The Naijaricans…

I remain proud of my pragmatic conditions of existence in a country that is mine and not mine. I am one breed, one slice, one nomenclature of the generic Naijaricans – Nigerian Americans, Nigerians in America, Nigerians for America, the multiple factions that you can find in the diversity of the country. I will be writing about these in many pages to come.

I was not here when Americans lined the streets of Washington DC, waving the Nigerian Flag, and President Kennedy eagerly received with fan-fair, Nigeria’s Premier Abubakar Tafawa Balewa at the White House. That Nigerian promise, courted for our vibrancy and our unimaginable wealth… that promise is gone.  I am here now, some two decades and counting.What my eyes have seen, my ears have beheld and my wakeful nights have sorted out, I will recount in this column.

My years have been of the years of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now the moronic narcissist Donald J Trump! Oh, I am an American now and here we can call our president names as much as we want. No fear. It is not hard to remember my first night in this America. My hosts had sent a limo with a chauffeur to get me from the airport to the hotel. It was night and the lights of DC induced a welcoming excitement. But as we traveled the roads and approached the hotel down the Capitol, I caught sight of my first consternation! There it was, a tall obelisk, rising deep into the skies, overlooking the entire city. There it stood in the distance but drawing closer as we approached. At the top of its cone-head there they were, two blinking eyes, shot red up, up in the sky. I was rendered into an instant curiosity and troubled quietude. America had actually built a monument to the KKK in its capital! The turbulence lasted the night until my host would help me out of the conundrum the following morning. Alas, I was wrong. What I had beheld as the KKK obelisk, was ‘The Washington Monument’, a pride of the nation dedicated to the George Washington, one of the founding fathers of this mass land of lush prosperities and flushed bigotry. However, it was in that night’s fear and disappointment, then followed in the morning by the revelation of beauty, history, culture and prosperity, that I found the meaning and learned the lesson of my new naton’snation’s resiliency. I am proud of my perceptiveness, of being able to see without the glitzy blindfolds of America. I remain proud of my pragmatic conditions of existence in a country that is mine and not mine. I am one breed, one slice, one nomenclature of the generic Naijaricans – Nigerian Americans, Nigerians in America, Nigerians for America, the multiple factions that you can find in the diversity of the country. There are hundreds of thousands of us here now, living, labouring, partaking, contributing, voting, building fresh dreams in our new land of the Red, White and Blue. We are the progenitors of a growing generation of Nigerians who love Nigeria more than we do because they have been fed on our own nostalgia. Most of them, our children may never live in motherland, but Nigeria will rise because of them, because of the combination of Nigeria and America that runs in their constitution! To them every meal that is a ‘swallow’ in Nigeria is ‘Fufu’ the most distinct of which is ‘black pudding’ (Amala), and ‘sloppy green’ (Ewedu). They also love the Nigerian jollof otherwise known as ‘Orange Rice’. They can speak Nigerian like we do, and in a second they can be as American as Apple Pie. Their ways and means are woven deep into American industry, Education, Arts, Sports and Business while their hearts and pride are strong for their dual nationalities and cultural patrimonies.

I will be writing about all of us, and all of them, and the diasporic nuancesof our colourful experiences in many pages to come.

Long before the angst in the protests and rallies of the last three months, we should have observed carefully that both Nigerian and American democracies were already teetering towards the proverbial Trumpian ‘sh..hole’.  For example, at his last stop on the African continent in Abuja Nigeria, Mr. Tillerson the then United States Secretary of State, met with President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria. Tillerson was on a diplomatic junket designed to make amends. His president Donald Trump had attacked with first a travel ban, and then the gift of a most uncouth name-calling: “Sh..hole Countries.”  I heard that some Nigerians at home even celebrated this nasty sobriquet. Naijaricans were furious, as the rest of the world. After his meeting with Buhari, Tillerson went on to hold a news conference with Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama. Out of their mouths oozed the well-practiced gibberish of international diplomatic cooperation, talking trade and the fight against Boko Haram amongst other interests.

To the consternation of the world, Secretary Tillerson was still at the press conference when he was fired via social media by Donald Trump. Trump was loudly making the statement that he couldn’t give a damn if Nigeria was hurt by his clear assaults on Nigerians in America and at home. He was saying to us to go find some deep lagoon to take a suffocating swim. On hearing the news, the whole of America was stunned and concerned about the potentially irreparable damage to America’s foreign relations. For some wild creative imagination, my mind would spina scenario of possibilities. What if Mr. Tillerson would ask for asylum in Nigeria as a political refugee, enroute Nigerian citizenship. I bet his request would have been instantly granted. He would have become a ‘Naijarican’ by naturalization. For a successful businessman that he was before his political appointment, his only dilemma would have been the decision in choosing which of one the two big parties to align with — APC or PDP.  A seasoned businessman who had found fortune in Nigeria’s oil and mastered the art of fleecing through the corridors of power, he would have just fit in nicely with the APC, hoping his allies in Buhari’s government would have helped and provided a safe haven from the arms of the EFCC.  I imagined that in a move to spite Donald Trump, the APC Caliphate in cohort with Bola Tinubu would lobby Buhari on the merits of making Mr. Tillerson, Nigeria’s ‘sh..hole” ambassador to the United Nations. Imagine that! With his deep contacts in American business world and politics, we would have had a shot at payback.

Seriously, most Americans far and wide, stand with the power of good, the idea of an America that is built on justice and liberty, a more inclusive and diverse country whose success and place in the world is defined by inclusiveness, diversity, innovation and equity. Sometimes the cacophony of interests and ideas can be deafening! I will be writing about these and our people – Naijaricans, exploring our lives in America and the ripples of our deeds in this country of our new birth, or sometimes nightmare.  I will examine the biographies of our democracies, choices and idiocies.

*Professor Ojewuyi writes from the Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois, USA