Making the Best of Nigeria’s Brain Drain Through Organized Diaspora Assistance By Abimbola Lagunju

That Nigeria hemorrhages its skilled workforce to The West and the Middle East is no news.  There are many drivers of this phenomenon at work, but they can be broadly classified into three or four push categories – economic, work environment, family pressure and security. Bottomline is that these Made and Trained in Nigeria men and women feel compelled to look for opportunities elsewhere. We hear and read of some who have brilliantly excelled in their fields, and who otherwise would have been unknown in their motherland for lack of support and hostile working and living environment.

Common to these skilled immigrants is the desire to see a better Nigeria, to hear of a better Nigeria, and to be able to boast of their homeland. This desire remains a dream, and a painful one too, having experienced good governance and political vision in their destination countries and understanding that the making of a normal and functional society is no rocket science.

We read of remittances from the Diaspora and how much it outweighs Official Development Assistance. We know that these remittances go on to save lives of relatives, send siblings to schools, ensure food on the table and leave a little for religious activities. We know that without these remittances, many lives would have been lost, many children out of school and many would have really felt the crunch of our voodoo-nomics. Life would have been difficult for many but for these hard-earned dollars.

But this does not give a license to self-entrench in complaints about Nigeria or to denigrate in social media or to condemn in articles in online newspapers. No one should ever mount a high horse as regards one’s homeland. Once a Nigerian product, directly or indirectly, always a product and tens of additional nationalities cannot undo that. A multitude of accents cannot undo one’s origin either.

Now it is time to call on Diaspora to give back something to their homeland in an organized manner – A kind of Official Diaspora Assistance, another ODA but fully funded by the Diaspora for rural roads and clean energy in rural areas of Nigeria as per the standards of their destination countries. It is a drive to transform brain drain into organized gains for the homeland. It is an opportunity to see the dream of translocation of the destination environment into rural Nigeria.

How will this Official Diaspora Assistance work?

A bit complicated but not impossible.

The idea is that diaspora Nigerians are taxed in their destination countries under a tax system called “Country of Origin Tax” for the development of their homeland of origin. I propose about 2.5% of their annual income. These monies are declared by the destination countries every year and every two years, the destination countries put up a matching contribution which is then committed to rural road networks and clean energy in rural areas. The management of these monies and execution of the projects can be assigned to a UN Committee. I will quickly add that the monies are strictly for operations and should not be committed to travels, meetings and consultancies by the UN body (they are very smart at that)

Thus, we have 3 contributors to these funds:

1    1. Nigerian Diaspora – 2-5% of their income taken from source by destination countries

2       2. Destination countries – Matching contribution

3      3. UN – Their travels, meetings, conferences etc.

What do we give the Diaspora in return?

-         - The right to vote and to be voted for even while in Diaspora

-         - The creation of a Ministry for Diaspora Affairs

Though, I have no doubt that the idea is quite feasible, I accept that it is a very complicated matter and I do not have all the answers. But then, there are many smart people out there who can flesh up this skeleton.

Just imagine what Nigeria would look like in another 30 years if we can get this working.

Let’s together Make Nigeria Great…..I didn’t deliberately put “Again” because I cannot remember when it was ever great. I do not think Mr Trump also has a reference for his "Again" too...

I hope our very smart and courageous Abike Kafayat Oluwatoyin Dabiri-Erewa reads this and acts on it. 

If ever a Bill is sent to the Nigerian Parliament, I want this Bill to be called Abimbola Lagunju Official Diaspora Assistance Bill. No joke!


CAVEAT
 Just two caveats:
1. If ever any government in power in Nigeria wants to take control of these funds, block it. 
2. If ever any agency of the UN wants to start deducting its travels, meetings and conferences costs from these funds, block the process.

South Africa – A Land of Thugs and Cutthroats By Abimbola Lagunju

It is a commonplace phenomenon that when people are confronted with certain images or they hear certain words or phrases, these external stimuli evoke pleasant or unpleasant thoughts, positive or negative physical reactions or psychological changes. These reactions are not necessarily based on personal experience, and may have been informed by other peoples’ experiences or simply from routine information gathering. It is akin to a mental scan of keywords in a narrative. Combined together, these keywords give a mental image of the subject under question.

When this exercise is applied to the mention of Republic of South Africa, the following words and phrases jump into mind: xenophobia, semi-literate thugs, violence, corrupt leadership, carjacking, rape, inferiority complex and ingrates.

South Africa has been in the news for a long time for xenophobic attacks on other Africans. The images of destruction visited on African immigrants have made the round in the world. These thugs kill, maim and rape. They accuse other Africans of taking jobs that they are too lazy to do, they accuse them for their economic woes and they invent stories to justify their carnage intentions. Then they judge and hound others like animals. Their leadership, both traditional and political gives tacit approval and make unconvincing excuses in the press. Hear what Jacob Zuma said of the attacks in 2017 “incidents of crime or feuds between people must not be incorrectly characterized as xenophobic violence”! And Goodwill Zwelithini king of South Africa's Zulu nation reportedly said in March 2015, “head lice should be squashed and foreigners should pack their belongings and leave the country”.

Their xenophobia starts from their embassies where they subject would-be travelers to humiliation. They play visa gods. And when finally the traveler obtains the visa, the traveler faces further humiliation on their national carrier, where semi-literate cabin crew talk down and humiliate their African passengers while they play the servant to the occasional white passenger on the plane. They are conditioned to be ever servile to their white masters. Forget their compromised independence. And on arrival in their international airport, the immigration and customs officers look for the most insignificant excuse to deny entry to the long-suffering black African passenger. They are outrightly hostile. We remember the story of a plane-load of Nigerians that was sent back for issues of yellow card. Nigeria under Foreign Minister Ashiru immediately retaliated and made the South African leadership eat humble pies. They have forgotten; they are back to their old game.

It is this same people whose leaders, cap in hand made a tour of different Black African states to ask for support during what they term “their struggle”. Their leaders came begging for money, for education places for their citizens, for military support and in some cases for military training grounds in some African countries. It is for these same people that many Africans shed their blood, suffered the invasion of their countries by the apartheid regime and were destabilized. The destabilization visited on Mozambique through the creation of Renamo by apartheid South Africa many years ago has still not gone away. Renamo still continues with the agenda of destabilization that it learnt from apartheid South Africa after twenty five years of the Peace Agreement. And it is these same Mozambicans who suffered so much for these South Africans that they now hound and kill like animals in their streets.

South Africans now point scornfully at the rest of Sub-Sahara as “Africans” and claim they are not Africans. They have said it and other Africans should respect that. They have a right to say who they are not. But they have not said who they are. But who really cares who or what they are? We know they aren’t Caucasians neither are they Asians. They are something that evokes xenophobia, semi-literate thugs, violence, corrupt leadership, carjacking, rape, inferiority complex and ingrates in the minds of other Africans. Their collective behavior represents an antithesis to the values of hospitality that Africans hold dear. They cannot be part of us. . What they do not know is that we own our lands in Africa they so much despise. And they have no lands. And there is nothing they can do about it. Black South Africans are just mere tenants on the African soil. Their masters own the lands and own them too.

Black South Africans in their collective delusions think their apartheid and race issues are over. They think their so-called struggle is over. They think their independence is forever. If they would focus a bit less on their hatred for other Africans and pay more attention to the emergence of a new world order where peoples’ rights are being threatened, they would understand that their so called independence of 1994 is just an interlude. What Independence without rights to land?! They still have a very long way to go. They still have a long struggle ahead. They will still look for help in the future from other African States. And who will listen to them? They have, in their naiveté and unbridled complex burnt all the bridges. South African can never again pull the wool of Pan-Africanism over the eyes of any Black African State or any African intellectual for that matter.

It is a crime for leaders of Black African States to fold their arms or make some diplomatic noise while Black South Africans maim and kill Black Africans. There are immediate measures that can be taken. Firstly, cut diplomatic ties with South Africa, secondly, expel South Africa from the African Union, thirdly reduce all trade links to the barest minimum (they can’t be killing other Africans and be making money in their countries), and lastly cut all sports ties with South Africa.

We really do not need South Africa for anything.

Mother Africa by Abimbola Lagunju

Mother Africa, I see you in dreams

gorgeous, tall,

royal, and adorned

in bright clothes,

and priceless jewels.

I dream through the hole of time.

Can this really be?

I, your curious son,

then transport my dreams

to my knowledge of you,

and again I see you

proud and tall,

posing for artographs

at the foot of pyramids

of Giza,

of Nubia

and on the Great Walls of Zimbabwe.

Tell me, what happened to you mother.

You look so different from the pictures

and but for your face,

I would not have believed that

you are the same person I see in my dreams.

Why did you allow your beautiful clothes,

and your jewels to be stolen

and these rags put in their place?