It’s been a few a few days now since I read somewhere that Mr. El Rufai Nasir sent a protest letter to US President Barack Obama urging him to remove Nigeria from the recent list of “countries of interest” to US intelligence agencies. Of course I was obviously displeased by that. My displeasure is not because Mr. Nasir doesn’t have the right to express his own displeasure over Nigeria’s insertion into the said list. I’m incensed by his reaction, which I honestly think is rather improper and untoward. But my decision to make my displeasure public was needled by Mr. Azubike Ishiekwene’s personal narrative, the first installment of which played here today on Saharareporters.com.
Although Mr. Ishiekwene’s piece is yet to play out completely, so far, it wouldn’t be irrational to infer from the first part that he aims to showcase and inspire anger over what he was put through on his way back to the US with his daughter. Again, he has the right to narrate his experience, but to showcase and inspire anger at the US is rather improper. I’ll return to this immediate prong in the piece anon.
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My perception of reality contrasts with Mr. Nasir’s. I believe that my inability to perceive issues like him derives from the contrasts in the history of the societies and cultures that produced us. Our respective biographies are dissimilar too. I’m the son of a father who was compelled by economic hardship to enlist in the West African Frontier Force in 1940/41 at the prime age of about 25 years. My father went into the service of the empire with a basic standard six qualification and was discharged as a first class wireless operator a few years after the end of the war. Service to the empire took him as far as Cape Town and Durban in South Africa, and then Uganda in East Africa. He was in East Africa for the duration of that war. Upon discharge, his improved human capital earned employment in the radio room with oil multinational, Shell BP. Everything he owns, strived for, he earned. He never stops to regal me with the story of his life, which is full of competitive struggles. My own biography mirrors my old man’s to a good measure. Everything I own, including my education, I’ve striven for and earned.
I do not know Mr. Nasir from Adam, but I know quite some about his antecedents (biography) and of course the history of the society and culture that produced him. His education, in deed his celebrated status as the former Federal Capital Territory Minister might not have been if the socio-political playing field in the society that produced him is as even as the one that produced me. I wouldn’t for the life of me disparage what he may have accomplished—if at all—as a minister. I’m saying instead that his conviction that his microscopic role as a minister could have necessarily and sufficiently salvaged a flawed political economy can be disparaged. That he failed is sufficient ground for him to rethink and reassess Nigeria. But it doesn’t seem like he can help himself though.
Mr. Nasir’s resort to protest directly to Obama derives from who he is which derives in turn from the history of the society that produced him. It’s certainly clear that Mr. Nasir’s biography makes it difficult for him to discern that in this clime, the formulation and execution of public policy are starkly depersonalized. The US is unlike the culture that produced Mr. Nasir, in which the formulation and execution of public policy are determined by the personal whims and caprices of public servants who are socialized to see themselves as the extensions of society.
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But is it not abundantly clear that Nigeria’s insertion into the list of “countries of interest” to US intelligence agencies is self-inflicted? Hasn’t it been long in the making? Where then is the logic of a protest letter to Obama? Obama cannot remove Nigeria from the list if he lacks prima facie evidence to show the voters who put him into office that Nigeria doesn’t represent a threat to their safety. Why showcase and inspire anger directed at the US and its policy makers when all the visible indicators that Nigeria represents a threat to the safety of life, limb and property in the US are still intact?
It is misplaced aggression for the chicken that simmers in the old lady’s soup pot to twirl its neck in a bellicose pose at the pot instead of the kitchen knife that dealt it the fatal cut earlier, which paved its way into the pot eventually.
● E. C. Ejiogu, PhD is a political sociologist.
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