Japa or Jakpa is a trending neologism that has entered our vocabulary, as it were, from nowhere. Yet it represents a socio-cultural reality that is threatening the economic stability of the homeland. Many believe it is another example of self-harm, occasioned by leadership ineptitude and undisciplined economic policies, with little or no social security for the underserved. A THINK TANK, like The Igbo Studies Association, should not be a passive onlooker as this social phenomenon traverses and unhinges our economic structure. It calls for a valent and reasoned response as this August body holds its meeting at the pre-eminent city of Enugu in May 2024. As a life member of the Association, I will be honored if I am allowed to make a few remarks on this trending matter. Japa need not be a jeremiad, foretelling the disaster of a people.
Keywords: Japa, Igbo, Diaspora, Migration, Globalization, Service
Unraveling a hydra-headed syndrome
The Japa syndrome is not unlike the age long Igbo NJEPU migratory economic adventure, during which Igbo skilled workers moved outside their place of origin to a foreign land to seek economic welfare. But a majority of them came back with their wealth to the homeland, before setting out again. It was a seasonal adventure. The Isu people were adept in this economic adventurism and it eventually gave rise to the term ISU-Ama or the Isu that moved out of their traditional homeland. Their dialect gave rise to the language of the Igbo Bible. The prize winning Omenuko novel by Pita Nwanna was also written in that Igbo dialect in 1932.
NJEPU, did not imply a permanent migration. But it had consequences and its variant in modern times has a negative carry-over effect, more worrisome than its antecedent.
NJEPU, for many, was, in the primordial sense, like a rite de passage, which in the search for “the economic grail’, led to a transformation, a brighter future and a better status. But if we are not careful, the modern variant, Japa, can be anti-productive and deflationary, leading to mental and structural deformity of Igboland. When a people continue to move away from their homeland to other climes, the tendency is for them to become assimilated, or sometimes feign assimilation into the dominant culture of the new environment.
They will also begin to lose their primordial cultural traits such as their dress codes and language in favor of the one spoken in the new environment. We can see this already happening with the Igbo language. In this case, Japa becomes a deficit in the existential value chain to survive, not only economically but also, linguistically and of course, culturally, two important instruments for ethnic solidarity, pride and identification.
Japa, analyzed from this prism, also becomes a loss. And that loss could be irreversible. While those who engaged in the NJEPU syndrome always had a vision of coming back home with their wealth, the Japa migrants are pushed by a different set of values. While the NJEPU migrant workers were deploying their skills in Igbo land, and using them to develop indirectly other parts of the homeland and by extension other parts of Nigeria, the situation is now different. Consider for example, the economic marvel, south of the Sahel region, code-named the ALABA MARKET, in the Ojo local government of Lagos state, touted as one of the largest venture capital in Africa. It is the product of the NJEPU economic culture.
Survival is the prime driving force for most of the current Japa migrants. They are, by and large, fleeing from our scorching economic strangulation, sometimes state-imposed. Most “victims”, for that is what I call them, are not thinking of coming home any time soon. Once ensconced in their new found homes, purchased beautiful houses, found schools and colleges for their young wards the next ambition is to bring their parents abroad, deepening the gulf. Between home and abroad.
Our post-civil war diaspora have made this mode of behavior a way of life, a neo-culture. Some of those who went abroad with me in the late 1960s as the war was about to explode are still there. Some who came back at the end of the war have gone back, and as one of them told a friend last year, visit home as part of a personal “pilgrimage”.
Many of their children have left colleges, found gainful employment, become citizens or residents, some with juicy appointments and high economic profiles, and now, with their parents around them, the impetus to come home wanes, and is no longer considered as a serious part of the agenda.
They are part of the generation that has decided to live, die and be buried outside their homeland, Igboland. This is the neo-culture beholding my generation, our generation. Japa presents even a more serious conundrum, as I alluded earlier, since the consequences of unregulated, uncontrolled dispersal remains indeed dire. Japa is also a counter-culture. The values and inspirations that drive the syndrome differ from our mainstream culture, and value chain:Think Home.
How then do we deal with this dysfunctional hydra headed syndrome and avoid a jeremiad, a disaster foretold, staring at us without a blink? Are we ready for the Jeremiah effect when the Jews refused to obey the warnings of prophet Jeremiah about the impending destruction of Jerusalem, which eventually occurred in 586 BCE?
A Global Phenomenon
Needless to say, the Japa Syndrome has enforced an existential gap in the homeland. No one goes out and returns to find the place as he left it. Chinua Achebe reminds us of this reality under a totally different circumstance -the exile of Okonkwo Unoka, the hero of the novel, Things Fall Apart:
‘Seven years was a long time to be away from one’s clan. A man’s place was not always there, waiting for him. As soon as he left, someone else rose and filled it. The clan was like a lizard. If it lost its tail it soon grew another”. (Page 121).
Achebe was referring to the pre-colonial homeland, between the 11th and 19th centuries, when ”men were men.” The homeland of today is a society in fast mutation, where primordial values are constantly challenged by imported values, and where old values do not grow back as fast as the lizard’s renewed tail. This is part of the reason to be concerned—the fact that not all those who Japa, have the intention to come back. And what is more worrying is that the Japa people tend to draw from the homeland those who should replace them. It is important, therefore, for our leadership to recognize these challenges and seek for creative recipes for immediate and wholesome resolutions.
We definitely need to create our own comfort zones at the home front through focused and selfless leadership. This leadership should foster social conditions that would stem the dysfunctional migratory syndrome. We can turn a disadvantage into an opportunity of creative possibilities. Dispersion is not unique to NdiIgbo but it seems to have taken us by surprise, with its somewhat embarrassing rapid growth, like a movement. It has its foreign dimension, beyond our borders, making it a global phenomenon. We can learn from the experiences of others.
Creative Recipes: The Indian Example
I studied and graduated with many students from India in the 1970s. Many did not go back to India because of lack of employment. Many with doctorate degrees in rare subjects like engineering stayed put as post-doctoral students with Professors that had grants, waiting for the appropriate opportunities to go home. Opportunities and reforms eventually came in different formats following appropriate policies from different Indian governments.
Kerala is one of India’s foremost centers of technology. Diaspora Indian’s returned home with skills earned in America and Europe to work for American companies which needed their skills in India. India dumped Coca-Cola in favor of home-made Limca, which found its way to Nigeria in the 1980s and 1990s. They also produced Indian-made cars based on the people’s need.
An Indian journalist Gurcharan Das, wrote about these development, some two decades ago as follows:
“India’s poverty is a symbol of poverty on our planet, and if India can hope to make a significant dent, so can most of the Third World “
Das also wrote, concerning one of the poorest countries of the world, India, surpassed perhaps, only by Nigeria on the poverty chart:
In the second half of the twentieth century, Asian tigers demonstrated that it can be done: a poor nation can become rich, and very quickly. They took less than thirty years to transform their societies, whereas the West needed a hundred. Late comers are sometimes blessed.”
Comforting and reassuring observation indeed.
Bangalore is an Indian region that gained from brain circulation. Indian Universities churn out every year about two million graduates. A reformed American immigration law, drew into God’s own country India’s brightest and best. America’s gain became India’s loss as the latter moaned over the brain drain. Indians could not, like Igbos, stop their children from emigrating. The prospect of these children returning to India was, however, brighter in India than in contemporary Nigeria because of India’s well-trained and disciplined entrepreneurs and a policy directive that encouraged self -reliance in the long term.
Forward-looking policy reforms, especially in the 1990s changed the game, as many Indians, educated in America, especially at the Silicon Valley, took their wares and skills back to cities like Bangalore, Bombay and even Madras and Punjab. Because these economic activities were on Indian soil, “payback time”, that is, returning values to the homeland began. According to Das, it was the result of “a new merit order, where talent, hard work, and managerial skill matter far more than inherited wealth.”. Compare this with the Nigerian situation where many educated Nigerians are migrating abroad, with the consequent departure of some foreign companies.
India is, today, a global hub for talent hunt. That is the India, concerning which the Harvard-trained Das wrote as follows: “India’s poverty is a symbol of poverty on our planet, and if India can hope to make a significant dent, so can most of the Third World” (p.xviii).
Despite pressures from the IMF and the World Bank, India remains resilient as the national objective is to improve the lives of the ordinary citizens. According to information from the U.S. Census Bureau, Indian Americans are the highest income earners, more than the average white American.
Japa , Hunger and the role of Agriculture
In a forthcoming book, I wrote about the role our village republics played in the past to ensure Igbos fed themselves in the context of self-sufficiency and economic independence. Our republican economy relied mainly on Agriculture to ensure, first and foremost, that hunger was eliminated, and a successful farmer was honoured and respected. Westerners called it subsistence economy.
Today, our westernized economy, highly dependent on neo-colonial prescriptions, finds it difficult to meet the demands of our localized and politicized “stomach infrastructure”. The Igbo Republican economic model, rudimentary as it was then, recognized other valent occupations and integrated them in the so-called primitive economy, to make it functional and harmonious.
Artisans of various categories, rainmakers, medicine men, musicians, smiths, woodpeckers — all were recognized in the model. What was not immediately needed, was put away for the rainy day. Everybody was employed or to put it more correctly- had something to do -and had dignity that labor confers. No serious economists would argue that there is no hunger in the land today, as the Nigerian government was not ashamed to receive palliatives from even a war-ravaged country like Ukraine.
A one-off food palliative is not a recipe for a nation that is suffering from chronic hunger. That the South East did not join other parts of Nigeria in the recent protest against hunger, does not mean that the zone cannot do better in the fight against food shortage. We need a sustainable Green Revolution that is home grown and that is free from a pervasive scarcity mentality, as we join a social revolution that is based on technology and the knowledge industry. That is the way to follow for a society with a population of young, upward mobile youth that must be admitted within the labor force. Hunger is one of the causes of the dispersal japa syndrome.
The Globalization Malaise
NdiIgbo need to upgrade this our republican model, like the Asian tigers—Japan, India, China, Singapore, Malaysia did, to respond to the challenges of modernity. I dare to repeat that, globalization and its misapplication is also at the root of our economic malaise. As it stands our people will continue to be short changed. In this regard, I had written some seventeen years ago as follows:
Globalization is not a free lunch: It is a movement away from one form of deprivation (national economic exclusion) to another form of deprivation (global economic inclusion). Those in charge of this neo-economic order, seriously speaking, may not necessarily be the so-called industrialized powers. Those in control are usually the multi-national companies from these countries and across the globe (You would be right if you say that their countries are the cheerleaders behind the scene)…There are about 38,000 of them all over the world, deciding who produces what and at what price.
Consider the price wars on-going between world airlines operators in Nigeria and Air Peace Limited as a result of the attempt of Nigeria’s Air Peace to fly to Britain. The operating philosophy is domination, profit and intimidation of less developed countries. This attitude and regime will bring about a new kind of conflict, just as colonization and evangelization did in the 19th century. Nigeria must be prepared for this.
Globalization, through its educational imperatives, is perhaps the greatest enabler of brain drain. Our obsession with foreign degrees is obnoxious, and despite the establishment of more universities in the land, the urge to go abroad is highly seductive. Globalization is also the source of talent outsourcing from developing countries.
Not too long ago for example, Nigeria, through the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the National Talent Export Program (NATEP) and Lab Four, an American cyber-security company. This is to create substantial employment opportunities by outsourcing 50,000 jobs to Nigeria, according to a report by Premium Times of March 19, 2024. The Minister, reportedly enthused during the signing ceremony in Abuja:
“We envision Nigeria as a pivotal global hub for service exports and talents outsourcing”.
However, before outsourcing our talents and minerals, we must have enough to take care of the homeland. A policy to this effect is what is needed to act as a fillip to the president Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda. That also is being innovative and creative. Taking coal to Newcastle, as the saying goes, is not exactly like taking coal to Iva Valley. It is not innovative.
The collaboration between NATEP and Lab Four is billed to contribute 1.2 billion dollars annually to the Nigeria economy. Fair enough. Money is important, but not as important as the determined will of a people to develop their country and to control the product areas of their economy. That determination must make accountability an important pillar. We must insist on domestic harmony through well thought-out economic policies and reforms.
What, for instance, informs the mindset of a government which wants to build the future of its homeland by “training” a digital generation that will be sent to foreign countries at the end of the training.? Should a policy objective type of policy be to the detriment of the homeland? Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? If we allow this to be done indiscriminately we will not only be out sourcing our capitals, human and materials, we will also be outsourcing the skills that should help us to develop ourselves, and avoid the dependence syndrome. It is yet another example of exporting wealth and importing poverty, a replica of what is happening in the oil sector. Poor and leadership myopia add to our underdevelopment malaise.
This development should be a serious concern to this august body. Our governments have never matched the resilience of our people with focused leadership and good governance. Unfortunately, most of our states do not work for the people. As they destroy the political freedoms of the people, they discourage free enterprise and business. That is why state power remains suspicious.
A Start-Up-Zone
Imo, Abia, and Anambra with a vast intellectual capital are in a good position to reap bounteously from the knowledge revolution and skills in entrepreneurship. Agriculture is a low hanging fruit, and we should harness our vast and enormous arable lands with improved technology. Okonjo-Iweala, who directs global trade should tell us where we have competitive and comparative advantages, as we heed her call for unity among our various states. We have great stories for entrepreneurial success. It is true that because of insecurity in these states we have not gain much from foreign investments, yet as I observed elsewhere:
“The development of a nation does not come from the generosity of global leaders or investors, but from the hard work and cooperation of its people”.
At the same time:
“… our development agenda need not be a war opposing the government against the governed. The grim reality of our sectoral statistics and human development indices reveal that we have neither created sustainable wealth nor alleviated poverty in the past several years. Both are on the dreadful fast lane of decay and dwindling returns. Most disturbing is the fact that there is a strong link between acute poverty and state failure, between state failure and security of life.
The fact also is that there are alternatives to alleviating poverty, of limiting avoidable migrations and fighting economic disruptions like the Japa syndrome and its deleterious effects on the homeland. Affected nations, including Igbo geo-political space and its leadership, must avoid the trap of TINA, the defeatist mantra that says there is no alternative, championed by western economic propagandists. We must have the confidence to think differently, like Brazil, Russia, India, China and Saudi Arabia (the BRICS) are doing, using their national currency, instead of the dollar, to conduct their trades. We must also look inwards to see what we can draw from our traditional economic system to ensure sustainability. Igbo land was not a tabula rasa in the areas of trade and business before the advent of the West.
Wrote Robert Gilpin:
Many aspects of the Japanese economy which baffle foreigners are as a consequence of a powerful commitment to domestic harmony; and the”over-regulation” of the Japanese economy is motivated by a desire to protect the weak and the defenseless”
A highly-diversified economy, Japan’s economy grew with emphasis on agriculture and manufacturing. It is one of the largest producers of motor vehicles in the world. Its GDP is 4.232 trillion USD.
On the other hand, India’s GDP is 2.410.89 USD. That economy had also produced about ten Nobel Prize laureates as compared with Nigeria’s one.
Nobody can say for sure what Nigeria’s GDP is presently, given the notorious manipulation of figures in the country. It had hovered between 440 and 448 US Dollars.
A Global Network for Rescue:
It has been generally accepted that the world is a global village. Technology has made it so. It is therefore appropriate to seek international collaboration to stem the tide of migration from so-called Third World countries to the advanced countries of the world.
According to The Newsweek of March 22, 2024:
“containing irregular migration from Africa to Europe demands global efforts. The European Union has signed an eight billion US dollar aid package with Egypt to cut irregular immigration across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. The aid will also help border control, increase trade and enhance security. It is estimated that about 9 million migrants are in Egypt waiting to cross to Europe.”
Who says our enterprising or desperate Igbo brothers are not among this number? The sad truth is that not all those seeking to cross the Atlantic survive the journey, reminding us of the horrors of the slave trade- a re-enactment of the debauchery and inhumanity of the trans-Saharan slave trade. In that inhuman culture, it was a forced migration at work. Today, the migration is self-inflicted, or almost so-triggered by a compelling desire to escape the harsh and wrenching economic conditions at the homeland.
Other Factors that Drive Migration:
The conflicts in the Sahel region, the rash of coups in the West African sub region, especially the francophone belt, have created humanitarian problems of forced dispersals with trickle down effects downwards-especially to countries with little or no border controls, like Nigeria. The religious components of these developments have their own disruptive consequences, exacerbating ethnic sentiments and loss of jobs, including loss of lives. It is only natural for the underserved to want to seek for a better living condition elsewhere.
According to the Newsweek report some of the other reasons behind the Japa syndrome include opportunism, flawed elections, colonial exploitations, lack of good governance, and, we must include, state capture. The report did not forget to include the effects of the Ukraine-Russian war, which has upscaled food insecurity and hunger.
One cannot but appreciate these realities, no matter where you live. Those who have chosen to join the Japa syndrome bandwagon definitely have their reasons. The question is: for how long shall we run?
Wrote Mohammed El-Bendary, a free-lance journalist from Egypt:
“The future of an economically stable Africa that can feed its children all depends on how rapidly the international community will manage to rescue Africa from current crises. The trajectory of policy in Africa by the world leaders must change from being primarily focused in maintaining security to also include fighting hunger. For it is only by assisting African countries to counter hunger, can we ensure safety and security of Africa and the world”. (Newsweek, March 22, 2024)
I agree with the above views, with a caveat. On the debt issue for example, for how long will our creditors impose – debt-reprieve programmes that are built on mismanagement and corruption? The West that is too quick in giving us credits, is also guilty of frustrating our development efforts through ambiguous and manipulative repay strategies, as some francophone African countries have found out. Such practices make it impossible for the debtors to be debt free in the long term. Nigeria is an example.
Debt Relief or Debt Cancellation?
During the Obasanjo Regime, Nigeria had a debt relief package of $18 billion granted by the Paris Club. It represented some 60% of Nigeria’s total debt profile. But what is the position today? Not encouraging you would agree. Nigeria’s Minister of Finance who also co-ordinates the Economy has recently informed us that the country has increased her debt-profile by contracting a $2.5 billion loan facility from the World Bank. This is , to say the least, disconcerting, given our high fertility rate and inability to produce for export or have enough to stem the ravages of hunger. The impression persists that Nigeria has since, bargained off the future of its children in order to meet some of the conditionalities tied to these loans. None of the states can boast to be free of some form of a debt hangover. I insist that we can do with some form of economic nationalism.
Conferences to the rescue:
The Igbo leadership at various levels is not unaware of the problems associated with the renascent Jakpa syndrome and the disconnect the dispersal has continued to inflict on the homeland. Yet I wonder if a thorough and in-depth analysis of the long-term consequences have been grasped.
A Conference titled “Bridging the Homeland-Diaspora Disconnect for Transforming our Present and Future Together” was scheduled to take place on Friday “12-13 April, 2024. It was billed to “address the emotional and physical stages that separate the diaspora and the homeland, as it affects cultural identity, economic development, and the overall well-being of Igbo communities”. I am yet to receive the report of the event organized by the Center for Igbo Studies, University of Nigeria and others.
each other. We are too individualistic”. She intoned these maledictions as a Zoom participant.
These are serious charges by one who knows what should conduce to sustainable development. Many other political juggernauts and some egg heads spoke with passion, identifying the problems confronting our people and offering solutions. As I have argued severally, individual survival, cannot ensure group survival. As the Igbo adage says, “Ubiam di na- obodo ebe otu onye nwere aku”.
Yes. Months after the economic summit, no discernible group project has been embarked upon by the zone. In the absence of a publicly announced communique agreed by the Governors, an absence which is a betrayal of trust, the hope, may as often is the case, reside on individual state efforts.
Abia state seems to be leading in the infrastructure area, typified by the recent commissioning of the enviable electricity project in Aba. The Geometric Power Plant in Aba is a trailblazer in the Nigerian energy sector. And if the transformative leadership of Dr Alexander Chioma Oti, is anything to go by, there is, indeed, some light at the end of the tunnel.
Governor Oti’s clear-headed approach to better the lot of the citizens , especially the entrepreneurial-minded ones through sustainable ecosystem innovative technology, and modern road infrastructure, is, so far, a total departure from the drab and dreary road of the past. It is a journey which if sustained, will yield unquantifiable results for our people who are fed up with bad governance. Other states should follow this laudable steps, especially in the area of energy sufficiency, and in other domains where the constitution has devolved power to the states, such as in education, railway, energy and agriculture. These will create jobs, improve the living standards of the people. This will stem the urge to japa at all costs.
Abroad, possibly to Canada where he already has an admission into one of the universities. The problem is funding.
There are many more like Obioha in Igboland. They fight also against hurdles by countries of the West which are no longer willing to grant visa for those coming to study in their countries. Australia has joined the clique. The United Kingdom is no longer willing to allow students to bring their dependents to the country. Only those doing the Ph.D are given visa that will be valid through the period of their studies. Obioha and others like him should also learn from the experiences of the protagonist of I Don Japa, the Nollywood film.
So-young Nigerians to either “japa or die”. Japa, from this psychological analysis, is also a mental health condition, of acute depression, anxiety and stress. A country in a state capture cannot escape this type of challenge, even if some personal reprieve is found through the realm of knowledge:
“My conclusions about life at any moment may change in the face of new experiences. So, I advised myself to seek more knowledge first. But then it has to be such comprehensive knowledge as would enable me answer most of the very important questions of life.”, observed the author.
In summary, the Japa syndrome is a strand of the absurdity of life – the conflict between the rational and the irrational, the possible and the impossible. Nigeria’s development inertia and laissez-faire attitude have serious underlying implications for its future.
Banditry, and the daily abduction of persons in the South East zone is a daunting existential reality, the symbol of a failed state. The fact is that nobody is secure in any part of the country today and not many of the suspects are known to have been prosecuted. I was in Igbo Ukwu on the 20th of April this year for the burial of a friend. Few minutes after the ceremonies, a kidnap attempt or incident was reported in the community.
Our approach to fighting insecurity has remained haphazard. It lacks not only the required intelligence gathering, the use of modern technology, and the harmonization of efforts but also the necessary political will and sincerity of purpose to consolidate a group strategy.
Ebebeagu, South East Zonal response to these abnormalities have failed. Like the dreaded Covid 19 pandemic insecurity has become the ”new normal”. It need not be. The agony of our people has been excruciating, and as long as these inequities persist, the urge to Japa will continue and will endure. We have been warned. Let us not allow the jeremiad to become a reality.
Concluding Remarks:
IGBO STUDIES ASSOCIATION AS A THINK TANK
“Think tanks act as brokers of policy knowledge, centers of research, and incubators of new ideas. As brokers, they channel knowledge between scholars, policymakers, and civil society. As applied researchers, they convert multidisciplinary theory and empirics into insights and recommendations packaged to inform and meet decision-makers’ needs. As innovators, they expand the policy world’s perspectives and possibilities — for example, showing the power of entrepreneurial solutions. At their best, think tanks provide information that is credible, relevant, and easily understood.”
The Igbo Studies Association (USA) falls, by all standards, within this conceptual definition, of Think Tanks, taken from the internet. The following is part of the aims of the ISA, taken from its website:
“Igbo values and leadership remain a central idea in both popular and academic discourses of and about the Igbo, given that peoples and cultures advance based on the values they uphold and the leadership they foster. Numerous internal and external influences impact, among others, the values of Igbo resilience, industry, and ability to negotiate new identities as well as nurture visionary leadership on new and imaginative frontiers. Hence, as the Igbo continue to interrogate the complex question of negotiating the Igbo identity and existence within Nigeria and in a globalized world, discussions and debates about what constitutes their values and leadership within these spaces in the 21st century remain ever relevant”.
With the theme of Ụ́kpụ́rụ́ ndi Igbo na Odudu Ha: Igbo Values and Leadership, the ISA 21st annual international conference intends that these debates would not only open up a broader conversation around the topic, but would also further the discussions about the Igbo vis-à-vis their culture, customs, language, religions, epistemologies, gender relations as well as their security, development, politics, economics, and interactions with other groups in today’s Nigeria and in diaspora.”
This is the task this august body has given itself. I need not dwell on the sub-themes, which further illuminate the depth of Igbo phenomenology. Said the Martinican psychiatrist (possibly of Igbo ancestry) Frank Fanon, “every generation must discover its mission and either fulfil it or betray it.” There is no doubt that the ISA knows its mission, and for over two decades have tried to fulfil that mission or part thereof. The Enugu conference is its 21st.
ISA‘s agenda interrogates life and living itself. Yet it is compelled by its social obligation to have result oriented and problem solving conversations among its membership. ISA cannot run away from the realities that foreshadowed its birth, the continuing realities in which we live, nor can it play the role of the ostrich. Investigations and interrogations of all issues-no go areas disallowed- mandate ISA to be problem solvers. And the problems include socio-political ones.
Many Think Tanks are peopled with intellectuals, egg-heads, many of who want to remain clinically cerebral, detached from the happenings in their societies. These men or women fall within the class of non-functioning intellectuals, those I described in my bookas “sidon-look ”intellectuals.
“It is not enough to say that this class of elites, has in the main, abdicated its responsibility to the ruling elite; it is also a willing victim of its authoritarian ideology.”, I argued.
We also have those, who, according to Dr Syed Hussein Alatas, a Malay sociologist, are the functioning intellectuals. Their presence in the society is important for social development because they are able to “pose problems, define and analyze them and come out with solutions”.
To the above, I added:
According to Vacter Havel, the intellectual should constantly disturb, bear witness to the misery of the world, be provocative by being independent, be rebellious against the hidden and open pressures and manipulations by the state, and should be a witness to their mendacity. For this very reason an intellectual cannot fit into any role that might be assigned to him, nor can he ever be fit into histories written by the victors”. An intellectual cannot be a servant of power and still function well.
The intellectual vocation is therefore a moral one and any intellectual who sees what is evil and keeps quiet or says its good is immoral and does not fit the bill. It is in this utilitarian context that the Igbo Studies Association must continue to function, to constitutively champion a morally renascent Igbo society and homeland. We must be single minded in order to build a harmonious progressive homeland.
Closing Remarks
Politics—the art and science of the government of a state, public affairs or public life,—” as defined by Webster Dictionary,is too much a resource to be left in the hands of a few individuals who go by the name of politicians. We must continuously, therefore, rethink and refine our roles as important stakeholders and change-agents vis-a-vis the fortunes of our peoples and our homeland. Have our annual conferences contributed to the betterment of our societies? Apart from financial remittances to the homeland, is there any other thing we, as diasporans can do? We cannot move forward by being neutral, by being mere on-lookers.
An American President, Benjamin Franklin, advised that we should not leave till tomorrow, which we can do today. Still, we take many things for granted. We can earn respect by being positively political without being partisan. This appears to be a given. Yet, it is better to preach to the “converted” than to bask in the unproductive assumption of a beguiling silence. There can be no rainbow, says J.H. Vincent, without a cloud and a storm. Knowledge exists to be transmitted and to be applied. A collection of seminar renderings in a book format is not enough. The gaps between leadership and followership can be filled by Think Tanks, and other incubators of knowledge. The existence of not less than five higher institutions of learning within the Enugu metropolis, for example, should induce a robust intellectual activism and interchange of productive ideas for a better society. Active scholarship demands no less. These “ivory towers” must come down from their soi-disant high horses to confront the realities of quotidian existence. Their lights must light the streets of the metropolis.
Final Remarks
Nothing can be “final” for a crisis that can turn into a pandemic if our authorities fail to take the syndrome as an emergency. Migration, irregular and regular, has come to stay. Many are taking advantage of Nigeria’s open-ended immigration policies. The last policy directive from the Buhari administration gave a carte blanche to persons from a part of the globe to enter Nigeria without visas. That policy directive had nothing to do with globalization or its dictates. Yet, it was not whimsical.
It had political and religious overtones, with socioeconomic consequences for the entire country. It has led to internal dislocations and dysfunctions. Those who have hitherto shunned our climes are coming in droves, ready to take over our lands and, indirectly, impose their way of life and values on us. Only last week, in Abuja, a Chinese company stopped some Nigerians from entering their premises for no justifiable reasons. Same Chinese companies bring to Nigeria, skilled and unskilled laborers from China to execute menial jobs that Nigerians can do. What does one make of the yet to be implemented Rwanda-U.K. immigration treaty. Globalization or neo-colonization at work?
On the other hand, what does it really mean to be an Igbo-diasporan in America, the United Kingdom or in Canada, for example? Is there a consciousness of separateness— a feeling of “Agaracha must come back” consciousness?) despite a general policy of inclusivity – in the constitutions of these countries that drive globalization? How do Igbo diasporans migrate through the daily realities they experience in these countries?
Canada advertises for our labors. Do these labors take adequate care of your humanity? Have we interrogated the true meaning of a global citizen? Has globalization obliterated the racist feelings of the average white person against the African.? When a Chimamanda Adiche opined in her book, Americanah, as follows, what do you think?
“The only reason you say race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it is a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue. I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America.”
One of the greatest thinkers of Black America, W. E. B. Dubois, the first black American to earn a PhD from Harvard University, opined that the greatest problem of the 20th century was the colour problem. What is the greatest problem of the 21st century? Are our diasporas saying anything different? Is the problem more economic than racial today? Has the slave wage really stopped? Who does the menial jobs in these Western and European countries?
This Japa generation may have the opportunities to receive better salaries than what are available back home, but they are never enough to create sustainable wealth, defined as the accumulation of scarce resources. Japa is a journey to nowhere. It does not ensure the Eldorado which the flight from existential ennui implies and anticipates. It deprives the homeland from the important sectors of the economy that should engineer its growth. Worthy of mention in this regard is the health sectors where thousands of our doctors and nurses migrate daily; others include our engineers, the technologist and others with service skills These outsourcings further reduce productivity and increase the poverty index of the homeland.
The consequences of the Japa syndrome are multiple, ranging from deprivations at the family level to dysfunctionalities at the national level. Economically and socially it is a case of “pound foolish, penny wise”, if migrations do not lead to a pay back effect in the short term for many families. We must not make light of cultural adjustments and the stresses they may and do impose on affected families. Meanwhile, there are roadblocks for immigrants on the way by the West in the education sector.
Access to foreign education, which has been the conventional reason to go abroad and which facilitates the Japa syndrome, is no longer as easy as before. The United Kingdom, for instance, has not only increased its tuition cost in their universities. It has also increased the cost of obtaining an entry visa to the country. Australia, as noted earlier, has done the same. Remittances from the Japa diaspora will become more difficult as countries all over the world experience heightened economic difficulties and high cost of living.
As the saying goes, East or West home is best. There cannot be a wiser dictum or dialectic. We may yet essentialize the prevailing syndrome and turn poverty into prosperity as some Asian countries are doing. Joshua, the one time biblical leader of the Jews did ask them who they will serve. John F. Kennedy, the 35th charismatic President of the United States did also challenge his fellow American citizens when said in his inaugural speech: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. In the current circumstances, this may be a hard pill to swallow, but at the end of the day: it is all about service.
Japa, jeremiad and Jeremiah: which do you choose? We can get our own New Jerusalem, if we choose right.
Prof IHECHUKWU CHIEDOZIE MADUBUIKE, PhD, Hon D.Lit. Hon LL.D., OON
Former Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Chairman, IRUKA, (Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu-Alike, Ebonyi State). Author, Nigeria and the Lugardian Hubris, And Proprietor, Ihechukwu Madubuike Institute of Technology (IMIT), Nkwoagu, Umunneochi LGA, Abia State.
Authored in Abuja: April 27, 2024.
