If you’re tired of being addressed as a giant, how about being treated or mistreated as though you were a dwarf? Not so funny, is it? But what if being told you’re closer to what you truly are? Would you take offence or accept it and stand that way?
I’m sure our president, Bola Tinubu, didn’t mind being ignored by South African president Cyril Ramaphosa during the latter’s swearing-in last month. Our man was shunted to the third row in a lineup of visiting heads of state, waiting to have a handshake with ‘Phosa. When the man of the moment did show up, he shook everyone’s hands except Tinubu’s. In fact, the South African leader didn’t show he even recognized the Nigerian president. As far as he knew, Tinubu was no show. The fun of it was that our man didn’t seem to bother at all. To his credit, Tinubu did as if he wasn’t in the party. That would have settled it. But trust Nigerians to make a fuss of anything that would pass for a snub of their leaders. The “giant of Africa” to be treated like a dwarf that couldn’t be seen in a crowd! Nah nah, that wouldn’t do.
The Presidency tried to make light of what happened in Pretoria. It said it wasn’t true that Tinubu was snubbed by Ramaphosa. The video that went viral on social media didn’t capture the main event, the Villa said. It was an informal setting where protocol was not observed. Many people, including my very self, believed that very version of the story. Why not. If the Presidency said Tinubu wasn’t ignored, why should we believe someone else who claimed he was? But then former US president Barack Obama did weigh in on the controversy. And that gave the story a stamp of authenticity.
Obama didn’t mince his words. He said Ramaphosa’s snubbing of Tinubu was “a disgrace” to the biggest black nation in the world. He said Nigeria needed to assert itself on the world stage. “Why was Tinubu made to sit behind leaders of smaller countries?” he asked. According to him, the South African snub was a wake up call on Nigerians to elect leaders who would be respected throughout the whole world. “Nigeria must reassess its diplomatic relations and rise to take its rightful place among all nations,” said Obama. Now, why did Abuja play down Tinubu’s South Africa debacle? Why did it have to take an American to tell us the bitter truth?
It could be that the Nigerian government saw what happened only as brotherly misunderstanding and didn’t want it blown to become a big diplomatic row. But South Africa didn’t see it the same way. Its silence over the matter suggested it couldn’t care less. Here some perspective is required. South Africa became a free nation only in 1994 while Nigeria got its independence 36 years earlier. Nonetheless, South Africa sees itself as being in competition with Nigeria for first position on the African continent. Secondly, South Africa doesn’t welcome anything that would remind it of the huge debt of gratitude for the big role Nigeria played in its liberation from white apartheid rule. This is why it has quietly promoted xenophobia against foreigners, Nigerians in particular, to state policy. Nigerians in South Africa and their businesses are regularly attacked and told to the country. The government in Pretoria condemns xenophobia in the day time but encourages it at night.
The Nigerian government should have seen the handwriting on the wall. What happened to Tinubu was long in coming. A clearer reading of the relations between the two so called sisterly African nations would have informed a degrading of the Nigerian delegation to South Africa. Our high commissioner in Pretoria should have been asked to represent Nigeria at Ramaphosa’s inauguration. That would have sent the right message about where the two nations stand on the world stage. Well, the milk is already spilled and can’t be packed. But there will always be a next time.
