them. Or, full, requisite financial compensation must be paid for those unwilling to return to SA
Holistically, they should embark on reorientation of the rabid masses in that jungle of mediocre citizenry through the mass media. Plainly speaking, most SA indigenous peoples with the exception of a few, are very pedestrian, extremely tunnel visioned people, even among some socalled elites.
Exploit Protocol of Reciprocity in denying their peoples, businessmen, entertainers, etc from entering Nigeria. They should "go beck" too.
At the impending Aug 29th AU meeting, Nigeria should come all out for SA, its people and its nonsense complicit and swaggering leadership. PUBLICLY. Oore pe, asiwere gbagbe!
Ki won gbo AROBA baba itan. School them properly on the real sacrifice, not the tainted version, which Nigeria made for them when we made "South Africa and Africa the centre piece of Nigeria's foreign policy." President, then General, Olusegun Obasanjo famously and vigorously pursued this mantra.
Set on Getting Mandela & S'Africa Free: General Olusegun Obasanjo as shown here in his first tenure as Nigeria's head of state, at the height of his stiff opposition to apartheid, and total support for the struggle's leaders in Lagos and ANC (Courtesy, Google)
How we did it altruistically. Globalisation led to Nigerians' exodus there, as they did all over the world, not for their paranoid reasons.
Call out their political elites and intelligentsia who lived on exile in Nigerian plush homes in upscale old Ikoyi and Victoria Island, on government-funded payrolls, feeding & living bills, and chauffeur-driven around in luxurious air conditioned government Peugeot cars.
Ezekiel Mphahlele, Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki, I heard even this Cyril Ramaphosa too, and many others lived in Lagos in this manner when the Boers declared their political party, the Africa National Congress (ANC) a terrorist group and declared several of them wanted. Nigeria ferried them out and gave them this succour in Lagos. When this mass propaganda against Nigeria started, why were they complicit? They are best poised to school their people better. They did not.
Only President Mandela ever did, openly acknowledged Nigeria with genuine emotions. Even he was hushed as time went on.
Now, it is not politically correct?
It is time to call them all out for their implicating silence when Nigerians were being wrongly stereotyped, attacked and killed.
Also, Nigeria must levy hefty taxes and duties on SA corporations in Nigeria. As Appropriate protocols must be set up to ensure that they populate their workforce with Nigerians. Let them whine to their authorities in South Africa. Let those ones to come cap in hand, begging for leniency for them. .
Who infused South Africans with hatred towards Nigerians'?
I was there during a wave of xenophobic attacks and I can authoritatively confirm that it is the south African mass media.
Almost daily, untrue, rabid and biased editorials, news reports and interviews are printed or aired to paint Nigeria efforts during apartheid in bad light. And also, portray Nigerians as opportunistic new colonial masters. They openly invited South Africans to resist shedding the toga of being oppressed by Nigerians after oppression by Boers.
They even advocated a desire for apartheid to have continued rather than living free but yet, "oppressed" by Nigerians. Oppression to them is seeing Nigerians hustling hard and prospering. Something their lethargy and lazy bones cannot fathom.
Only rioting and violence inspires and energises them. Beyond that, everything lohically rational and intellectually endowing flow pass their heads.
They also condescendingly dubbed Nigeria, "Father Christmas" for its large heartedness and selfless sacrifices.
Why was that propaganda not stopped?! President Mandela spoke out but he was the only lone voice among the power hawks who whipped that wrong sentiment up in the media for political reasons.
Whatever.
Now, this is where it stops. Forever! South Africa should treat Nigerians with respect and dignity.
We are the ones that should be kicking their asses. The worst form of ignorance is the acutely unaware ignorant that believes he is a sage.
Uneducated, unexposed, hare-brained ingrates best versed not in sublime arts and behaviour but violence needs must learn civilized behaviour towards us if they destroy our skillset, investments and trade!
They don't have the excuse of being hung over from decades of violent apartheid struggle as psychoanalytic reasons for their still pervasive barbarian ways anymore. The country has has had 32 years of independence in 1994 to rewire its brain. The xenophobia is deliberate.
Dr. Martin Luther King famously said, "Hatred is taught. Love is taught." No one is born hating or loving someone. It is learned behaviour. The elderly generation who fought for apartheid are dying off. They are the ones who spewed this venomous hatred into their youngins. Unprovoked and unjustified..
SA citizenry should embrace education to Ph.D levels. Get global certified training according to global best practices. And work hard. There is dignity in labour. They should stop the aimless wanderings and marijuana-passaround huddles at front steps of buildings, corner shops and train stations like most SA masses do daily in South Africa.
But, work. Work hard.
That way, they can be as successful as Nigerians that they viscerally love to hate.
Standing ten toes down! President Tinubu demands respect, dignity & restitiin maybe? (Courtesy, Google News)
Thank you President Bola Tinubu for staring eyeball to eyeball, and standing ten toes down, in declaring that Nigeria is saying, "No more"! From now, onwards "tit-for-tat tough diplomacy is at the heart of Nigeria's foreign policy". QED.
Nigeria. Let this be a lesson. Let there be a strict entry and exit plan of Nigeria's foreign policy interventionist engagements and gains. No more excess show of help. Our engagements should stipulates codified commensurate reciprocal treatments for Nigerian nationals, businesses and national interest when doing so ever again. No more free lunch.
Otherwise, they detest us, disdain us and parody our generosity as idiotic "Father Christmas" giveaways. For instance, by virtue of Nigeria s pedigree and boundless sacrifices to emancipating South Africa and many other nations in the 60s-90s, till the noughties, no African nation should oppose Nigeria when it stands for any office in the global arena. But, it did in a few instances, and they would refuse to withdraw for Nigeria if pressed. Beni Republic did it once.
If such was codified and agreed on before our exhaustive and back breaking selflessness for them, not just liquid gains would be made but the statute of Nigeria and Nigerian passport holders would not be diminished.
Onwards now, to whom much is given, much is expected. No more free lunch.
The Americans understood this best when it drew up its Marshalls Plan for Europe's redevelopment after the two world wars.
It's high time Nigeria did too. Whatever is given out freely is never valued.
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