In terms of being a preferred destination, why does Ghana continue to trump Nigeria? This is the engaging question on my mind this Thursday evening. By all accounts, we happen to be the big one. And yet, Ghana continues to be the top dog in certain respects.
Possibly, there is something after all in that terse phrase: small is beautiful. Still there is a lot to be said for the fact that market-wise, it is impossible to ignore the big one – this time Nigeria.
As I reflect along these lines, I am thinking of the fact that, for many African Americans who seek some emotional comfort in mother Africa, Ghana is their preferred choice. What is being said here can be seen in the fact that in recent times, a number of African Americans are making efforts to ditch America for Africa and in the specific sense, Ghana is it for them. A number of factors are responsible for this back to Africa, sorry Ghana movement.
First, there is what can be called the conscious policy of the Ghanaian state. Sometime ago, Ghana initiated the Programme of Return. African Americans were encouraged to visit the country as a form of spiritual journey in which they came to experience, so to say, the experience of their ancestors. And if the truth be told, the push factor is very big. I am referring here to the fact that till date, and with a few exceptions the American dream, remains something of a nightmare for African Americans.
Read Also: Ghana’s cedi at record low amid surging FX demand from importers
The blacks continue to occupy the bottom of the totem pole. A lot of African American writers in various ways have focused on this theme of alienation and subjugation which constitute the lot of the blacks in the United States. Writers which come to mind here are Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and James Baldwin, the author of: Go Tell it on the Mountain.
Even the day-to-day experience of the black man in the States borders on the Nightmarish. He is constantly profiled, stigmatised and stereotyped in ways which go a long way to challenge his humanity. In writing this, I am also speaking from some personal experience. I was in one of those post-doctoral jaunts in the US, and let me say this; my immediate hosts in the University were very wonderful.
Initially, I was ensconced in the University Guest House and all seemed to be well. Crunch time was when I had to look for a house, on my own. Note the phrase; on my own. This was when I started seeing the other side of America. I could not get accommodation even when I went to places, which had been advertised as being vacant.
Apparently, my pigmentation had something to do with it. My immediate hosts in the University were naturally embarrassed. So I was given an escort, who had to explain to prospective landlords/landladies, that: here is this foreigner, a black man who is not really one of us. So please give him accommodation. In those moments and in those days, what came to the mind was that memorable poem: Telephone Conversation, by Wole Soyinka.
He, Soyinka had been in the same predicament. He went to seek accommodation, this time in the UK, and he had to explain to the prospective landlady that; Madam, I am black, I hate a wasted journey. This was a poem which I read in my early years in the University. I only absorbed it, in terms of its abstractions. But in those moments, the poem and its preoccupation came back to haunt me in full force.
The immediate foregoing explains why I can easily identify with those African Americans, who are coming black to Ghana in droves. As the inclement instances of racism continue to rear its head in the United States, Ghana is the country that is reaping the fruits. There is for instance a Stoneham Davis who contends that trauma is embedded in her DNA, owing to the Transatlantic Slave trade. There is also reference to the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, in which some of her family members were displaced from their homes.
So what to do? Head back to Africa-Ghana. According to her, the trauma of racism was beginning to take an emotional and psychological toll. In the same vein, the African Diaspora Forum revealed that in the wake of the George Floyd incident, there was an upsurge of requests, from at least 300 people a day, on how they can relocate to Ghana.
In an objective context, one can almost understand this preference in the light of the fact that compared to Nigeria, Ghana is more stable and predictable. Take the issue of power. Somehow, the country has been able to solve this problem. Very much the same thing can be said for roads. Most importantly, perhaps, at the level of values, Nigeria and Ghana are miles apart.
Still, there is something of a grand irony in much of the foregoing. If we go back in time, such was the population of the enslaved from these parts that in earlier times, the social formation called Nigeria was known as the Slave Coast. This means we should have been the main beneficiary of the return of our brothers and sisters from the United States of America.
In fairness to them however, and at a point in time, we were the preferred destination at least in the potential sense. There was even the narrative that some of the African Americans in their search for spiritual and emotional comfort wanted to visit Badagry-a major slave port in those days. But the place could not be accessed, in the light of the nightmarish experience on the Lagos – Badagry Expressway. What is being said here about that road goes for a lot of other vital roads across the country.
Meanwhile, the power situation continues to maintain its epileptic profile.
And in contemporary times, we even have on our hands a worsening of the situation. This is in the light of untoward features like: banditry, kidnapping, Boko Haram, and a deafening, near destructive debate on issues like, restructuring, separatism and secession. When you add into this combustible mix, the various spates of industrial action from doctors, University teachers and other health workers, one begins to appreciate how and why a demographic power-house like Nigeria in terms of its black population continues to play second fiddle to a mini Ghana.
Evidently, this is clearly a tragic reversal of roles.
