I have often wondered at what convention it was decided that the Nigerian is the one to be hated by the world. Perhaps, the invitation to this convention was diverted by our notorious NIPOST thinking it contained dollars since it must have had a foreign stamp. Believe it or not, the hatred for Nigerians around the world is alarming and streaming along quite well with such venom only reserved for used car salesmen (no pun intended). It is the kind of hatred that would make the average Nigerian, bemused rather than angry as it has assumed an utterly comical proportion. It appears everyone has an opinion about Nigerians and they are ever ready to passionately defend their position. In all my travels, I have never met anyone that is tittering on the fence on the matter of love/hate of the Nigerian.

In all these, there is a tinge of respect for anything Nigerian, be it in academics, sports, science, etc and there lies the silver-lining. Nigeria and Nigerians have been used as benchmarks in various spheres of human endeavors. Even in sports, the Super Eagles, no matter how mediocre the team may be, remains the team to beat on the continent, the team that accords others the right of passage to the super league. On June 2nd of this year, in an African Nations Cup qualifying tie played in Kampala , the Ugandan national team, “defeated” Nigeria in controversial circumstances garnished with suspect officiating. For the old city of Kampala , it was a standstill as the Nigerians were in town.

Of much interest was the fact that the match occasioned the resuscitation of a 14-year old abandoned railway system to ferry fans to the stadium and fetched the Ugandan Football Federation (FUFA) more than SH560 million, the most ever. Afterwards, the hosts made bold to declare that the defeat of the Nigerians has transposed them into the elite class of soccer powerhouses (never mind that they have never won a single continental glory) that had hitherto been the preserves of the 4-time African Cup winning Cameroons and Egypts of the continent. Even Ghana , our friendly neighbors, recently boasted to be African Champions after they destroyed the mouthy Nigerians 4-1 in a friendly match played in London on February 6, 2007.

Many attribute this hatred to the behavior of Nigerians seen to be annoyingly arrogant and often boastful and if the truth be told our Owamberic ways have not enhanced our reputation in this regard. To them, there is no modesty in the Nigerian lexicon. An African friend once noted to me that “Everything in Nigeria runs in the millions, when a politician embezzles, it in the millions. I have never heard of a Nigerian who embezzled thousands.” I responded in jest that embezzling thousands is no longer news worthy or fashionable. This ascribed behavior and perception of Nigerians present a perfect case study for the adventurous sociologist or perhaps, an ambitious dissertation topic. It will be interesting to know why Nigerians have distinguished themselves in this manner, good or bad, why their entrepreneurship dwarfs others. On per capita basis or percentages, if you will, Nigerians remain the pioneers in education and invention in Africa . Even in the US , interesting enough, they have managed to distinguish themselves as the foreign group with the most doctorate degrees, a seemingly impossible feat in the midst of Indians and Chinese in the same US. But it is true. In the medical field, their presence is aplenty, inventing, researching and excelling. In arts, a Nigerian, Wole Soyinka, was the first African to win a Nobel Prize, indeed in any category for that matter. I am yet to read an African writer who has matched (not surpassed, but matched) the likes of Achebe, Elechi Amadi, Cyprian Ekwensi, etc.

But the question still looms, why then do they hate Nigerians so much? Why will CNN muddle in stereotype of this tribe of over-achievers? Why would Collin Powell say that “these Nigerians are a bunch of scam artists?” Why would Oprah Winfrey, quite unfortunately, assert that “all Nigerians, no matter the level of education are corrupt?”  Seen as a threat, I mean economic and intellectual threat, hating Nigerians thus appears to be a measure of self-preservation for most of these Nigerian haters. Give a Nigerian an opportunity and he would make hay of his good fortune. I am reminded of the words of Senegalese President, Abdoulaye Wade, who noted in frustration that there cannot be a unified and borderless West Africa as long as Nigerians are part of the arrangement. Wade was simply afraid of what Nigerians would do to the Senegalese economy given a borderless region.

There are varying levels of perception of the Nigerian on the continent and this belies, immeasurably, the ineffable intrigue of the Nigerian. In Kenya, for example, Nigerians, for the most part, are viewed with much interest as though, alien beings, mesmerized by the likes of former president Ibrahim Babangida (imagine, Babangida of all characters), football star Austin Okocha and the legion of Nigerian soccer stars who ply their trade in the envied English Premiership League and other parts of Europe. To the average Kenyan, every Nigerian is either rich or a Pele on the soccer field. A group of Nigerian journalists recently traveled to Kenya and told of their experience in an essay recently published in various Nigerian dailies. The sum of it all is that they found Kenyans to be interested in them, their ingenuity, general success and ambitious tendencies. They were more interested in Babangida than the corruption he embodied.

But the Nigerian visiting Kenya should either be equipped with a copy of the most current African map or be very aware of its territorial boundaries as not to wander into neighboring Tanzania where hell awaits with all its perfidious treaties. Tanzania , like many other African countries, being the willing and eager recipient of Nigeria ’s endless largesse, is becoming notorious for its continued humiliation of Nigerians who dare to visit. A senior Tanzanian immigration officer once told a visiting and revered Nigerian clergyman that its embassy in Abuja has been instructed to encode in each visa issued to a Nigerian an invisible chip that would alert the immigration officials in Tanzania of the level of risk the visitor is likely to pose. In the case of the clergyman, his risk level was high and thus, refused entry in all his priestly regalia. But somehow, the so-called high risk level evaporated into the scorching Tanzanian air upon the revelation that he was a student at Harvard University . Wonders!

The fact that we share a common ancestry has not spared Nigerians from scorn in the hands of the African-Americans. In the US , the African-American and Caribbean communities continue to deal with Nigerians with palpable aspersion compounded by the noted unmeasured utterances of Collin Powell and Oprah Winfrey, their role models and heroes. African-American ladies are warned not to tangle romantically with Nigerians as they are domineering and insincere about their relationships (is this peculiar to Nigerians or an issue for all men?). I recall many years ago, Oprah aired a program on scam marriages, falsely, as often the case, portraying Nigerians as the main culprits. Much of this, invariably, stem from the unavoidable Nigerian factor of ambitiousness and the sky-is-the-limit attitude. To this end, an African-American is less likely to hire a Nigerian in corporate America for fear that he might replace her/him in a short few months.

A few years ago, as a member of a faculty search committee at my university, we received over one hundred and fifty resumes for two advertised faculty positions. Among those short-listed for one of the two positions was a Nigerian whose first and second degrees were from Obafemi Awolowo University , but obtained a doctorate from a Big Ten institution in the US . It is interesting to note that the members of this search committee included three African-American faculty members and two whites, totaling six, with my inclusion. As we poured over his resume, we soon reckoned that in a very short time in the US , the Nigerian candidate had accomplished far more in terms of research and publications than the other three short-listed candidates.

For good measure, he was also a recipient of a national award only given to students with exceptional academic and research abilities. None of the others had this merit. When he came on campus for his interview, being the last of the four, our suspicions of him being a good fit were well confirmed as there was abundant evidence that the job was his to refuse. We were all impressed or so I thought. But somehow, in their “infinite” wisdom, my African-American colleagues found an assortment of reasons not to extend an offer to this candidate. First, they talked about his perceived inability to socialize with other professors as though that were the primary reason for being hired; then the focus was on his accent which, if I should state, was never an issue during his phone and on-campus interviews; then they talked about his first and second degrees being from an African university with the argument that it may not enhance the overall profile of the department, blah, blah….Since the committee rules required a simple majority before an offer can be extended, and deadlocked at three against three, the candidate was overlooked for another who failed miserably in his very first year, thus, occasioning another search.

If crime (of some Nigerians) were to be the basis of such hatred we need no statisticians to tell us that the African-American and Caribbean communities in the US and even in Canada ( Caribbean community that is,) are awash in crime, illicit drugs, gangster activities and like vices. The numbers of African-American men in prisons across the country, it would appear, almost equal those in “freedomville”, USA and let us resist the temptation of blaming it all on the overlords in a flawed and racist justice system. No one can tell the story better than our hardworking African-American sisters that struggle daily to find worthy mates in their communities. So why have they too victimized Nigerians?

In South Africa , Nigerians remain at the pinnacle of the law enforcement radar often harassed, abused and mistreated for who they are. In crime-ridden Johannesburg , that makes Lagos on its worst crime day look like a soothing paradise of pristine and angelic enclaves, Nigerians are often targeted for the slightest infraction of the law. The grouse the South Africans have with Nigerians is the solemn fact that most occupy high positions they expected to have at the end of apartheid. In South African universities, one would find Nigerian intellectuals roaming the halls, teaching and professing. They are deans, department chairs, vice presidents and highly respected professors. Nigerians are even marrying their pulchritudinous women and the South Africans are far from being pleased at this development.

The ambidextrous Nigerians have even infiltrated South African football as players, coaches and managers as well as their corporations as CEOs and top executives. The black South Africans are resentful of this upsurge of the Nigerian humanity as they ponder this new form of apartheid that has subjected them to the background in their own land. The mis-education of the South African under apartheid has regrettably yielded a tribe of unskilled and inexperienced professionals incapable of managing the affairs of the country without resorting to the highly sought skills of the Nigerians and other Africans, especially, Ghanaians, proven intellectuals in their own right. For the thousands of Nigerians who reside in Mandela’s land, it is a daily struggle of survival in a society that has earmarked them as public enemy number one for no singular reason but their innate ambition.

The story however, is markedly different in Ghana , the new focus of Nigerian businessmen, students and fortune seekers. Nkrumah’s land is appealing for a number of reasons and Nigerians are not waiting for a soothsayer to intimate them of this fact. Ghana , once under the nefarious clutches of corrupt leadership that occasioned untold hardship on its hardworking populace has truly turned the corner and well on its way to economic buoyancy, need I say vitality. With the recent discovery of significant oil deposits running into the millions of barrels, the possibilities for Ghana is as wide as the Atlantic Ocean that crest its southern shores. Against this enticing backdrop, Nigerians’ interest in Ghanaian real estate has driven up the cost of prime land in choice areas such as East Legon, Airport Residential and other areas usually reserved for the cream of the Ghanaian crop. It appears that Ghanaians at the moment are at peace with their eastern neighbors in this seemingly quid pro quo relationship that is beneficial to all.

In Europe , like the electricity in Nigeria, sympathy for the Nigerian is in acute short supply as the story is hardly heart-warming. I had cause to travel to Nigeria recently in May 2007 to attend to some personal matters and experienced first hand how the world sees the Nigerian. On the return flight from Lagos to Amsterdam on KLM, I was taken aback when immigration officers stormed the plane eager to check the travel documents of arriving Nigerian passengers. This was highly unusual as they usually allow the passengers to make it down to the immigration desk before checks are conducted. But this flight was from Nigeria and it was special and was so treated. I should note well that this was not the case on the first leg of the trip from North America to Amsterdam . 

I was the first, out of three hundred or so passengers, to disembark and unaware of their presence initially, I took a few steps and found myself in the waiting arms of the overzealous armed officers who dissected my documents as though a pathologist performing an overdue autopsy. I watched in awe as one of the officers pulled a magnifying glass and held it against my passport anxiously checking for authenticity. Unsatisfied with his initial test, he waived me aside, to free up the line, and continued his test in his make-shift lab. The questions were abundant far more than what a serial killer in the dock would have been subjected to. Much to my chagrin, I discovered that even the usual protection afforded by an American passport was brazenly thrown overboard and replaced with intense scrutiny as long as the holder was of Nigerian origin. Such was the plight of the Nigerians on that flight.

O' what contempt.