Nigeria today boasts of only a handful of statesmen who would take a stand—fearlessly—for the right thing, caring less whose ox is gored. Mallam Nuhu Ribadu is one of those few men who fall within the quarters of this kind of upright standing. Historically, those who know his pedigree can attest.
His remarks, on Thursday at the annual lecture of the National Association of the Institute for Security Studies (AANISS) is proof of this, again. Responding to the remarks of the Chief of Defense Staff, General Christopher Musa, who told the audience that the Canadian High Commission in Nigeria had denied himself and other army chiefs visas to Canada, Mallam Nuhu called out the idiocy of that action without a bluff.
In his words: “They can go to hell. Even though it is painful, it is disrespectful, but we are peaceful and strong, and I agree with you that it is time to fix our country.”
No response could have been more perfect, well-scheduled and effectively delivered to the insult that was the denial of visas to Nigeria’s top brass military commanders by the Canadian High Commission. That country, and its cotravelers in the West who disrespect Africa and Africans, and only see our countries as places where they can poach the best minds and brains to fill their hospitals and schools deserve to go to hell indeed.
Nigeria can no longer afford to kowtow to foolish, derogatory, and contemptuous disrespect in the name of diplomacy. Like America’s President Trump will in fact do, we will call it as it is, and deal with it decisively. Nigeria is nobody’s mate on the African continent. We are Canada’s contemporary by several standards; worse, we run their hospitals, universities and even government for them.
The President of the Canadian Medical Association is Dr. Bolu Ogunyemi, a Canadian-Nigerian physician, who has been an instrumental figure in Canada’s medical community, and has risen to this height. Kaycee Madu, a Nigerian-born lawyer made history by becoming the first Black justice minister and solicitor general in Alberta, Canada. And there are so many others whose businesses, intelligence, and skills are providing Canada with the expertise that keeps their country’s engines running.
That bold statement from the National Security Adviser is the classic Mallam Nuhu that insists on putting the dignity, uprightness and honor of his country above everything else. He is not the type that would sell his dignity for cheap visas to countries that are begging for Nigeria’s talents through shady immigration policies.
Mallam Nuhu Ribadu’s words were those of a patriot calling on his fellow countrymen to see the green pastures within their borders. The grass is not always green on the other side, it is green where you water it, an aphorism says. Indeed, Nigeria has all that it needs to succeed if we simply come together to devote our resources to its development.
Enough of the neocolonialism and veiled slavery that the West is reintroducing today. Nigerians must stand up against that filthy superiority complex that has made us look like servants to the West. That is what Mallam Nuhu was saying: that the denial was a reminder to us that we do not need to go looking for gold in Sokoto, when we have it in our “sòkòtò.”
Nigeria is a country with over 200 million in population. We are a booming marketplace filled with talent and resources. We are a people who cannot be narrowed into a statistics. It is popularly said that Nigerians are not the kinds of people you push to a wall and they give up, because it is either we pull down the wall, or we leap over it. We are a resilient people. Across the world, especially in Western countries today, Nigerians are the leaders running their major businesses, their technological startups, their hospitals, and even their governments in some cases. Today, we are crowned as the largest economy in Africa.
This is a stark reminder of our worth as a people and the very fact that we are more than enough for ourselves. We must stop cheapening our value for the white man, and prove to the world that we are not hungry boys searching for food. But we are self-sufficient and well-equipped to compete globally.
The trajectory of the world today is already showing that countries are taking the direction of self-sufficiency and nationalism. They are looking inwards. America is cutting away aid it sends to developing countries, mostly in Africa. IMF and other lenders are giving loans with excruciating conditions that insult our capacity to think development for ourselves and govern our economies.
General Christopher Musa is the commander of the Defense Forces of the largest population of Africans on earth. With no diplomatic row, it is an insult to the Nigerian government, its people, and our sensibilities that he or other army chiefs were denied a visa.
Like the defibrillator that delivers the electric shock to the human heart to restor life during a cardiac arrest, Nigerians must take Mallam Nuhu Ribadu’s wake up call as a shock that must revive us from our constant undervaluing of ourselves.
Let us take the statesman’s call as one that is right on schedule. Enough is enough to the disrespect dished to Nigerians by the West. Nigerians must begin to see that it is time to, in Mallam Ribadu’s words “work hard to make Nigeria work.”
I never shy way from reminding Nigerians that the countries we are always eager to run to for holidays, medical tourism, jobs or education tourism were built by humans like us. They do not have two skulls. They simply loved their country, invested in it, and fixed their country.
Like Nigeria, too, these countries went through wars and tough times. But they worked hard to build resilient economies that we are today rushing to go and enjoy with them. That is why they look down on us. We must have introspection and change our mindset to one that recognises that the duty of changing Nigeria for the better, transforming its economy in every respect, is the duty of all of us Nigerians.
We would continue to be mocked if we do not work for the development and growth we want to see in our country. That is what Mallam Nuhu Ribadu has said. Our grass is greener when we give it the attention and water it deserves. To hell with the filthy grass of Canada!
Mohammed Abiodun is a historian, and writes from Abuja.