Scapegoating "non-indigenes"

Governor Theodore Orji of Abia has just been criticized for "disengaging" (i.i. sacking) non-indigenes in the Abia State Civil Service.

Governor Fashola of Lagos State "deported" (as though they were citizens of a foreign country) 3,029 non-indigene "beggars" to their "states of origin". (If you don't trust The Nation, here is a link from NEXT).

This sort of thing has happened frequently over the decades, in every state. For the most part, you cannot predict when a state governor will whip out the "scapegoat non-indigenes" card, except when new states are created from old states; the tendency is for the old state to sack all indigenes of the new state who remain in what had until recently been a shared state bureaucracy.

I complain rather frequently that not much discourse or debate occurs before policy is implemented in Nigeria. But it is not just a before-the-fact problem, it is an after-the-fact problem too. We go around in circles on issues (for example electricity) not simply because not much thought went into the policy in the first place, but because after the policy has failed nobody really gives much thought to why it failed. The popular thing is to classify the failure as being the result of "corruption" or "the Nigerian factor" or blame whichever region/ethnicity/religion of the country we do not belong to, blah, blah, blah.

Then a few months or years pass, and we do the same thing again, with the usual fanfare (and lack of discourse and debate), only be be shocked, shocked I tell you, when the thing doesn't work as well as promised.

Let me ask a question.

What was the effect on important statistics (e.g. unemployment, poverty, crime rate, etc) of sacking non-indigenes from your state civil service or deporting "non-indigene" beggars to their states of origin?

I don't just mean in the present instance (Orji and Fashola) but historically. Our states have done things like this so many times that we have (or should have) built up more than enough data to make an empirical, peer-reviewable set of findings on the efficacy of scapegoating non-indigenes in the name of serving indigenes.

Do you know of any studies of said effects?

I don't.

Yet our states keep doing it.

I am not going to pretend that I have the hard data. Nobody does, because far too many people don't care, and the few of us who do (me, for example) can have no access to the data because none of our state (or federal or local) governments keeps any such data. If you ask them, they will insist that the programme had fantastic and wonderful effects ... but then our governments lie to us so unabashedly that it has actually become counterproductive for them, in the sense that nobody in Nigeria really believes the government even when the government is telling the truth (assuming they ever do).

So no, I won't pretend to have the data.

But using my ordinary human powers of observation, it occurs to me that scapegoating non-indigenes has NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on the welfare of indigenes. It is not that it makes their lives worse or makes their lives better, it is that IT HAS NO EFFECT.

It is cruelty for cruelty's sake.

The political/economic powers-that-be and leaders of thought, rather than admit they have no idea how to improve their state, distract and misdirect people by labeling non-indigenes as the source of the state's problems. Getting rid of the "foreigners" (their Nigerian citizenship counting for nothing) is portrayed as the only solution available to the "Action Governor", who duly take action.

In the warped world of our public discourse, this actually garners them popularity from a section of their state's population; lets face it, human beings in general are rather prone to this type of argument. Indeed, the saddest part of the saga is that those sacked or deported are the lucky ones; the unlucky ones become the targets of violent mobs of unemployed, unemployable, destitute youths who see what possessions the non-indigenes have as having been taken at the expense of "sons of the soil" like themselves.

On a different but similar note ....

Former FCT Minister Nasir El-Rufai rendered as many as (or more than) 800,000 people homeless by bulldozing their dwellings in and around Abuja. According to him, "Abuja is not for everyone," by which he meant the Capital City of the Federal Republic was not meant for the poor. It was not built for poor economic migrants, people El-Rufai thought should go back to their states of origin instead of messing up his shiny-shiny Abuja with their dishevelled presence. The people who should have questioned El-Rufai, be they legislators or the Nigerian commentariat, were full of praise for him for trying to reimpose the outdated, obsolete, unrealistic-from-day-one Abuja "masterplan".

But seriously, does anyone think that any amount of bulldozing will stop poor people from migrating to Abuja? And does anyone think the high cost of accommodation in the city won't inspire the creation of "informal" settlements?

If you don't masterplan for poor people showing up, that won't stop poor people from showing up. Why was there no debate and no discussion of replacing the unrealistic masterplan with a new one that took REALITY into consideration?

I just don't understand how and why it is politically and socially acceptable to try to deport Nigerians from Abuja or any other state in which they live. Because that is all they are doing ... trying.

Eventually, the people return, and in bigger numbers.

You can adapt your development planning model (assuming any exists) to reflect rational and realistic expectations in terms of the influx of economic migrants, or you can continue trying to deceive people that you are doing something by harassing, discriminating against and or deporting non-indigenes.