I am sure there must be millions like me around the world. Born and raised in countries of the world where poverty and its fellow traveler, diseases, have always reigned supreme, we’ve clawed our ways up either by sheer luck or dint of hard work, and often, combinations of these two prerequisites to absolute or relative successes. We are paradoxical beings born of circumstances – these vary from one poor country to another throughout the world – all underlain by the search for economic well-being which has forced us to choose as new homes different countries of the wealthy First World. While many are unable to ever return to their homelands for many reasons among which, ironically, may be finance, most traverse their two new worlds with ease, spending working time in the wealthy nations and resting periods – these get longer the more comfortable the émigré becomes – in the former homelands. Many, in some cases, return permanently to the homelands by that unforeseen pull that makes home beckon even when it seems to offer very little in comparison to the life of comparative comfort that the rich country offers an émigré.
Even for those cut off by space and time from their old worlds, communication has made it easy to keep in touch and abreast of what goes on”at home.”
In the last one year, several events have happened to make me wonder about this seeming paradox for those of us in the world with loyalties to two countries, or two worlds, so to say. A ‘façade’ may not be a good description of the way that people who have adopted new countries feel about their new homes; may be ‘outer layer’ would seem a better word. Whatever the right word may be, the fact remains that we are often torn between two worlds in our feelings. I am sure most naturalized Americans feel the same surge of pride when they see the flag billow at a rendition of The Star Spangled Banner that an aged American born in Philadelphia who fought in Korea feels. Why? The flag is the symbol of a country that will send an army to rescue a single American in danger, anywhere – naturalized or native born. That knowledge brings a responsibility, an obligation of loyalty from the citizen and cannot be anything but genuine feeling.
The bombing of the World Trade Center brought outpourings of genuine sorrow and sympathies for America from the world over. Then came Afghanistan, Iraq and unprecedented violence in the Middle East. There have been anger at the OPEC “cartel”, Christian/Muslim tragedies AND the Miss World fiasco in Nigeria, World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Mexico, the Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir’s Jew “bashing” speech at the ASEAN summit in Thailand, etcetera.
I wanted Bush to succeed in “smoking out” Bin Laden and his gang in Afghanistan, and recoiled when a boy wanted to sell a Bin Laden almanac to me at Bere, Ibadan before September 2001 ended.
In spite of my being a Christian – a minuscule part of the hundreds of millions for whom Jerusalem is sacrosanct - I have always tended to side with the Palestinians against the Israelis. Choosing an easy out for a not-simple problem can be seen down the ages. Even after I saw an incredible show of shame in which some Palestinian young men carried what looked like a corpse draped in the usual green flag while half running but not really a corpse, I still tend to pity them as underdogs who stand no chance against the awesome Israeli defense might. To make their point of mounting body count, it was a living human made to look like a corpse.
The surreal feeling and fright I felt when I saw the “body” jump down and everybody scattered in different direction were beyond words. I believe the United States has a duty, a moral one, for a country that is probably the only Christian nation not running away from Christianity, to call Israel to order. I know this is going to be near impossible because no politician can survive in the United States after going against Israel.
And that brings me to Dr. Mohammed Mahathir. Before he stepped down last month after ruling his nation for more than two decades, he told the world – in a speech heard in person by President Bush of the U.S. – that America and other rich nations were “proxies” fighting Jewish wars for Israel. In a reaction still reverberating all over the world (the medical doctor-turned-politician received a standing ovation from the Asian leaders at the meeting).
Dr. Mahathir’s other thought-provoking suggestions were not as headline-grabbing as the “Jew-bashing” words. For instance, he had also asked “Moslems to join the modern world and stop fighting a losing battle in Palestine”, etcetera.
My interest in Malaysia dates back to the Seventies. A very good friend, married to an Australian was a co-worker in my go-fer days at The World Bank. I was also intrigued to learn of the palm oil nut that the country had gotten from Nigeria. The export of oil, no, not the black gold but palm oil, formed the mainstay of the country’s exports for many years before Dr. Mahathir’s twenty-two year rule catapulted Malaysia into an Asian Tiger. No, Oyo, Calabar, Itsekiri, Birom, Ibo, Hausa, et al., Malaysia is NO LONGER in the league of your corruption-ridden country that seems to get poorer the more money it makes from God-given resources.
I have not been to Malaysia but all you need is just access to cable television and see (even just from the ads for “Malaysia, Truly Asia”) the highly-developed infrastructures of the country: shopping malls that are at par with those shopping temples of the First World, multi-lane super-highways that look like the interstate road network of the United States of America, etc., all legacies that confirm Dr. Mahathir’s description as “Father of Malaysia.”
A little over a year ago, a young man went in search of a new life in Malaysia. Yeah, he IS a Nigerian but no drug runner or 419-er, he. In fact, X is as straight as God can make a near-perfect being. All he wanted (and still does) is a chance in life, and he was not getting it. As most of us know by now, it is possible but VERY difficult for a young person with no powerful parents to succeed in Nigeria. X pursued his interests in life: music – not singing, but piano-playing - art, boys’ scouting, church music and other simple things in life with vigor unmatched by the money-chasing interests of his peers. He holds an Ife first degree and had been a teacher. One of these interests landed him in Kuala Lumpur and a combination of several of these interests has kept him there.
We e-mail each other back and forth and here is a sentence from his last mail: “… I am coming home in … (my heart first skipped a beat on reading this!) but will stay till … I will rather live here even though I have to struggle than come to live in Nigeria …” X then wondered at how Malaysia, where people do their work and live “very simple life”, can be compared to Nigeria. It was a truly heart-warming letter from X who had been very much in step with the do-nothing attitude in Nigeria.
Water, the saying goes, will always find its level and so, I had expected nothing less from this kid who was always at his most joyful when at the piano/organ keyboards. Dr. Mahathir’s so-called “authoritarian” state has helped him go deep into his innermost being to discover how far he can go. Nigeria, unlike Malaysia, though, is still waiting for her own messiah!
The First World rants a lot about OPEC as a ‘cartel’, that is an evil group, a monopoly, bent on stagnating First World economies by hiking crude oil prices at will. It is amazing because I’ve read of how countries like Britain feed fat on the stratospheric taxes they impose on gasoline that make the pump price in Britain unbelievably high. I think a gallon was selling for over four pounds the last time I was in England.
Now, if high crude oil prices affect the economies of these rich countries, and OPEC is seen as a group with goals that are inimical to their interest, isn’t it hypocritical not to see all those subsidized agricultural products in EU countries as being against the interest of Third World Countries?
In a move that would gladden the fossilized heart of late Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia – he helped found the non-aligned nations in the Fifties – these countries banded together in Cancun, Mexico during the last WTO summit and demanded that these subsidies be removed. Food-exporting countries want their produces to be able to compete but this will continue to be impossible without the removal of the subsidies that advanced countries grant their farmers. The U.S. will have none of it and neither will the EU. They cried foul and the U.S. has threatened to take the bilateral route in its trade dealings rather than the multilateral approach that agencies like the WTO promote. Funny, the WTO is the brain child of the United States and she used to spearhead the multilateral approach! As we know and as the U.S. does, the bilateral route will lead to a dead end and the U.S. will, as in the case of rejecting the UN a while back, need to – pardon me – retrace her steps. Pardon me too for being shallow in Economics, but is ganging together to make the products of certain countries so expensive as to be priced out of a market not cartel-ling?
Let’s turn our attention now to the East, east of the world that is. During the Asian Economic crisis a couple of years ago, it was the same Dr. Mahathir who cried out at the stock market bogey thrown the Asian Tigers’ way. He refused the usual IMF remedy and instituted what he believed was in the interest of leading his country out of the general crash of the region’s economy which he believed was a First World conspiracy to stall their growths. I’ve also read that the IMF, the ‘Lending Club’s masquerade and harbinger of more poverty for poor countries, has grudgingly acknowledged that the Doctor’s prescription, excuse the pun, worked!
Still in the Orient we must turn to see another hypocritical, okay, economic doublespeak. The United States wants, and is hard at work to convince China (not Taiwan) to float its currency. Why? Floating the currency would definitely see a higher-valued currency unit which would raise the price of Chinese goods that flood U.S. market. By the way, the quality of Chinese goods in the U.S. is not the same as your ‘Made in China’ sold in Lagos or Onitsha. I know because I’ve personally bought a set of wrench at a Home Depot in the U.S. and another set here. Anyway, back to the double-dealing. China does not want the U.S. lucrative market cut off from its goods but I do not think she would let her currency find its real value which is much stronger than the present rate. That way, she can sell her ‘Made in China’ very cheap in the U.S. Makes sense to me; Chinese, approach, that is!
Okay, what of economies like Nigeria’s? Writing about the devastated value of the naira seems to be a recurrent theme in this column. Since Babangida, the naira has been allowed to “float” for reasons that even a non-economist like me finds baffling. We do not produce oil; God put it in our subterranean area, if I may put a spin on Professor Aluko’s retold story of the encounter with the Israeli professor who kept on asking if the palm tree groves between Lagos and Ife were plantations! OPEC, to which Nigeria belonged, agreed long ago to price crude oil in dollar. Since oil is the only thing we really export if you discount plastic, detergent, beverages, etcetera that we sell across West Africa, pray, what is the advantage of a very weak naira when we produce little or next to nothing for export?
Why would Nigerian government claim it was removing a “subsidy” – that has now changed to our ever-widening economic vocabulary addition tagged “deregulating the downstream sector” if it really ever existed when farmers are routinely subsidized even in the capital of capitalism, the United States of America? It isn’t only farming that is being and has always been subsidized in the U.S. It had to come to the aid of Chrysler Corporation, the auto giant, in the Seventies – I remember because I wrote a term paper in Finance questioning such a move in a supposedly capitalist economy. I understand why it was a necessary move to save thousands of jobs but that move was a bit of socialism! U.S. government, through her Department of Agriculture, is actively involved not just in helping farmers produce enough for America’s market and export but also purchases food, livestock, etc. which are routinely burnt to stabilize market prices. Pray, are these not subsidies?
I am not sure if there is any country that can truly practise an out-and-out free market. For instance, lowering interest rates so that people can buy homes or re-finance their existing loans is tampering/manipulation to stimulate the economy. When consumers refinance their old loans, they often get cash out which are spent on vacation, shopping, etcetera and these spur the economy. Interest rates in the U.S. right now (to consumers) are so low that many people are buying cars at 0 (zero) percent interest rate! I do understand that the U.S. has the strong manufacturing economy to support its trillions of dollars in debt but I dare say that no country can run up a teeny-weeny fraction of the debt she runs up without her people having to pick the trash can for food.
By the way, it baffles beyond belief that Nigeria is planning to privatize the mint while the Canaan of capitalism, the good old U.S.A. continues to have her mint under the vise grip of the Treasury Department. Pray, who will own the mint? And who will be Esau’s Jacob to front for the real owner?
These are what constitute dilemmas for people from Third World countries who make their new homes in the rich countries of the West. While most genuinely love their new countries, it is also very easy for them to see the double standards that seem to permeate rich countries’ world view, a view that often results in the naturalized citizens often seeing their new countries not as the ideal place they first thought. Ask Arab-Americans.
The comparative material comfort and even affluence of the First world do not generally feed the soul of first generation naturalized First World citizens. These societies often lack the compassion that a person born and bred in a Third World country grew up with. Dropping in on friends and families may often be welcome – or at least not frowned upon – in Mexico, Nigeria or India, it would not be welcome, for the most part, in the First World. I must mention, though, that many in those parts of the world are beginning to see, in the words of late Dayo Dedeke’s Yoruba folk song that “Ki a rin k’a po ni nye ni, o”- the more, the merrier!
TOLA ADENLE
The Comet on Sunday, November 2003.
