Will Nigeria rise up again? Can the country of promise reclaim the Dream of its founding fathers? And will the Nigerian Diaspora be able to play a pivotal role in the country’s renaissance or are nationals abroad just a group of internet warriors shooting with loaded guns on tweeter and facebook yet unable to make any real sacrifice or contribution to redeeming Nigeria? These and many other questions have come my way these last few weeks as I have met with several Nigerian groups in the United States and in Europe.
The place and role of the Dispora in the rise of many countries, from Japan to India and China is fairly well documented. But much has been said about possibilities of the Diaspora as catalysts for progress in Africa even though documentation of contribution seems largely limited to financial remittances.
In speaking at several gala dinners organized in the United States by United Kingdom based Nigerians on the platform of Nigeria Dialogue, with the ambition of mobilizing Nigerians living abroad into Nigeria’s literal 37th state that could be an exemplar to the others, and help to move Nigeria to a place of pride in the world, I had to pointedly reflect on the string of effort to make Nigerians abroad a positive influence for development and progress.
That effort to organize Nigerians abroad has not always been salutary. Fractured and sometimes divisive as the engagements have been, the potential benefits, if we manage to get it right, clearly justify the effort. A starting point in gauging that value is the experience of other counties.
Much credit for Japan’s ascendance, following the Meiji Restoration, has been given to Japanese returning from Germany and elsewhere in the West but it is in the resurgence of India and China that the full benefits of a Diaspora community provides models we could learn a few things from.
When in 1991 India’s current accounts situation was terrifying and the foreign reserves were barely able to sustain a month’s trading, change became imperative and the appointment of Manahan Singh as Finance Ministe,r triggered reforms. These reforms excited the Indian Dispora into such a level of engagement that it was soon ranked second only to the United States, in the listing of sources of the surge of new investments into India. The category of non – resident Indians (NRI) would not only account for new investment funds but also for the engagement of ideas such as outsourcing and globalization in their countries of domicile which would eventually serve India’s purpose. Economists like Jagdish Bhagwati at Columbia wrote a book aptly titled In Defense of Globalization just as several leading business School Deans, such as Deepak Jain at the Kellogg School who served on the board of Relliance Industries helped bring their knowledge and network to enhancing the disposition of global players towards high growth Indian companies.
Attempts, led by government, to engineer similar outcomes for Nigeria have been far less successful. The creation of NIDO, as the umbrella for Nigerians in the Diaspora (Organization), produced, in many cases, unhealthy scrambling for position. Position – coveting, a Nigerian malaise associated with the view that positions are fungible assets that could be converted to personal gain, rocked NIDO in a way that suggested the host cultures had not robbed off on those Nigerians so inclined.
The Federal government even tried to institutionalize Diaspora affairs, giving Joe Keshi, who as Consul – General in Atlanta, had provided guidance for organizing the Diaspora movement, charge over the subject at the Presidency.
Then there also emerged conduct that suggested competition and disputations between the Diaspora and home based bureaucrats and citizens. Some professionals at home, instead of looking forward to what they could learn from colleagues abroad saw them as threats to their livelihood. The reason for the ineffectiveness in harnessing the Diaspora dividend has, in my opinion, been the wrong expectations and government involvement. This is partly why I find the Nigeria Dialogue, a movement by a group of young Nigerian Nigerian professionals to weave the body of foreign resident Nigerians into a tapestry of passionately committed change agents that can be seen as Nigeria’s 37th state, as very laudable.
When they recently put up a road show of Gala Dinners across the United States and invited me to speak at some of them I found the initiative striking. While many battling in NIDO for supremacy were asking what government could do for them to enable them give something back to Nigeria, the Nigeria Dialogue team working with the Future Awards people, and others, were putting out their resources for Dinners in 5star Hotels, before Town Hall meetings which tend to attract more of the Twitter, Facebook internet warrior types, who ask why the problems of Nigeria have not been fixed, rather than what they can do to fix it. I spoke at the Galas at the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta, and the Houstonian in Houston. It seemed like a good strategy to meet those who like to Dress up and go out at such Gala, then afterward get ready for the people who want to tweet their frustrations, both rightfully and in unhelpful exasperation, and hope eventually to find enough common ground to have collective aspirations on Nigeria that can alter the cause of history. Of course all find social media valuable and many. The variety of dispositions not withstanding there is good news. As chairman of the board I was favored to cut the tape to open the Victoria. I stand offices of a global software Business enterprise created by Diaspora Nigerian which has been doing business with Fortune 500 companies in the US.
As I told those at the Dinners the net effect could be to get Nigeria to getting it right enough that its neighbors seek a similar path resulting in a region of affluence that would raise the dignity of the person of negroid descent anywhere in the world. So it was of direct personal benefit to them whether they planned to ever live in Nigeria again or not. I am indeed persuaded that a re-oriented Nigeria that leads a pack of flying Geese from Africa towards prosperity and away from media report of the type of the abduction of the Chibok girls and Ebola and Famine and Civil War will be one whose triumph will be appropriated by many far from the continent of Africa.
This is the way of hope but it will be manifest at least cost if all the stakeholders understand how much of a win-win scenario it can be. Not seeing the possibilities clearly, sometimes results in outcomes of competition from people who should be collaborating. A good example can be seen in a tweet I put out on this recently. In indicating that I believed the children of the generation that left town will renew the land I touched off comments among which were those who thought those who left town have no interest in where they left from, and those who thought their children would never come back, as well as those who said they would take meat from the mouths of those who stayed behind. But the majority saw the Diaspora as asset.
The truth as I see it is that working well together all should be able to gain more than any can lose in the collaboration of stakeholders from home and abroad.
Pat Utomi.
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