Are Nigerians ‘Model Immigrants’?: A Lotta Hellas

I left Twitter for the calmer environs of Facebook so I could be less angry – less visibly angry anyway.  I know that Facebook content tends to be more conservative and less socially aware so I had one simple rule  – I’d  unfollow anyone who tempted me to respond angrily.  When I broke that rule, twice, on one topic, I decided that it was time for another blog post.  

The background to this piece is the news that President’s Trump travel restrictions, the so-called travel ban, will, in February 2020, extend to Myanmar, Eritrea, Krygzstan, Sudan, Tanzania and to the shock of my fellow Nigerians, Nigeria.  I can’t pretend I wasn’t a little surprised.  I haven’t fully kept up to speed with Trump’s antics (atrocities?) and the last I heard, the travel ban was known as the Muslim ban.  My first hastily drawn conclusion was that this had something to do with Nigeria’s large Muslim population, Boko Haram and Islamophobia.

The restriction will prevent citizens of  the above countries from obtaining visas which would allow them to immigrate to the United States permanently but would still allow them temporary visas to visit, study or work temporarily.    Despite it not being a literal ban on Nigerians entering the US, an American former class mate, in the context of choosing a location for  our class re-union, has opined that it would be difficult for alumni with Nigerian passports to obtain a visa to travel to the US.  This could be because there will be additional hurdles even for those seeking temporary visas to show that they have no intention of seeking permanent residency, have private means of support etc.

There are over 300,000 documented Nigerians in the US and probably many more American-born citizens with ties to Nigeria.  Travel from Nigeria to the US from Nigerian citizens is already strictly controlled  and full of stories about arbitrary decisions and disproportionate questioning.  These new restrictions will have a significant impact on Nigerians, or people with Nigerian ties, on both sides of the travel divide.

Not knowing much about the travel ban, I expected to see debates from Nigerians  about whether the concept of travel bans are just or a draconian limitation on freedom of movement and whether the US has grounds to do apply these restrictions to Nigeria.  I no doubt expected questions as to why Nigeria was on this list.  The White House’s official statements asserts that  Nigeria is not complying with:

“the established identity-management and information sharing criteria assessed by performance metrics. Nigeria does not adequately share public-safety and terrorism-related information, which is necessary for the protection of the national security and public safety of the United States.” Therefore, “The entry into the United States of nationals of Nigeria,” with some exceptions, “is hereby suspended.”

The extract seems to me vague, difficult for a lay person to understand and more importantly to know what Nigeria has to do to reverse the ban.  The full statement is here:  https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-improving-enhanced-vetting-capabilities-processes-detecting-attempted-entry/

Relevant questions have been asked of course but some people have chosen to lament Trump’s decision on the basis that Nigerians are ‘model immigrants’ – the kind that work hard, are disciplined and eat good (or something).  This is hella wrong in a number of ways – hella delusional, hella generalising, hella offensive, hella right wing rhetoric and hella pointless.  Let’s flesh these hellas out.

1. Hella…not really true:  Nigerians are model immigrants, apparently.  First of all:

Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of things which are great about being Nigerian but I think if you conducted a survey among, say, a medium sized group of law enforcement professionals, only a minority would agree that Nigerians are ‘model immigrants’.

Or perhaps it’s a different Nigeria they are talking about – not the one which sits between Chad and Benin Republics (and Cameroon).  Because it can’t be the same Nigeria whose citizens  are constantly the  butt of jokes about fraud, even in outer space (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfwf9B0jUwM).  Not the same Nigerians in Peckham or any part of East London or London or any city in England or even Accra who other Africans complain are unbearably loud, rude, crass, pushy, arrogant (noooooo!) and dishonest.  Again, not the same Nigeria that one of my best friends was talking about when she confessed to me that she was nervous of making friends with me because her mother, like the parents of many Africans at our university, warned her to ‘stay away from Nigerians’.

During the induction course at my new firm, the Finance Director trained us on anti-money laundering regulations and told us about the official list of high risk countries maintained by the EU.  This Nigerian country, which produces ‘model immigrants’ can’t be the same country also named Nigeria which was not on the list of high risk countries but which my finance director felt compelled to mention.

“It may not be on the list now.” he said, in a tone that seemed to imply  that it had very recently, in his view, temporarily been removed.  “But you still have to be very careful of transactions involving Nigeria.” (causing me to take back my breath of relief when the list ended without Nigeria being on it.  I and other Nigerians do this a lot by the way.  When Kweku Adoboli was convicted in 2011 for  one of the biggest stock trading frauds in recent history, my first thought was “Well at least he isn’t Nigerian.”)

I don’t think you can just unilaterally declare yourself to be a country full of “model immigrants”.

2.    Hella generalising:  Let’s face it, despite the above, I’d be just as critical of  an article which suggested that Nigerians, as a whole are loud, uncouth criminals, perhaps even more so let’s analyse this claim a little further.

We all know that there are Nigerians and people of Nigerian origin, resident in the US and other parts of the world who have made extraordinary  achievements in science, medicine, literature, computing, sports and mathematics, to name a few areas. However, let’s hope, for the sake of sanity, that the  claims that Nigerians are model immigrants aren’t based on what can’t be more than a minute percentage of the Nigerian immigrant population.  To do the maths , if say, 5 million Nigerians live outside Nigeria (and the Nigerian Guardian estimates this figure to be more like 17 million) even 50,000 outstanding Nigerians would make up only 1% of the Nigerian diaspora.

They probably mean Nigerians who, because of their ambitions to become middle class, contribute through working, owning businesses, buying nice things (consumerism),  paying taxes, and perhaps the odd bit of mentoring as opposed to committing crimes, engaging in substance abuse, being unemployed and/or homeless and relying on state welfare.  Even if these are markers of being a good immigrant, is there any evidence that the Nigerians who do this are in the majority as compared with all the Nigerians in the diaspora?  And to put a slightly related  question, even if the ‘bad’ Nigerians are in the minority, are they are in such a small minority that the deeds of the model Nigerian immigrants cancel out their impact on society?

Nigerians have a reputation of being hard-working and ambitious.  Yet we hear overwhelmingly of Nigerians’ casual attitudes to integrity and dishonesty.  What really is the truth?

And what of the people from whom these model immigrants are drawn – the vast majority of Nigerians back home?  If their counter-parts in the diaspora are model immigrants, surely they should be model citizens.  Not if you ask these snooty, middle-class diasporans.  According to them, majority of Nigerians back home are a bunch of thieving, greedy, swindling, lazy, undisciplined  lot and part of the reason the model immigrants left the country in the first place.

However an alternative narrative  is that all a Nigerian needs to succeed and realise their true potential is to leave Nigeria.  It’s the leaders that are bad!  They are not Nigerian at all – they are from a planet called Planet Evil.

Nigeria is a difficult country and I am not denying that Nigerians are, by and large, used to working harder for the same or less gain.  However, what the average  middle class Nigerian is talking about when she calls Nigerians model immigrants are Nigerians from a relatively small and wealthy pool of  people, who have sometimes imbibed the values of the very unfair society that Nigeria is,  often with the means to pay for higher education, who are doing very well.

The fact that people like that are visible especially as black people in certain industries by no means prove that the rest of the Nigerian diaspora are model immigrants by even this standard.  What middle class Nigerians (myself included!) are insulated from are the struggles of poorer Nigerians with less auspicious backgrounds, the things they have to do to survive, sometimes the crimes they commit and more than anything else they are shielded from the horrendous reputation that Nigerians as a whole have in many parts of the world.

3.  Hella offensive: Before I go into what makes a good immigrant and how that fits into the right wing rhetoric, I have to say how offensive I find this statement to firstly to other African immigrants (and immigrants from other parts of the world in theory but I’m sure every region has that one country that fancies itself to produce ‘model immigrants’) and to black people, frequently non-Africans,  who have paved the way for Nigerian immigrants and African Americans in particular.

Firsly, who says that Ghana, Kenya or Sierra Leone are producing less than their fair share of people contributing in terms of working, running businesses and paying taxes?

Kenyan man surprised and disappointed at his low ranking immigrant status.  “I thought we had a shot.”  he said mournfully

Why is the model immigrant assertion even an answer to the travel ban?  Isn’t it a way of saying, ‘what of all these scummy other immigrants? why not shut them out? why us????’

Somali woman not at all surprised by her low ranking since she knows that us model immigrants have never forgiven her and her fellow  Somalians from fleeing a civil war and coming to the West in numbers.  Without their designer dregs.

Or is part of it  that Nigerians are trying to communicate to the world how different they are to those lazy, unambitious African Americans or in the UK, Caribbeans?

If so, it is hella offensive, isn’t it? It also completely fails to acknowledge that Nigerians have been able to succeed because of the grounds laid for them by these people and the welcome hands that have been stretched out to Nigerians who are able to jump back and forth between utlising laws intended to uplift African Americans from the traumatising impacts of slavery and Jim Crow laws  and claiming that they do not have the historic chip on their shoulders that African Americans carry and are therefore less problematic (not all Nigerians etc).   Attitudes like this contribute to the backlash against Nigerians in certain African American communities.

It’s also offensive in a less dramatic way.  People cannot help coming from poverty; from having to leave their country in circumstances here they have nothing; coming from a background where  there are other virtues apart from education and succeeding financially in a ruthlessly capitalistic world.  If Nigerians were naturally endowed with the hard work gene, I think it would have made itself evident in Nigeria as well.  What Nigerians have in abundance is a disproportionate respect for wealth and status that pushes them into certain professions.  A lot of their wealth and status in Nigeria is obtained at the expense of millions of other Nigerians.  A cleaner, a shop assistance, hairdresser  or a taxi driver is no less essential and no less ‘model’ than a bank manager or doctor .

4.  Hella right wing rhetoric:  So what makes a model immigrant and why do we care?  I don’t believe the concept of immigration laws and border control is in itself wrong.  However, immigration rhetoric, particularly those used in politics and in the media, is frequently flawed and bordering on fascist.  The basis of a lot of it is that an immigrant is taking something from the real citizens or the natives.   Therefore the reason why the topic of Nigerians being model immigrants in this context has even arisen is because of the belief that, every single immigrant is under a duty to show how they are personally giving back to their host countries.

In reality, inward migration brings with it new people to carry out jobs, form customer bases, pay taxes and open businesses.  Even on a hard line capitalist assessment and discounting things like new cultures, attitudes and food, all of these create employment and refresh the economy.   For example, if there were less people in the UK, housebuilders and retailers wouldn’t make as much money and various sectors wouldn’t have the skills they need.

Western governments know  this which is why they have several programs encouraging immigration yet politicians and the media consistently tell us, in so many ways, that  immigrants are harming their host  countries  simply by being there and some people have bought into the idea that the only way that immigrants can counterbalance this harm  is by giving back in an extraordinary and noticeable way.  In my view, justifying immigration of or  opposing immigration controls on a particular group of people on the basis that they are good immigrants encourages, not only prejudice and division, but the kind of unjust generalisations that crudely lumps people into categories and values or persecutes them accordingly.

Basing this qualification solely in terms of being ‘intelligent’ (better educated because they   had the means, however dodgily obtained,  to escape an economical and education systems which are failing the majority of Nigerians), hard working and ambitious which loosely translates into the fact that there are more rich Nigerians is unbelievably exclusionary.  It endorses an unequal system and doesn’t see the value in low paid jobs or people who are less able to perform traditional jobs and tasks, like disabled people.

By calling yourself or your group the good kind of  immigrants, you are not dismantling an incredibly dishonest rhetoric that has added another layer of suffering and misery  to immigrants struggling to cope even as they enable people from the host countries to be more prosperous.  You are enabling and facilitating a cruel system

5.  Hella pointless:  And it’s pointless.  The rage about immigration is not about good or bad immigrants, especially when it comes to people of colour (the only good immigrant is the white English speaking one, as the joke goes).  They don’t care how good you are at your job and you can cure cancer from your own damn country.  Your neighbourhood racist or xenophobic is not impressed by how many degrees you have.  They resent you for it and want you to go away.

This is difficult to explain and even more difficult to accept but the sight of your African looking face, especially if combined with an African language. agitates these kinds of people.  They have to take a breath, calm and rationalise with themselves  when they come face to face with the internal disruption from seeing you and people like you round the school gates.  They have been convinced, on some level,  that immigrants are spoiling their country by default.

It’s depressing enough to have to convince them that immigration is generally beneficial  (or that you are not, in fact, an immigrant but that is another blog post) but trying to distinguish yourselves from other groups of immigrants by telling them, don’t worry, we’re the good kind, the ‘model immigrants’ in fact?  They’ll decide that for themselves, mate.

So that’s it in a ranty nutshell.  I guess on a personal note, it is disappointing how quickly liberal Nigerians (and others ), without any apparent thought, revert to divisive right wing thinking as soon as they perceive any threat to their own interests.

Opting Out, Pulling Out And Discussions About The Reluctant Dad

 

Even before the recent exposè by the mother of his first child, Shola Ogudu,  we all suspected that Wizkid had more than a touch of arseholery about his person. His vicious half of the long-standing riff with Davido¹, his use of sexually violent language in reaction to Linda Ikeji’s admittedly stupid and malicious reports about his living arrangements, his failure to show up for concerts without apology and the occasional slip in interviews demonstrated that his arseholery is very much informed by Nigerian-style sexism.

I think we ignored (for the most part) his little pop-ups of nastiness because of his talent, his unstoppable rise and his contributions to bringing ‘Naija to the World’. However the 10-page instagram post, which I have not read in its entirety, seems to reveal that he is or can be a cold, sneering, arrogant, narcissistic (Look at me now! I’m famous! I TOLD you the world – and you! – would bow at my feet one day. HA HA HA HA!’) man who uses his ex-girlfriend’s requests for financial upkeep and emotional support for his son to wield power over her, rarely sees his first son and is oblivious to the hurt it would cause the child to see him fawning over his other children in the circumstances.

Unfortunately, having listened to friends and family, read stories on social media and worked in the past as a court clerk for a family law practice, some of his behaviour is not uncommon. It is  probably many an embittered separated father’s fantasy to be able to tell a despised ex-partner  to sod off on a regular basis.  How many men, people, would love to do that with no apparent  consequences?

Some of it however, like his efforts to prove that his son (4 years old at the time) was not gay are so sociopathic and incredible that all I’ll say is this. If you are a Christian and you believe St Paul’s teaching about the fruits of the spirit and the extended version presented by some pastors, this would be a fruit of the kind of pathological homophobic ‘spirit’ which  exists in Nigeria. I doubt very much that it is any part of God’s plan.

The commentary to all the sensation and drama included the typical accusations of Shola trying to trap because he is or was rich (I believe he was a 19 year old struggling musician when she became pregnant but I could be wrong) or that she shouldn’t have had a child if she could not afford to care for the child without his help.

That last little gem was from feminists and sexists alike and ignored the fact that (1) he has an obligation to pay for the upkeep of his child  (2) it is very difficult, even in countries with free education and health care, to raise a child on a single income.  In fact this particular woman has done very well for herself considering her age and qualifications. (3) if married women’s incomes drop when they have children, what do we think happens to single mothers who don’t have Dad to hand the child(ren) to now and again?

I could go on but suffice it to say that a lot of the criticism strays from a sensible caution to women that, in reality, they are likely to bear the brunt of unplanned pregnancies in Nigeria to presupposing that Shola alone is to blame for the pregnancy and is predominantly responsible for the child.  Wizkid, it seems, should permitted to opt or dip in and out as his career demands.  Despite  being left with the care of the child and therefore less time to make any money, she has been labelled by some a gold-digging, manipulating, layabout  who expects Wizkid to pay for her existence.

Other people (the sensible ones) agree that Wizkid is really not trying but moving from the specific to the general, even with the best intentions, it is difficult bringing up a child with someone you are not with, who you may not like, may have had an acrimonious split with and whose motives you do not trust. Heck, what with parents being two completely separate human beings, it is sometimes difficult to co-parent a child when you are married to the person you love (I’ve lost track of whether the right phrase is ‘co-parent’ when the couple is together or whether it is reserved for separated parents?).

In an ideal world, separated partners would just get on with it without any hard feelings or  difficulties in communication. Both parents would have no interest in or feelings for the other which are unconnected to the welfare of child. Some of the debate I have seen does not acknowledge that this sometimes does not happen. I have mad theories!

Firstly there is the issue of feelings. I am not sure when they ended their relationship but their texts to each other seem very emotional, especially the ones from her. It is not clear whether she just wants a more cordial relationship where he doesn’t bark-text orders at her, she feels that pleading with him and trying to appeal to his conscience will make him actually perform his duties and would make her son feel less abandoned or she wants something more. I would be very surprised if it is the third, especially with his other children, and the fact with each new partner, he moves further and further away from his local dating pool. However one cannot underestimate the social, religious and cultural factors that would encourage her to keep trying to revive a relationship with her child’s father.

Wizkid, on the other hand,  claims to be emotionless but seems to be very resentful of her presence, upset with her, even and punishing her for something. You get the feeling that he wants her to just disappear but is simultaneously deriving some kind of perverse pleasure from her distress.

I can’t deny that a part of me wants Shola (it feels presumptuous to call her by her first name but I’m not going ‘Ms. Ogudu’ my way through this piece like some kind of court reporter for the Vanguard Newspaper) to abandon all attempts at friendliness or even cordiality and be more business-like but I can’t say what effect that would have on Wizkid, her or her child.

This is I suspect not unusual. Even with all intentions of being unemotional, you are likely to be affected by someone you have had a close relationship with. You will be hurt when they are being deliberately hurtful and you may even misinterpret them when they are not. You cannot take a pill and make yourself feel nothing.

On the actual co-parenting, even couples that live together have different views on how to raise a child. However, they at least have the opportunity to discuss and dissect each other’s views. They have enough access to each other to understand where the other person is coming from, if they choose to make the effort. When they are not living together it may be more  difficult to understand why the other person is taking the stance that they are. With the potential for argument,  they may not have the time or inclination to sit down with the ex and dissect their views.

Their priorities are different, as well.  If you are living at home with the child, the home, bills, education, clothes etc are staring you in the face; forcing you to take notice. You notice when the heating goes off or the air conditioner is on the blink or when junior is running around in too-short trousers. Things like that are a bit more remote, I would imagine, when you live away from home.

Take the example of a (fictional, more amiable) pop star and his ex-girlfriend and child. He may think it is better to invest money in a business opportunity on the basis that it may pay off later making everyone better off. She is aware of domestic needs that have to be taken care of now. He has to take her word for it. He may be distrustful or just not trust her judgment. They never have the chance to have an in-depth conversation about it. It’s difficult. One party often ends up feeling short-changed even though both parties feel they are doing their best. You also have factor in that the non-resident parent may have another home, partner and even children to be concerned with.

Another example is hearing through the airwaves that pop star dad has earned so and so for a concert or other deal.  He may know how much that deal is worth in real terms and how much he gets to take home and how much he has to pay out. All she may know is what everybody knows and what his management wants the world to know in an effort to increase his hype and therefore his value.  I’ll just add that like every other sensible person out there I believe that his child support payments should be commensurate to the paying parent’s wealth; conversely, the courts and I agree that if the paying parent is a low earner, they shouldn’t be driven to destitution by the requirement of an arbitrary level of support.  What I have seen is men who are so indignant that any money paid will pass through the child’s mother’s hands and may be used on some things that indirectly benefit the child like energy bills, rather than things that the child uses directly, that they refuse to work.  It’s a sad, angry world out there.

Then there is the thorny issue of the man who thinks that the woman should have had an abortion and is resentful that she did not. Abortion is not an easy topic for me but I think practically and in terms of the balance of harms, the woman should choose. I also recoil at the idea that a man or even society can demand that women have abortions for any reason. Firstly, having an abortion is an issue fraught with emotional, physical and practical difficulties and secondly, just no!

Forcing a woman to abort  is at least as subjugating as forcing her to carry a pregnancy through. It may not be technically fair but she should choose in this imperfect scenario. And a man ought not to be able to opt out of caring or providing for the child just because he doesn’t agree with her choice because they are both responsible for creating the baby. It’s not as if she gets off scot-free. She is likely to be left with a lion’s share of the care as well actually birthing and nursing the child.

However, I do acknowledge the ill-feeling that a man can have, when this decision is taken out of his control. Yes he should have been more careful with the protection.  They both should have been but the argument that if Wizkid did not want a child with the incumbent permanent relationship with the mother, acceding to her every request in exactly the way she wants him to, he should not have had sex is dangerously close to the one that says Shola should not have had sex or had a child if she was not prepared to be abandoned by him (and a little postscript note, from my memories of sex-ed, ‘pulling out’ is not the contraceptive miracle that some people on social media seem to think it is).

It’s a difficult situation. I myself am in a position where I am financially responsible for someone who I feel made a series of avoidable and unwise decisions that caused the current situation (and I’ve failed to help out with a sibling’s child but that’s another story). I do not think that this is comparable to Wizkid’sand Shola’s situation by any stretch of the imagination. The only similarity is that at some point you have to pull yourself together, do what you can and stop being an arse. I think I spent far too much time being resentful and grumpy about my situation. The other difference is that a child is involved – the only party who is truly devoid of responsibility for the situation – and a reality which cannot be wished away, no matter how badly a parent acts, and which should be the priority.

So, in conclusion, I’m annoying. Just kidding. In conclusion, it is difficult to take care of a child, whether or not you are in a loving relationship with the other parent.  The fact that I can never escape or even take a break from parenthood occasionally fills me with panic.

It is probably more difficult to co-parent when the romantic relationship with the other person has broken down.   I acknowledge that past experiences, hurt and feelings cannot be instantly erased. However, the right thing to do is decide to focus on the well-being of the child. I say this but I can’t imagine how difficult it is for someone to decide to do the right only for the other party to continue acting like a Wizk…I mean, a dolt. Even if that is achieved, it may still be difficult and fraught with miscommunications, differing priorities and hopefully moments of joy and love and definitely memories that cannot be replaced. That’s all really except that Wizkid may still be an arse at time of publication but can choose to have some class and dignity and rise up to the occasion.

1During the said beef, Davido was heard saying things like ‘I heard he doesn’t like me. I don’t know what I ever did to him. I just try to be nice to everyone and concentrate on my music. Well if he doesn’t like me, I don’t like him either. I don’t need him to like me…’ to which Wizkid responded “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Frog Face!’ apparently striking at the heart of Davido’s insecurities.

Child of the World: Misogyny or A Massive Overreaction?

Introduction

So, a couple of weeks ago, Falz released his music video for Child of World. I read the lyrics (https://genius.com/Falz-child-of-the-world-lyrics) when the album ’27’ came out last October  and I was so put out by them that I couldn’t bring myself to listen to the song. I wrote a couple of bad-tempered unpublished posts and moved on. I read a few similar posts but most people hailed it as the most socially valuable song on the album.

Now that the video has been released, previous grumblings about Falz’s alleged misogyny, particularly in relation to his numerous songs about the evils of ‘runs girls’ have turned into loud, vocalised outrage. I was a bit gratified that other people have noticed this but  tried to contribute to the conversation in what I hope was a reasonable and even-handed manner.  Unfortunately I just happened to read the lyrics again and filled with fresh rage, have decided that now is the time to write the objective article that I vowed not to be distracted into writing.

Social Media Wars

Predictably, with the Falz dissent came Falz’s super-fans, ferociously in support of someone they deem to be the most ‘socially conscious’ musician in Nigeria. I don’t really understand why there is such a burden on Nigerian artists to produce conscious music or how this will make Nigeria a better country but there you have it. I can understand their outrage, if I’m being honest. Falz is a brilliant rapper and I too feel a constriction in the throat area whenever I think that people are criticising him unfairly. The fact is some people think that he’s a genius and, like Beyonce’s fans, feel real emotion when he is being attacked.

However, I was astonished that respected feminists and allies also praised and couldn’t see the problems with the song. They were conspicuously silent during the short period of backlash and counter-backlash. You can always tell a good debate by the number people who feel compelled to keep quiet to avoid being caught up in a mob – that’s what I say. Other people also expressed genuine bafflement at the outrage.

Incidentally I have kept a tally, in terms of likes and retweets, between Team Falz and Team ‘Falz Is A Sexist Little Shite’. Team Falz is winning judging by the retweets although there is a sneaky Team FIASLS tweet which may have more retweets than the most popular Team Falz tweet but I’m not sure I should count it as it doesn’t mention Falz by name. I am aware that this is not the most accurate way to judge the competition since sometimes people retweet to mock rather than endorse the original tweet.  However, I think any further analysis of the tweets would mean my descent into madness over this issue has finally become irreversible.

The Hard Questions

So! Is the song sexist? Is Falz sexist? Why are we so invested in the answers to these questions? Also, what is it about mild-mannered Falz that occasionally evokes such frenzied bursts of public outrage? Tracy investigates…..

The Lyrics and Story

Okay, the lyrics are graphic and triggering (I have hesitated to say this out loud because I don’t want to sound like I’m censoring his art) and the storyline is so clichéd that it would make a 1990s Nollywood director blush but is there anything actually wrong with the song? Is Falz not entitled to tell a story, dumb it down and sensationalise it as he sees fit like anyone else?

I will freely admit that very few fictional accounts of rape pass muster for me in terms of whether the triggering is justified by the story or message. I didn’t like it when Adichie dropped a rape scene into Half of Yellow Sun and I ain’t going to like it when Karashika Boy drops one into an album but even taking into account my personal bias, I do think that some of the lyrics are extreme (and by extreme I mean vile and disgusting) and I find it hard to explain why:

“ Uncle please stop…Shhh be silent Uncle didn’t stop till he broke the hymen”

“She don dey look for the thing she dey resist before
She never had a daddy figure so she need the love (?)
Uncle peter don create a beast he can’t tame the storm (???????)
She like make e rough, she can’t have enough
She met some ladies wey go like rub shoulder
On some quick business with a high turnover
Say if you ride the stick, you go ride range rover”

The first line above sounds like the imaginings of a rape by someone very unfamiliar with the topic with the kind of detail that can be harmfully triggering or be turned into a rape fantasy. It would take an extremely good point to justify such detail and as it turns out the song almost has no point at all.

Also, what the heck does “Shola ti mature, gbogbo body ti di large size” mean in English? Surely he hasn’t thrown in a reference to the victim’s figure. Not in a song about rape. Please tell me he hasn’t.

It appears that director Kemi Adetiba has tried to make something more out of the song by including captions  like ‘rape is never the victim’s fault’ in the music video. Well, who but a complete idiot could think that this particular rape was the victim’s fault? She was in her room, in the house she lived in when a trusted relative forced himself on her.

I once watched a trailer of a Nollywood film or series where a woman, played by Adesua Etomi (W), appeared deranged by her desire for a married man. She made it clear to all and sundry, including his wife, that she intended to continue a sexual relationship with this man for as long as she wanted to. She stalked the couple and subjected the man to unwanted sexual attention (it turns out that any sexual attention from your mistress in front of your wife is almost always unwanted – go figure). The characters ended up in a criminal court case as Etomi’s character accused the man of raping her when they were alone somewhere.

I don’t understand the jump from pursuing an affair to the rape allegation and of course, nothing, including any previous sexual relations between the victim and the rapist, negates the necessity of consent. However I can understand how this story could, in Nigeria, start some kind of discussion on how rape is never the victim’s fault. A man creeping into his niece’s room, on the other hand, is a bit bloody obvious!

As the lyrics above illustrate, the terrible thing that the victim becomes is a person who (1) likes sex (with the added unnecessary detail that he means rough sex – whatever the heck that means) and (2) starts to have sex for money which results in abortions and an HIV infection. She doesn’t, for instance, become the kind of person who empties a machine gun magazine into a crowded theatre.

I have no doubt that being sexually assaulted can have a traumatic effect on a person and may even change their sexual behaviour but the fact that he chose these fairly common things and doesn’t explain how they are inherently wrong to make his grand contribution to the issue of sexual assault makes for a very unimportant and clichéd tale and shows his warped thinking on the subject.

People have pointed out other aspects of the song. The girl laments that she has let her mother down when it is she who  has been let down by relatives. Nothing is heard of the uncle but of course the story follows such an obvious line that the missing detail about the uncle can only be a flash Christian conversion and the uncle clutching his wife’s knees, wailing that he will ‘never follow devil again’ before gratefully accepting a large plate of jollof rice from her. No, not jollof rice, it has to be some kind of starch and soup, eaten with his hands to show his astounding humility.

Falz is entitled to tell any story he wants to and the path from good girl to runs girls to abortion and HIV to activist is, however implausible and unevolved, just a story. One reason for the anger, I suspect, is that it reinforces what people think of as a sympathetic rape victim – virgin, not fraternising with strange men etc – therefore not disturbing people’s comfort with seeing a so-called bad girl being harmed. Worse than that, it attempts to distinguish the characteristics of a good girl and bad girl based on the very flawed assumption that a woman is to be judged as good or bad  by her sexual behaviour.

Gender Issues

The song touches on four very important gender issues and reduces them to a hodge-podge of mawkish sentimentality, pity and judgment, I’m afraid. Social media informs us that so many people are dealing with memories of sexual assault and abuse. It happens at every age, every where and to every type of woman with various degrees of sexual experience and values. Rape is not committed just by monstrous uncles but by thousands of young men who think that a girl stepping over the threshold of their house is the equivalent of signing an irrevocable consent form and men who think that buying a girl food or paying her bride price grants them  inalienable rights over her body. Falz knows this – he appears to be good friends with Nigerian comedians who advance and joke about these ideas. It’s committed by school boys who have made a pact with each other and lecturers who threaten to fail women who won’t have sex with them.

I don’t expect him to rap about rape culture (what a fun song that would be) but I expect him to speak about rape as if he understands that rape culture exists or not to speak about it at all. We don’t all become runs girls, we don’t all require redemption. We don’t live our lives completely driven by the experience and the most basic research could have shown Falz this. If we did, a high percentage of Nigerian women would be non-functional. It is always there in the background and in the forefront as we hear of more and more stories of rape; as nothing seems to be getting better. We don’t need someone telling us to ‘rise above our circumstances’, we need society to buy into concentrating on making it stop.

As to runs girls, there are conversations about agency and transactional sex and whether marriages and our more conventional sexual relationships have an element of the transaction about them. On abortions, conversations about reproductive rights. There is an entire television series on HIV and safe sex. There was no need for and no value to this triggering nonsense.

The Man Himself

I’ve watched quite a few Falz interviews and listened to a lot of his music because I am a fan. The most obvious thing which is now being pointed out about is his obsession with runs girls. This song might have passed under the radar if (1) Someone else sang it (2) Falz didn’t turn the victim into a runs girl and spend an entire verse lamenting the evils of the runs girls lifestyle or (3) he didn’t decide to make such a big, bloody production of it all.

When I started listening to Falz, I did notice his contempt for runs girls and women who didn’t fit his definition of a good woman – women who bleach for instance. At first I assumed he just thought that it was a clever thing to write about. That such women were an easy target and perhaps he didn’t expect to be challenged on it in sexist Nigeria . To be honest, I didn’t really expect him to be a feminist. If all Nigerian entertainers were feminists, that would probably be an indication that the gender issues in Nigeria are not as dire as they are made out to be. In my naiveté, I compared him to American rappers who wax lyrical about bitches, hoes and harming women who don’t behave

However the lyrics seem to be getting worse, as with Lekki Girls and even comedy rap Faize Yi, and it does make me wonder whether there isn’t something more to it. Also, I’ve noticed that it is frequently in the background of some of his non-runs girls songs – the girl he loves who doesn’t ‘drop for the cake’; the workaholic who ‘prices her body’ in the evenings.

I don’t know what his issue is with runs girls is.  It is however noteworthy (has been noted in fact on Twitter) that the male characters in his songs are often wildly promiscuous and don’t, according to him, require similar bashing or an idiotic backstory to justify their actions.

Actually contrary to the various rumblings about him and his mates and runs girls (said with startling confidence), he seems to have very specific standards for women that he would consider dating. These interviews , (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBBd-viX4hM, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ8Hnavvo5Q) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZKJlLNZNTk, show that he is blasé about his observations that ‘body count’ is a matter that is judged differently between men and women. Also, he appears to be highly suspicious of Nigerian women who aren’t themselves rich. The interview with Beat FM contains (just in case you can’t be bothered to watch it all) a long, self indulgent whine about why he is still single and the state of Nigerian women.

He is put out that women he meets often want to be openly associated with his fame or (and even I was shocked when he described this behaviour) want him to appear in their SnapChat stories!!! Even asking is indicative of deviousness. My conclusion from watching the video is that he requires a prospective girlfriend, upon meeting him, to focus immediately on the inner him (who she doesn’t really know much about) and put out of her mind any thought of his fame, wealth and talent (which apparently aren’t part of the real him). A woman who expects him to spend money on her is a no-no. Very idealistic in a country where women are sexually harassed, discriminated and shamed, for not being wifely enough, out of money making opportunities.

His open contempt towards runs girls is unfair and demeaning to them. It encourages us to think of them as less human – the hop to deserving of harm and not deserving of sympathy is not a long distance. It is also harmful to women in general. Imagine, if you will, a white singer who constantly sings about the bad things he thinks goes on the black community. Oh, but he is not singing about all black people – only the ones he thinks are bad. Would that have the effect of demonising and dividing the entire community or not?

There really isn’t that much to link between being raped and being a runs girls. And being a runs girl isn’t the evil thing that Falz thinks it is. I personally don’t think it’s great and I certainly wouldn’t want us to concentrate so much on protecting the validity of sex work that we accidentally leave swathes of women with this as their only career option (“I don’t know what she is complaining about? How is it different from working in, say, a Nigerian commercial bank?” How indeed.) but there really is a better discussion to be had about it before he plonks it in the middle of his moralising song.

Another thing I’ve noticed from his interviews is that his activism isn’t accidental. It’s highly unlikely that he is going to say that he was just telling a story in Child of World. The screenshots I’ve seen of the video, complete with the trite captioning and his outspread arms, definitely give the impression of spreading a message. But even if it did not, when asked about the song a Pulse Magazine interview, he made it clear that he wanted to speak about the societal problem of sexual abuse. He didn’t do a bad job in the interview- https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/falz-rapper-talks-about-27-album-m-i-abaga-s-fix-up-your-lives-more-interview-id7532629.html. The only glitch was when he said the “upside” of it all is that sexual assault victims can always “bounce back”. Apart from being hopelessly inept phrasing, yes we do survive but we still think it’s a terrible thing and we still want it to stop happening to other women.

The interviews about ‘This is Nigeria’ also shows how serious he is about being an activist (as stated in this critical article about Falz – https://thenerveafrica.com/19168/woke-falz-this-is-nigeria/). In his view, things are messed up in Nigeria, people like him need to talk about these things and anyone who disagrees with him is guilty of something- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1HjXdELuhM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6u-ELxvWlM. It’s just that sometimes he, and other well-to-do socially conscious young Nigerians, get it wrong.

His detractors have asked him to concentrate on Yahoo boys instead of runs girls and his supporters have retorted that he has taken shots at Yahoo boys actually. Firstly, he talks about runs girls about 78 billion million more times than he talks about yahoo boys. Secondly, when he talks about Yahoo boys or other poverty driven crimes, his thinking is still confused.

He was lambasted for some very mild comments about praising known fraudsters in music in June 2017 and since then he’s spoken and sang about the topic more boldly. Fraud is of course bad and rich Nigerians seem to be aware of the need to make some kind of reference to political leaders who put Nigeria in the position that it is in. However they happily conflate all the issues and conclude that if everyone would just stop stealing, then everything would be alright. But it wouldn’t, would it? The rich will still have their loot and the poor will starve to death.

Peep the pearl clutching in his interview with Wazobia Max, linked above, – Do you mean to tell me that people actually commit property and theft crimes in a poor country with a chronic lack of opportunity??? Who would have thunk it?.The song ‘Confirm’ tells us how how you can go from being a plantain seller to flying first class if you hustle honestly but in reality, this is very difficult even in a relatively stable country and this kind of thinking in Nigeria is the reason why people give all their money to rogue churches in hope of ‘breakthroughs’ and ‘blessings’.

Falz is obviously very passionate about some real issues and I generally try not to be critical about his efforts especially in light of  the unnecessary pressure on Nigerian singers to be overtly political. Unfortunately, I don’t really believe, I can’t believe having read the lyrics to Child of the World, that rape is one of those issues. I think this song is the worst combination of his excesses – the desire to write a worthy song mostly for the sake of appearing ‘socially conscious’, too little research to convince me that he has any real interest in this subject, his failure to examine his own gender bias and his sometimes deficient activist tactics.

Why does it bother me/us so much?

Okay, I don’t like the song but why do I feel unreasonably aggrieved when somebody else likes or praises it. One obvious reason is Falz’s influence. He is not as popular as some of the other Afrobeat entertainers but people take him very seriously. He is at pains to emphasise his legal qualifications, perhaps because he uses poor people’s accents to promote his art. I see tweets demonising women for asking for ‘Something Light’, for being Karishikas (such a vague concept that it could include virtually any woman) or for being a ‘Lekki girl’. It’s even more disheartening because of his good guy image.

Also, I’m annoyed that, in his eagerness to cover every topic that he’s not qualified to cover, he could not take some time to do the basic research to dismantle rape culture just a little bit before producing this ridiculous song. Most of all, I’m glad some attention has been brought to his shortcomings, even if Team Falz won the Twitter war in the end.

But I have to admit that there is an element of irrationality to my reaction and the reaction of others. Even this post is a little incoherent in places. I can’t say I don’t understand why some well-meaning people are surprised about the backlash. However I have resisted the temptation to edit my anger out of this article.

The thing with rape and sexual assault is, for whatever reason, you are either full of rage about it or you are not. The rage is neither good nor bad and it is not an indication of whether or not you support rape culture or how woke you are. For as long rape continues, the rage will remain. It won’t always express itself properly or say the right things but it will be right there alongside us angrily analysing gender politics and rape culture, whenever anybody, be it a stupid comedian telling rapey jokes or a pious rapper, decides to settle on the topic.

 

Trending on Twitter: Falz, Yahoo Boys and the State of Nigeria

This is rapidly becoming old news  but I thought I’d add my tuppence worth.  Falz gave an unusual (for him) interview a couple of days ago. He criticized musicians for glorifying fraudsters in their music. He said that such music encourages young people to think fraud is the thing to do, musicians should honour their status as role models, and was especially critical of singers who name fraudsters in their songs. Nigerian twitter has linked his comments to 9ice’s single, ‘Living Things’ as he appeared to quote some of the lyrics.

Coming from a relatively ignorant angle (I’ve neither been a victim of fraud nor of the type of anti-Nigerian prejudice that assumes all Nigerians are fraudsters), this seemed a reasonable statement to me. However the social media backlash had me wondering, did Falz say something wrong?

First came the badly written tirades. Did the terrible grammar and writing mean we could dismiss the authors as idiots or simply yahoo boys defending their trade? Or had Falz struck a chord among working class people –  people who are unlikely to have access to well-paid jobs in Nigeria, because of lack of connections or influence, or who will struggle to have his kind of career without investment from dodgy money? Some of the very people who Falz mimicks when he puts on his comically exaggerated Yoruba accent; who with a little money and opportunity may well turn to internet fraud for whatever reason (although I recognise that people from all classes in Nigeria engage in internet fraud).

Then came the twitter intelligentsia and ‘woke’ twitter expressing disbelief that anyone could possibly criticise Falz for his comments. Despite their condescending put downs and over-egged, ostentatiously dumbed-down authentic-Nigerian-twitter-speak (“Is Nigeria ok?” “I tire oh”), I found myself unable to fault their logic.

Then came the more articulate attempts to defend 9ice. Toni Payne, Fumni Iyanda, and some poor guy on a timeline debate (“I quit!” he declared “I’m overwhelmed!”). They made some good arguments but didn’t quite get there, for me, in terms of putting together a convincing defence.

I should mention that 9ice popped up once or twice but didn’t do a good job of defending himself; if indeed you feel he had to. “Erm…the song wasn’t about glorifying internet fraud. It’s about…oh yes..it’s about going to work in the morning….you have to be in the realm”. In his second attempt, possibly buoyed up by the online support he had received, he asked Falz to report anyone he had mentioned in his song to the EFCC if Falz had the evidence to do so.

I’m going to dedicate some space to the very special people who follow Falz on Instagram. They seem to hang around his page waiting for him to make any kind of political or social statement just so they can shout at him about his father. I thought Femi Falana was just a human rights lawyer myself. According to Instagram, he is a thieving, villainous rogue who, armed to the teeth, went from polling booth to polling both during the 2015 general elections, forcing people to vote for the APC. So vicious were the comments that I actually caught myself indulging in some victim blaming (you finished annoying everybody and you now went to put your face on Instagram – to borrow some Nigeria-speak from woke twitter – yes, of course I do it too.  You’ve never heard of a hypocrite?).

However, there was some real emotion in the Instagram comments. People said how dare you, Falz, with your privilege and your opportunities? HOW DARE YOU?!? ‘Yahoo’ fed me and my sister, sent us to school! Despite the misery that internet fraud causes for millions, I must admit the sheer hopelessness in that last statement got to me a little bit.

One of the questions that Falz’s fans asked him on instagram was who do you think attends your highly priced concerts? Who can afford your tables of 10 for one million naira but yahoo boys and corrupt politicians (the consensus appears to be that the latter are the underlying cause of crime in Nigeria but not of course an excuse for internet fraud)? In those circumstances, can you really afford to criticise internet fraudsters?

Now the point has been made that Falz wasn’t having a go at internet fraudsters as such, but saying, gosh guys, let’s not glorify fraud in our music. Things are bad, maybe crime is inevitable but that doesn’t mean we have to act like it’s a good thing; a viable moral choice.

Having absorbed the above information, what’s my (still ignorant) view? I don’t think Falz can be sensibly criticised for his comments. I do think however that people sing and rap about all kinds of crap and other people have their personal crusades. Nigerians’ reputation as internet fraudsters is clearly one of Falz’s bugbears. You can’t really blame him. He has made himself clear on the matter in many of his songs and was recently almost denied entry into Kenya because of completely unsubstantiated claims that he and his mates were fraudsters (shouldn’t have let big-boneded Shody carry the laptop then, should you? Ha ha).

However other people with other bugbears could pick at the lyrics in Falz’s songs. As gender equality is my current crusade (had to find a way to crowbar feminism into this article), I could object to Reminisce’s lyrics in Falz’s song ‘Clap’, or Olamide’s first line in ‘Bahd Baddo Baddest’ or even Falz’s character in ‘Soldier’ who is essentially telling a woman that she has no choice but to date him. Couldn’t it be said that  these lyrics are glorifying violence against women or at least  chipping away at the necessity of consent?

So long story…less long, I think Falz made a reasonable point but I think he could have had a more complex, sophisticated discussion about it. Perhaps one that didn’t involve him telling his colleagues what to sing (“Tell a story. Paint a picture”) and perhaps one that didn’t involve him using the same accent which identify those who have been robbed of opportunity because of the state of the nation.