If you play a word association game with a South African, you can put good money down that four times out of five, the response to \u2018Nigerian\u2019 will be either \u2018drug dealer\u2019, \u2018makwerekwere\u2019, \u2018criminal\u2019, or some version of the above. Essentially, negative. Try it around your next braai. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is what we regularly come up with when referring to a country of more than 200 million people \u2013 four times the population of our country \u2013 speaking more than 500 distinct languages. A country that birthed Fela Kuti, whose anger and social conscience woke the entire world up to Afropop, as well as King Sunny Ad\u00e9 and arguably the most soulful jazz singer of modern times, Sade Adu. A country that actually has the largest film industry in the world and was home to sophisticated kingdoms that existed almost two thousand years ago. Yet here we sit, tied in to global criminal networks exchanging poached perlemoen for tik and trading rhino horn with Chinese gang networks, voting for a political party that loots Covid-19 relief funds and accepts crates of whiskey and chicken braai packs in exchange for multi-million rand tenders, and view Nigerians as criminals. Eish! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nIf we want to talk about criminals, how about one Nhlanhla \u2018Lux\u2019\nMohlauhi (also Dlamini) who uses hate to galvanise mobs on looting\nand killing sprees under the guise of operation dudula in order to\n\u2018clean up\u2019 our country. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nIt would be interesting to know what Nigerians in Nigeria associate\nwith the word \u2018South African\u2019. I\u2019m guessing \u2018arrogant\u2019 and\n\u2018xenophobic\u2019 might emerge with some regularity. \u2018Ignorant\u2019\nwould also be accurate. Because we are. Arrogant, ignorant, and\nxenophobic. South Africans are like the Americans of Africa. We know\nnext to nothing about the other 53 countries on our continent. Maybe\na little about our immediate neighbours but there\u2019s not many South\nAfricans who can tell you what lies north of the Zambezi, much less\nidentify the countries on a map. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nIt\u2019s not entirely the fault of us average Joe\u2019s and Janes. Our\nschools teach the American civil war and the French Revolution with\nnot a whisper of the Nigerian civil war or the jihad against the\nHausa kingdoms. Yet it\u2019s the most populous, and arguably the\nrichest country on our own continent. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nBut there is a solution: reading. The other thing Nigeria has is\ngreat writers. Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Ben Okri,\nChimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chigozie Obioma, the name a few, the last\ntwo included in an inspired collection of essays titled Of This\nOur Country.<\/em> \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nContaining 23 personal essays by contemporary Nigerian writers\nreflecting on their Nigeria, the collection opens a door to a\nvibrant, raucous, conflicted, and sometimes violent world rich with\ntradition and ancient wisdom grappling with the after effects of\ncolonialism and global capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nEach essay is only about 10 pages, the personal nature of the brief\noften giving us insight into the circumstances of the writers\nthemselves, which paradoxically brings their part of Nigeria to more\nanimated life. Spanning religions, regions, native languages,\ncultures (myriad different cultures exist in Nigeria) and\ngenerations, each writer further enriches our understanding of what\nshould be our sister country. Read it and you\u2019ll forego anywhere in\nEurope as your dream travel destination in favour of the riches\noffered within Africa. Moreover, you won\u2019t be like those 4×4 tits\nwho roar up and down the Mozambique beaches in December, but will be\ncurious and engaged. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nI\u2019m willing to bet that having read this book you\u2019ll come up with\na host of new associations when someone mentions \u2018Nigerian\u2019.\nWhat\u2019s more, you\u2019ll have a better understanding of your fellow\nAfrican.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nOf This Our Country is\nedited by Ore Agbaje-Williams and Nancy Adimora. Distributed by\nJonathan Ball publishers, it is available at the Book Lounge.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"