By Ugoji Egbujo
One religious crisis , throats will be slit and
thousands will perish.
Nigeria. The supposedly pious will zealously
and sanctimoniously disembowel pregnant
women and disgorge fetuses. Some innocent
non indigenes of the wrong faith will have to
choose between dying by the knife or drowning
in a well. Hopes and livelihoods will disappear.
Many, fortunate, will run hundreds of
kilometers to the safety of their hometowns .
Neither the victimized living nor the butchered
dead will be accorded even a semblance of
dignity. The dead will be lumped onto lorries ,
open tipper trucks and driven to hurriedly dug
pits , graves, in the dark in the interest of
national unity. And the living will get no
redress, no rehabilitation. The instigators and
the perpetrators , to whom all impunity
belongs , will walk away free.
And the House of Representatives that has
found its voice in the wake of the South
African crises will offer tepid resolutions and
nothing more. And the government will console
not the bereaved but the trouble makers , so
that -”we can move forward”. And they will set
up a committee and the committee will come
up with papers that will be discarded by the
government because the committee was in any
case, a ruse.
You die , you die and life goes on . Or how else
can it be interpreted? You die for nothing! “No
one is greater than Nigeria” they always say. So
sleeping rabid dogs are left to lie, free to bite
and bite again.
Egregious evil is often banal. And the banality
of gross unspeakable acts of inhumanity is the
reason the whole of humanity must always be
on guard . 800,000 skulls in 100 days. Rwanda
. Man’s capacity for monstrous evil must never
be underestimated. Common every day people
when intoxicated by the brew of hate served
them by unscrupulous powerful , self seeking ,
elements can perpetrate mind boggling evil
against fellow humanity. If it were not so
thousands of Germans – drivers, doctors ,
priests, nurses would not have actively
cooperated with Hitler and the Nazi regime to
achieve the holocaust. And many other good
men would not have acquiesced by being
passive.
The Zulu king spewed hate and parts of South
Africa went aflame. South Africans have been
noted to exhibit an exceptionalism , a shared
self perception as non Africans . And many
have tried to find the reasons for such a
‘superiority complex’ or sense of otherness .
Their struggle against apartheid may have
conditioned them and foisted on them a sense
of uniqueness sufficient to justify the
conception of brother Africans as “others”. But
nothing can explain a penchant for naked hate
filled violence by black south Africans against
black Africans of other nationalities. The
current spate of attacks is preceded by other
such events. Everyday street interaction reveals
a population seething with hate for black
immigrants in many parts of south Africa
Many South Africans allude to the fact that
many of the foreign African nationals in their
country engage in nefarious activities and help
to worsen the deteriorating crime situation in
the country. A particular charge is laid against
Nigerian nationals for drug peddling, advance
fee fraud and armed robbery. It is true that
years of apartheid has left many black south
African youths and families impoverished and
educationally backward. These black
communities suffer many social dislocations
and deprivations and all of these have
contributed in raising family and social
tensions. Such communities can ill afford
aggravation of broken situations by
immigrants. But rather than employ mob
justice and barbaric methods , why wouldn’t
such an aggrieved society use the criminal
justice structures and immigration processes to
stem any such foreign criminal proliferation.
The other popular but patently spurious
refrain is that black immigrants have usurped
jobs meant for locals. And this , however
viewed , is a ludicrous charge. If jobs exists
locals always get priority. And this is
acceptable worldwide. And if locals consider
the jobs beneath them or lack the expertise to
fill the roles then immigrants would naturally
take up the roles. Hard working, law abiding
immigrants benefit all nations. Why would the
success of black African immigrants engender
murderous envy in a predominantly black
country where whites dominate at all levels.
Whites live in opulence, legacy of apartheid .
Blacks live in squalor , no thanks to Botha and
his ancestors . Yet down trodden indigenous
black Africans transfer murderous aggression
to fellow sympathetic black Africans. South
Africa has deep seated problems of social
inequality which scapegoatism can’t solve . And
at the risk of being misconstrued as a racist,
why are South Africans targeting only their
black African fellows if their xenophobia is
borne of economic desperation ? Why are
immigrants of other races so welcome where
the fellow black Africans aren’t? White South
Africans must be on their guard, the tiger may
turn on them soon.
Many African nations sacrificed so much in the
fight against apartheid and the inexplicable
lukewarm attitude of South African leaders in
the wake of the attacks has baffled many. A
group of hitherto shackled people who, in
their dark days , lived off the benevolence and
charity of others in the spirit of African
brotherhood. And whose freedom was
purchased by the contributions of sweat and
blood by many African nations. People , who
privileged on the identity of ‘Africanness’. How
can they so treacherously now turn their backs
on Africa and repudiate African brotherhood
and murder and burn Africans on the streets
of Durban in day light?
But Nigerians have so much to learn from
these events. The Zulu king asked foreigners to
pack and go. That was extremely irresponsible
and the gravity of the offence he committed
lies in the enormous influence he wields. The
Oba of Lagos, recently,made a worse
pronouncement. He swore by Allah and
promised death for all Igbos he voted contrary
to his imperial dictations. Many have called for
the head of the Zulu king for instigating this
chain of calamitous events and many of those
screaming from their rooftops in Nigeria were
not heard after the Oba’s venomous
pronouncements .
Before the Oba could be asked “ what were
you thinking?”, many rose to his defence
without any squeamishness. And even well
known human rights activists and social
crusaders went dumb. A few mustered a few
whimpers in the spirit of political correctness
but betrayed themselves when they sought to
control , moderate and limit the grief of the
primary victims.
Those who felt victimized and outraged were
often asked , peremptorily , to let sleep dogs
lie and move on. When Femi Falana managed
to ask the Oba to apologise reminding him of
the crimes he had committed, we were told it
would be sacrilegious for the Oba to apologize.
An Oba who is no longer a sovereign , whose
word is no longer law anywhere, cannot
tender an apology for a grave moral and legal
infraction he committed against millions in
Lagos? Come to reality, this is not 1800.
The Oba defiantly refused to apologise, and the
state failed to take any action against the Oba
and , by so doing, set a dangerous precedent.
People charged with the constitutional
responsibility of maintaining law and order
cowered and abdicated their duties. The South
African Human Rights Commission is
investigating the Zulu king but the Nigerian
Human rights commission known for barking
and not biting only rendered a couple of
perfunctory and ineffectual howls. The Oba and
Lagos state government have conveniently
swept the matter under the carpet. It is my
prayer that the seeds of discord sowed by the
Oba and watered by a manifest disregard for
the feelings of his victims in the failure of a
proper resolution of the matter do not sprout
and bear fruits someday .
And someone wondered why the Oba should be
sanctioned since , as she put it , – no one
died. But the gravity of such a grave moral and
criminal offence is not primarily determined
by its actual immediate physical consequences.
Nothing grieves a victim more than the
remorselessness of a conceited offender. Oba’s
refusal to apologise is an aggravation of the
offence, moral and otherwise, he committed.
And that lack of penitence is in itself immoral.
“ Lagos is not a no man’s land” many yelled in
the wake of the Oba’s saga , yet some of them
would cheer Nigerian youths who rallied to
defend themselves , holding their grounds in
Durban and Jo’Burg and repelling violence with
violence. They aren’t particularly asking their
countrymen who live in Durban to pack and
come back. It is easier to ask why a legal
immigrant in Durban is not entitled to his
peace than to understand that a Nigerian
citizen in Lagos does not owe his continued
flourishing there to anyone’s magnanimity. Let
any returning Nigerians pass through and pay
homage to the Oba. Let them lay some of their
woes at his feet. Perhaps experience will teach
best.
Lagos, I insist, is comparatively, very
accommodating. Be it in Kano , Aba, Markudi
or Jos , amongst those yelling and tearing
themselves up and decreeing death to south
African businesses here are people who make
living intolerable for non indigenes. In many
parts of Nigeria , especially up north, non
indigenes sleep with eyes wide open, live on
the precipice of disaster because locals would
leverage on any breakdown of law and order
and prey on their lives and property.
Yes, amongst some who actively took part in
the killing Gideon Akaluka and amongst others
who endorsed that heinous crime by their
eloquent passivity are later day human rights
activists whose sense of moral outrage is only
touched by distant events like xenophobia in
South Africa. But they will kill and maim fellow
Nigerians in exercise of religious and ethnic
bigotry and retain equanimity
The pictures coming from south Africa are
gory and horrific. Conspicuous free flow of
moral outrage is good and hopefully will be
effective deterrent. But emotional outpourings
are not enough. While we demand firm justice
against perpetrators and protection and
rehabilitation for our citizens and others, we
must soberly reflect on the goings on in that
country and we must internalize the
experience.
Women and children have been decapitated
severally following religious riots in northern
Nigeria. Thousands have died in Plateau state
in many ethnic /religious confrontations
between indigenes and “settlers”. Instigators
and perpetrators have always walked away and
victims have never been rehabilitated. So we
can make demands on South Africa but we
must set same standards for our selves. Punish
offenders, soothe victims, re- orient the
society.
Let justice, peace and unity reign.
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/04/xenophobic-south-africa-and-hypocritical-nigeria/

Nigerians are like a family who fight,quarrel and injure themselves each passing day and still make up at night before going to bed.Despite these,the troublesome family wont take it easy on any other family(country) that attacks a member.