By Lasisi Olagunju

In a democracy, victory won through real elections brings enduring legitimacy. ‘On Your Mandate We Shall Stand’ was composed and sung for Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola because he submitted his ambition to a competitive process: he had a competent opponent, votes were cast, counted, and he won. The song, its defiance, and resilience followed that mandate because it was legitimate.

Those who chant similar slogans today may find themselves clutching empty matchboxes tomorrow if they continue to sidestep competitive elections. A democratic seat secured through elite manipulation and backroom agreement cannot command enduring popular support, especially when those same elites decide to take it back.

Nigeria today stands in the grip of what is called consensus politics; choosing candidates without the ‘trouble’ of voting. We are even scheming to elect a president next year without the inconvenience of election. Good luck to all of us.

At the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, the Norman king, William the Conqueror, defeated King Harold II and went on to become King of England. Historians note that the victory set off sweeping changes across the British Isles. They say by force of arms, William took the crown and went on to remake the Church, the palace, and the culture of England. They say he did more than change the English crown; his victory remade the English language through a deep infusion of Norman/Latin forms. The consequence is that more than 60 percent of English words now carry Latin parentage.

One such word is ‘consensus’, from the Latin ‘consentīre’—“to feel together”,

“to agree,” “to be in harmony,” “to concur.”

The rains started beating that word a long time ago. Language historians note that words which experienced long migration often shed their original sense of shared feeling and acquire more instrumental meanings. So it is with ‘consensus’ in today’s political usage.

Somewhere along its long journey from Latin to modern political speech, ‘consensus’ lost its warmth. The distortion of the word and its meaning is no longer abstract. In our usage today, ‘consensus’ no longer suggests a meeting of minds; it often signals a decision already made; an outcome proclaimed from above and affirmed below. A word that once implied a genuine convergence of minds now describes an order from the throne, delivered through courtiers.

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The parties—especially the ruling APC—have stretched and inverted the meaning of the word. In APC’s political dictionary, “consensus” increasingly reads as the will of the president, not the outcome of deliberation.

As we had it in Sani Abacha’s transition programme, we think any of today’s living parties that make it limping to the ballot in January 2027 should reach an ‘agreement’ and adopt one person as the consensus presidential candidate. That is how rich our imaginative thoughts are and how limitless our capacity for distortion of values is.

Within both party and polity, the president now embodies what Aristide R. Zolberg calls “the chief executive who is also the supreme legislator (the chief elector), and the ultimate arbiter of conflict.” Because the president is what he has always been, photo ops are staged as proof of order, while his name, cast as the final authority in the APC’s doctrine of “consensus”, is invoked to sanctify outcomes.

The APC set its neighbour’s hut on fire and rejoiced; now the blaze has caught its own roof. Across the states, the refrain is the same: the abuse of ‘consensus,’ with the president inserted into the process as decider-in-chief.

Oyo State offers a very sharp illustration. Some APC leaders, on Friday, announced Senator Sharafadeen Alli as the party’s “consensus” governorship candidate, invoking the president’s name. Within hours, former minister, Adebayo Adelabu, pushed back, also invoking the same presidency, and declaring that he remained in the race as the president’s “son”. When two rival claims lean on the same authority, what is presented as consensus begins to look like a contest of endorsements, not agreement.

Our fathers say the medicine must match the disease. Bí àrùn búburú bá wòlú, oògùn búburú la fi ńwò ó (When the affliction is severe, the remedy cannot be gentle). That may explain why the rhetoric of resistance has turned harsh. One does not need a keen ear to catch the crudity in what now issues from Oyo APC bigwigs. It is a stream of curses and abuse, imprecations without restraint. And one must ask: why?

Beyond Oyo, across Nigeria, north to south, we hear cries of plots to impose “consensus” candidates. How do you use the words ‘imposition’ and ‘consensus’ in the same sentence? Imposition comes from above; the other grows from below. ‘Imposition’ is force without consent. ‘Consensus’ is agreement without force. The two opposites appearing as companions presents a contradiction, and politics is autological, a self-defining oxymoron. You will likely agree with my linguistic choice if you believe the popular (but etymologically false joke) that “politics” comes from ‘poly’ (many) and ‘tics’ (blood-sucking parasites).

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In Nasarawa, former Inspector-General of Police and APC governorship aspirant, Mohammed Adamu Abubakar, rejected any move towards “consensus,” insisting that only a direct primary could confer legitimacy. To him and others in the race, what is being dressed up as consensus is little more than unilateralism in softer language.

In Ondo, there are subdued objections to what the party may decide on Ondo South senatorial ticket. Aspirants for the Ondo East/Ondo West federal constituency have raised similar alarms, accusing party leaders of plotting to impose a candidate under the convenient cover of consensus. Their warning is simple: once choice is managed from above, internal democracy is already compromised.

In Yobe State, Senator Ibrahim Mohammed Bomai, Kashim Musa Tumsah, and Usman Alkali Baba—three APC governorship aspirants—have rejected the party’s endorsement of former Secretary to the State Government, Alhaji Baba Malam Wali, as its “consensus” candidate for the 2027 election.

Bomai’s choice of words is telling. He described the “consensus” imposition as an affront to democratic principles. He warned against the steady replacement of popular choice with elite arrangement. No individual, he argued, regardless of past office or political influence, has the authority to determine the leadership of millions behind closed doors. Leadership, he insisted, must emerge through a process that is free, fair, and transparent—not one brokered in the name of “consensus.” Quoting him directly, he said: “We categorically reject this attempt to subvert due process. We reject the culture of imposition. We reject any scheme that undermines fairness, equity, and the democratic rights of our people.” Those words give voice to what dissatisfied but muted APC leaders and members in Kwara, Ogun and beyond are saying in uneasy, even fearful, silence.

Lagos, for now, appears to be the exception. The emergence of Dr Obafemi Hamzat as the APC governorship candidate quietly followed a process that bore the marks of consultation rather than imposition. Hamzat combines the fine qualities of a gentleman with humble erudition. In a field without a formidable opposition, his path to final victory looks smooth. Congratulations may therefore be in order.

Choice of candidates by consensus is good, cheap and safe if it comes with clean hands. Going far back into our beginning, we find that real consensus is not alien to the African political tradition. Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu (1931 – 2022), in his reflections on ‘Democracy and Consensus in African Traditional Politics’, argues that decision-making in pre-colonial African societies was anchored in discussion and agreement rather than imposition.

He draws, for instance, on the words of Zambia’s founding father, Kenneth Kaunda, who observed that “in our original societies, we operated by consensus. An issue was talked out in solemn conclave until such time as agreement could be achieved.” Similarly, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, in 1961, noted that “the African concept of democracy is similar to that of the ancient Greeks, from whose language the word ‘democracy’ originated. To the Greeks, democracy meant simply “government by discussion among equals.” The people discussed, and when they reached an agreement, the result was a “people’s decision.” In African society, he said, the traditional method of conducting affairs is “by free discussion… the elders sit under the big trees and talk until they agree.”

Our politics has refused to benefit from that past of refined due process. There is no “people” in today’s decisions. And we expect today’s “consensus” arrangement to yield good governance. No. It will not. It can only produce a system that answers to kings, kingmakers, and the capos who guard their power.

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When a ruling party actively promotes “consensus” after weakening the opposition, it risks sliding toward a very bad form of authoritarianism. It also strips even its own members of the power to choose their candidates. As Kwasi Wiredu observed, both Kenneth Kaunda and Julius Nyerere defended systems that claimed consensus but, in practice, narrowed choice.

The Yoruba, watching what has become of this democracy in the hands of its custodians, would say: when a wise man cooks yams in a mad fashion, the discerning take theirs with sticks. That is àbọ̀ ọ̀rọ̀—half a word—and for the wise, it is enough.

What passes for consensus in Nigeria today therefore demands closer scrutiny. When outcomes are settled before conversations begin, when dissent is managed rather than engaged, and when unanimity is announced rather than negotiated, consensus ceases to be the product of dialogue; it becomes instead an instrument of control.

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” In politics, as William Shakespeare suggests, opposites often blur; good and evil do not always stand apart; they, in fact, reinforce each other. Bernard Crick, in ‘In Defence of Politics’ (1962), reminds us that politics thrives on contradiction, that it is “a creative compromise… a diverse unity.”

All dictionaries insist that “consensus” and ‘coercion’ are not the same. Our politicians, however, behave as though they are—indeed, as though one can be made to pass for the other. Once coercion learns to speak the language of consensus, it no longer needs to persuade; it only needs to declare. And declarations are fast, sweet and cheap.

But there are consequences.

Someone said “every cheap choice is a lost chance at joy.” The quest for easy victory is behind the current ‘consensus’ frenzy. But it may be the death of this democracy.

In Yoruba, some proverbs come as stories. Take this: “All the animals in the forest assembled and decided to make ìkokò (hyena) their asípa (secretary). Ikoko was happy to hear the news, but a short while later he burst into tears. Asked what the matter was, he replied that he was sad because he realised that perhaps they (his electors) might revisit the matter and reverse themselves.”

Professor Oyekan Owomoyela, from whom I got the proverb, explains what it says: “even in times of good fortune one should be mindful of the possibility of reversal.”

The moral is that those who donate victory cheaply through agreement can agree again to whimsically annul the victory without consequences.

By Tony Erha

This time around, I’m compelled to shift a steady gaze from the backwater politics and insecurity that greatly trouble Nigerians. Must it be bitter politics and unresolved insecurity all the time? There is intense migraine, where there is no respite, and no end to the afflictions. Alas, renegade politics, economic woes, and insecurity have permanently dominated the air waves and tend to mar the life of the people.

The unrestrained news of deaths, maiming and criminalities compete with political maneuvering, in this sickening season of the 2027 political transition and commotions. There is no more sanctity of human lives and normalcy. What has become usual is ceaseless news of heavy death tolls, disfigurements, political manipulations, burning and looting. Sadly, it is an endorsed insurgency of the sort, a definition of our national life that is worse than a full-scale war.

For days, the unprofessional boxing fight between Portable and Carter Efe, has dominated the happenstance chart or newsbreak of a country that is in a derisive search for peace. The news of the freestyle boxing bout of the two prominent entertainers has climbed national chart to number one. The bout, continually generates fervous, excitement and the polarization of fetishes and Christian dogmas, where Portable boasted that he was using ‘juju power’ to defeat Carter Efe and he (Carter Efe) professed he would use “Jesus power”, to floor his rival.

Well, the outcome of the fight, with Carter Efe crushing Portable, appeared to have fit the main stream narrative that “Jesus” has defeated “Juju”. The hangover ranges and rages, where Portable, who had claimed to have defeated his previous opponents with the same “Juju”, is now at the receiving end.

Whereas Joseph Oderhohwo Efe (Carter Efe) is a comedian, online streamer and songwriter; Habeeb Okikiola Badmus (Portable) is a musician of the ZaZoo genre. Both men have a penchant for engaging the youth and other entertainment fans with their brands, which sometimes lean to excessive showmanship and magnetism. In the fiercely contested and energy-sapping encounter, held on Saturday, May 2, 2026, Carter Efe won Portable via a unanimous decision in the highly publicised event, titled ‘Chaos in the Ring 4′

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In a prevalent social media comment, a poster called it “pitiless ram-head-fight”, a brand with which some money bags unruly influence the youth to money, materialism, violence and self-important illusions, where hundreds of millions of Naira were sunk in”. Another pointed out that it is similar to the “BBA reality show, which is fading away”.

But, it is not far from the usual entertainment hypes once organised by outlaw American cowboys, as a forerun to the main fight between its gun-slinging gangs. It is also suited to gunfight scenes, known with American films, once popularised by American cowboy actors of memory – such as John Wayne, Ben Johnson, Clint Eastwood, Gary Cooper, Tom Mix, Gene Autry and Sam Elliott.

Yet, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, informs us that ‘Ram Fighting’ is a blood sport between two rams, held in a ring or open field. It is commonly in culture of Africa, Asia and Europe. In Nigeria, Uzbekistan, and Indonesia, Wikipedia also stated that it gains popularity, amongst the locals.

I have watched the ‘ram fights’ in Nigeria, where fighting rams die, after spilling blood, and the spectators jubilate. Thereby stagers of the fights betted and collect the gains or losses of the fights. Such fights pose ‘Cruelty to the Animals”. As an advocate against cruelty to ‘Animals’, with the Animal Kindness Club of the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), animals should be treated with dignity.

The Portable vs Carter Efe’s duel is ephemeral ceasefire and breathing space to an overwhelmed government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Lucky Jababan – who faces restless public agitation over the avalanche economic woes, insecurity, and social problems Nigerians face.

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It’s likened to the alibi of a drunkard, that alcohol consumption makes him forget his problems. But, what he doesn’t also divulge is whether the problem is no more when the boozing has worn out, and he is himself.

Stopping problems do not require one to cause more, whereas, humanity is filled with five best strategies of problem-solving. Unfortunately, the reckless prizefighting between Portable and Carter Efe, is a delinquent official approval for the increasing violent social conduct that saturate Nigeria. For critical thinking, where do violent encounters prevail in addressing the attitudinal fisticuff of a societal?

It is like a rule that gives a people the choice to die or live. Such is the advertorial on cigarette and its addiction. “The Federal Ministry of Health Warns that smokers are liable to die young”. The question is whether it’s out of place or impossible to entirely ban smoking?

For bloodsport like boxing, wrestling, kickboxing etc., with lethal side effects like the Parkinson’s disease, brain and tissue damage, and untimely deaths, there are rules.

Once upon a time, I wanted to prove a point to my wife that the wrestling fights she often watched on network television, including the melee; free-for-all-brawls, weren’t make-believe. I got a ticket for her to watch a wrestling tournament, organised by Felix Okugbe, a late sportswriter and some other promoters, with the Raypower/AIT giving it a live coverage in an indoor sports hall of the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos.

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It turned out to be a terrible incident of regrets that I still haven’t overcome. Greco-Roman wrestling of summersaults and the American free-styles, started with thrills, ovations and cat calls. My wife was getting to the reality of the things I told her, when the worst happened.

A young wrestler called Indomitable Fearless, died instantly, in one of the supportive slams, after the medics failed to revive him. It was agonizing moment for all, and a torture to comfort my wife and getting her out of the venue, in a jiffy. Until date, wrestling bouts are hardly watched in my house.

But, blood sport has its warning like the youth are warned not to carry out in schools and at home, the physical actions of wrestling they watch on television.

Yet, entertainment exercises that insult sensibility and are fraught with dangers should be avoided, where the rules of the games are also strictly enforced.

Pointedly, there are misgivings to the slipshod fight between Portable and Cater Efe. This is, nevertheless, raised by a Nigerian woman, identified on the Facebook as Nne Sophia; “Boxing is a regulated and dangerous sport”.

She condemned how the two celebrities, who are not professional boxers, were allowed to face-off, without following some boxing rules. She decried a dangerous punch Carter Efe gave Portable, on the back of his head, called a “rabbit punch”. “This is a very dangerous thing to do as it can lead to serious disability or death. The back of the head, ‘occiput’, is where the brainstem that controls our vital body functions like breathing and our heart rate is located”

By Festus Adedayo

A commenter on X, obviously a South African national, with the name Paul, reacted to a CableNews April 27 report that two Nigerians were killed in recent spike in South Africa’s xenophobic attacks on fellow Africans. He said: “They were burnt alive…our country isn’t a playing zone. They (sic) will be more Nigerian criminals to be buried this Saturday.” Paul was writing with the handle, @blewcash.easymoney.referral, with the South African national flag hoisted on his comment. A BBC report had earlier quoted a 43-year-old Democratic Republic of Congo national living in Hillbrow, S.A. as saying he felt lucky to be alive: “My best friend was attacked one morning… He was stoned to death like a dog. Imagine someone runs away from his own land and comes here to find peace but ends up getting killed.”

A 2017 report cited by Nigeria’s House of Representatives said that 116 Nigerians were killed in South Africa over a preceding two-year period, out of which, roughly 20 were killed in 2016. Though not a recent phenomenon, xenophobic attacks in South Africa have assumed epidemic proportion. As far back as 1994, in the rush for scarce resources, immigrants face stiff push, leading to violent discrimination. Record has it that in 2008, South Africa harvested 62 deaths from xenophobic uprising and attacks. A 2018 Pew research poll reported that 62% of South Africans believed immigrants constituted social and economic burdens and were responsible for crimes. At the moment, South Africa’s rate of unemployment, ranked as one of the highest in the world, oscillates around 33%. Xenophobia attacks increased after Nelson Mandela and a black majority government deposed white rule, inflicted by assailants who allege that job losses result from foreigners’ infiltration.

Julius Malema, South African opposition politician and leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, had a stinging remark against such claims. Last Thursday, at the 14th anniversary of Collen Mashawana Foundation, he took a swipe at xenophobia by saying, “I want to challenge you who say ‘Zimbabweans take your jobs, Nigerians take your jobs’ and you march, close shops, and beat up people. Tell us after doing that, how many jobs have you created?… Unskilled men, with no skill whatsoever, say somebody took their jobs. The skill they know is to drink and want to pretend like revolutionaries.”

South African politicians, like ones in uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) led by ex-President Jacob Zuma, latch on this to make xenophobic comments to gain political advantage. Early this year, Zulu king, Misuzulu kaZwelithini, used highly derogatory term for immigrants while calling for their eviction. He spoke by the rocky Isandlwana hill, in a place where history recorded that, 147 years ago, his forefathers, commanding 20,000 Zulu warriors in the Anglo-Zulu war, defeated 1,800 British soldiers in the battle of Isandlwana.

The 51-year king said: “The kwerekwere must leave,” kwerekwere being a derogatory word for African migrants. His late father, Goodwill Zwelithini, made similar offensive call in 2015, asking immigrants to “pack their belongings”. This led to a rise in vigilante anti-migrant groups, chief of which is the Operation Dudula (Dudula in Zulu language meaning “to be removed by force”) as well as March on March, with their notoriety flourishing daily.

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There is no way we can locate South Africans’ violence against fellow blacks unless we go into history. In 2019, South Africans unleashed an unprecedented assault on Nigerians which resulted in loss of property worth billions of Naira. To understand this hate, we have to trace its genealogy. It will explain the infliction of horrendous pains on fellow blacks by South Africans.

Historically, since 1948, Black South Africans have harboured bile, violence and rancid hatred for other races. 1948 was the year Apartheid was institutionalized as a system of white minority rule. It led to acute racial segregation. The Apartheid system also forced non-white into segregated areas, restricted their rights to mingle with whites and took away their voting rights. These further inflicted incalculable damage on their psyche. The National Party, led by such leaders like Pieter Willem Botha, enforced this oppressive policy of apartness.

Today, though Apartheid was defeated by the collective voices of the world in 1994, it has not died. While you may see imposing infrastructural relics of white rule in South Africa, its innards are made of up of irreconcilable dysfunction, hate and quest for vengeance of 1948 to 1994.

If you read the works of authors like Mazisi Kunene, Ezekiel Mphalele, Peter Abrahams, Alf Wannenburg and many others, you will understand why South Africans haven’t purged themselves of their bond with violence.

I have searched frantically for the lure of the gruesome murders of Nigerians and other African nationals at the drop of a hat by South Africans. My findings revealed a retained savagery of Apartheid. Placing stories of blood spillage under Apartheid with the recent ease with which South Africans hack fellow Blacks to death, a knowledge of the country’s historical development will bail you out of wonderment. If you now read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and William Golding’s classic, Lord of the Flies, place the bestiality in the books beside the black-on-black hate in South Africa today and you will agree with white theorists’ submission that the Blackman has within him innate bestiality. Today, South African blacks only need very little provocation to unleash an ancestry of savagery, like Golding’s little boys marooned on an island, whose animalism took the better part of them.

Like Fela Anikulapo-Kuti sang, quoting Botha, Apartheid indeed brought out the beast in South Africans. Today, fellow blacks have replaced whites in their subconscious. The moment the system castrated the Blackman’s manhood, he became a lot less than an animal, with no difference between his behaviour and those of his ape ancestors. If you read the history of the South African liberation struggle, it is replete with macabre and a number of horrendous murders that would make a civilized world shudder. In the name of the struggle, many of those atrocities were excused and overlooked; indeed, they came to the world’s knowledge seldom. The world focused, on the reverse, on the evil regime of Frederick de Clark and the atrocities of segregating white from Indians, the black and coloured. The dastardly act of murdering fellow blacks they labeled Askaris, who were alleged to have betrayed the liberation struggle, were never heard. Thus, we never knew how ignoble and bloodless the hearts of our South African brothers were.

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You will recall the trial of Winnie Mandela and the allegation of her involvement in the murder of some youths, who went by the façade of a football club. The murdered boys were alleged to be squealing on the liberation struggle. They were summarily tried by the “Winnie Boys”, sentenced to death and executed, similar to how a Nigerian police officer, ASP Nuhu Usman, was captured on video executing a 28-year-old suspect, Mene Ogidi, last week in Effurun, Delta State. Winnie was eventually tried for these murders which constituted one of the thousands of gruesome killings by blacks under Apartheid.

If you read some of the works of Alex la Guma, like A Walk In the Night, you will encounter District Six, the inner city of Cape Town, home to all sorts of sub-human activities and why horrendous murder became part and parcel of the people’s existence. Mutual knifing, unprovoked arson, murders and all sorts were carried out with a clinical finish that would make a decent man shudder. In Quartet and In the Fog of the Seasons’ End, you will encounter the bestiality that Apartheid wrought on the psyche of our so-called brothers. Many black South Africans lost their humanity in the process.

Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), founded by Mandela in 1961, perpetrated a lot of criminal activities and mindless murders that were swept under the rug while Mandela was in jail. Several South Africans who were accused of betraying the struggle were tagged Askari or “cockroaches” got summarily executed and nobody ever heard of their deaths thereafter.

If Gen Z South Africans who hate Nigerians this much, apparently not born in 1994 or are too young to appreciate the roles Nigeria played to get them the freedom that made them fiefs in their own land, methinks elderly South Africans should retell the story to them. After all, my people say if a child was not alive to witness history (Ìtàn) in manifestation, they will at least hear historical narratives (àróbá). In total, it is said that, from 1960 when Tafawa Balewa made Africa the centerpiece of Nigeria’s foreign policy, to 1994 during Sani Abacha regime, Nigeria wasted an estimated $60 billion on funding the anti-Apartheid struggle.

That Nigerian intervention actually began with the Sharpeville Massacre of March 21, 1960. Police had opened fire on a crowd of protesters outside a police station in the township of Sharpeville. They were protesting Apartheid system’s Pass laws which required Blacks to obtain passes to move around. 72 blacks were killed and about 184 wounded in one fell swoop. In protest, Nigerian university students voluntarily skipped their lunch for a month, and the proceeds remitted to South Africa. It was called the Mandela Tax. Not only did they make fetish of the evil of Apartheid, Nigerian students mobilized public opinion in support of people they felt were their brothers, with many young Nigerians contributing from their little pocket monies in aid of the struggle.

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In the same vein, many tertiary institutions formed clubs like Youth Solidarity on South Africa. Nigeria then boycotted the 1976 Olympics and 1979 Commonwealth games, leading to national losses. To get South Africa liberated quickly, Nigeria declined selling oil to the apartheid regime. Aside these, Nigeria played a vital role in the anti-apartheid struggle through music, using powerful songs to mobilize awareness and solidarity across Africa and beyond. Artists like Fela Kuti and Sonny Okosun used their voices to condemn oppression, inspire resistance, and amplify the call for freedom in South Africa.

Apart from frontline states like Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola, Mozambique and Namibia, no nation could rival Nigeria in contributions to the struggle against apartheid. If you read the book, Diplomatic Soldiering (1987) written by Gen. Joe Garba, Nigeria’s foreign affairs minister under Gens. Murtala Muhammed/Olusegun Obasanjo, you will have an idea of the quantum of fortune Nigeria sank into the liberation of South Africa and South African states. On many occasions, Nigeria single-handedly picked the bills of programmes associated with the struggle. Thousands of South African youths received scholarship to study in Nigerian universities, nursing schools, polytechnics and colleges of education. Frustrated at some point, Obasanjo, as Head of State, once threatened to deploy all means possible to fight Apartheid to a standstill, including invoking what he called the Blackman’s magical power.

At some point, Nigeria was home to South African freedom fighters like Thabo Mbeki’s father, Govan Mbeki; Albert Luthuli and other ANC leaders who were here on asylum. Nigeria also richly funded ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. Thabo, Mbeki’s son, was also on exile in Nigeria from 1976 to 1979.

On May 13, 1990, upon his release from a combination of terms in Robben Island, Pollsmoor, and Victor Verster Prisons which cumulatively stood at 27 years, President Nelson Mandela was on a courtesy visit to Nigeria. At the Murtala Square, Kaduna, he affirmed that Nigeria made the highest donation to South Africa’s liberation. To further underscore this, on April 27, on the Freedom Day which marks South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, President Cyril Ramaphosa reminded his country of the debt it owes other nations on the continent who supported their struggle against the racist system of apartheid.

The children and grandchildren of Nigerians who made those huge sacrifices are now the ones being killed in South Africa today. As Nigerians, we have our own drawbacks, but violence of the South African kind is alien to us.

My take is that, if Nigerian governments, from independence to 1994, had spent the estimated $60b frittered on South Africa on the future of Nigerians, their offspring would not be hibernating in South Africa today. South Africans may also jolly well still be in captivity. We owe it a duty to both ourselves and country to make Nigeria too a pleasant country, a country which, travelling out of it would be for mere sightseeing, rather than for economic liberation. The hopelessness at home and the serial plunder of our country by our own kin, the notoriety of which is a tale told in all the four corners of the globe, are reasons we weigh little in the estimation of the world. Again, the criminal lifestyles, drug-pushing and excessive self-underscore that our nationals live abroad cannot but make us objects of xenophobia.