Naija to the World: Deconstructing the Myth of Nigerian Exceptionalism

A few months ago, I joined a WhatsApp group created for prospective volunteers for an African Union initiative. Applicants joined from various African countries. As we awaited the final results of our applications, we introduced ourselves and had light-hearted conversations. But as the days went by, I started to notice a pathology among other Nigerians. They frequently threw casual jabs at other African countries, especially at Ghana. I shrugged it off for a while. I wasn’t surprised. Nigerians are notoriously loud and vaunted when it comes to claiming superiority on the continent. You see this in comment sections on social media and during Twitter wars.

I thought this puerile braggadocio would die down after a few days. But they kept at it. They did everything from starting the vapid Jollof war to making innuendos about Ghana Must Go – a code phrase for the mass deportation of illegal West African immigrants, mostly Ghanaians, by the Nigerian government in 1983. For some reason, these insufferable jokes were met with mild pushback. I suppose other Africans already knew that it was pointless engaging in unproductive online battles with Nigerians as almost always, Nigerians would win, not because their vaunted claims of continental giantism and exceptionalism are true, but because Nigerians have the numbers and admittedly, creative insults to bully them into silence.

This was supposed to be a group where we kept ourselves up to speed with the results of our applications. It was supposed to be a group where we connected as Africans. It was supposed to be a place where the ideals of Pan-Africanism mattered more than national identity. But Nigerians very quickly made it about themselves.

And then I lost it. I could only take so much of the insensitivity and entitlement being displayed by my fellow countrymen. So, one day, someone from Rwanda posted about Rwanda being visa-free to all Africans as the country has already signed the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA) agreement and how it has been ranked as the second best country on the continent for ease of doing business. This elicited positive replies from others and someone even wished to be deployed to Rwanda, if their application became successful. Then the poster went on to say Rwanda is the Singapore of Africa and an ICT hub. No one except Nigerians had a problem with it. A Nigerian dude responded to the claim that Rwanda is an ICT hub by asking if the poster had been to Computer Village in Nigeria, before coming to that conclusion. By the way, Computer Village is a popular electronics market in Ikeja, Lagos. It’s dirty, crowded, and infamous for merchants who sell fake products to unsuspecting buyers. There is nothing structured about this market. Suggesting it’s an ICT hub is an insult to anyone’s intelligence. Having tolerated this ridiculousness for days, I eventually dropped a harsh but honest post about how Nigerians had acted insufferably and why I would understand if other Africans had found Nigerians annoying.

This story exemplifies a tendency among Nigerians to exaggerate their importance in Africa. Because we have a fragile ego, we constantly want to reaffirm our perceived dominance. When we see signs or claims of development elsewhere in Africa, our snap reaction is a whataboutist claim about Nigeria being more developed. You won’t be hard pressed to see Nigerians say something to the effect of “Small Ghana there” or “Nigeria can buy the whole of X country [in Africa, of course]”. We think we are exceptional. We think we are the giant of Africa. We think we are rich. Until recently, Nigeria was the biggest economy in Africa, and we made sure to boast about it as evidence of Nigerian exceptionalism.

Very often, you find Nigerians sloganize Naija to the World. This has become a motto for Nigerian exceptionalism. Whenever a Nigerian artist wins an international award, we scream Naija to the world. If a Burna Boy sells out an arena in Europe, Naija to the world. If Nigerian footballers perform well in European clubs, Naija to the world. When we see videos of foreigners lip-syncing or dancing to our songs, Naija to the world. When we see videos of foreigners attending Nigerian weddings dressed in colourful aso ebi, it is definitely Naija to the world. When we see videos of women from other places praising Nigerian men for knowing how to please a woman, best believe we scream Naija to the world.

Reno Omokri, a public intellectual in his own right, posted a video on December 16 of a Kenyan woman saying on a podcast that Nigerians are the reason nubile women now go to clubs because Nigerians are responsible for Hennessey selling in Kenya and people washing their hands with Champagne. She said Nigerians have conquered the world. I found it startling that someone who worked as an aide to a former president gleefully shared that video as proof of Nigerian exceptionalism.

Claims of Nigerian exceptionalism are often intellectually dishonest. Better yet, Nigerians selectively brag about their exceptionalism. But you have to take the good with the bad. Otherwise, that would be logically inconsistent. It’s okay to confirm stereotypes of Nigerians being exceptional in entertainment and culture. But it’s blasphemous to say Nigerians are notorious scammers. It’s okay if a foreigner uses Burna Boy as an example of Nigerian greatness but sacrilegious if they use Hushpuppi as an example of Nigerian criminality. It is either we sloganise Naija to the world in both the good and bad, or we don’t if we only want to highlight the good.

Nigeria’s claim to fame is demographic and cultural. Of course, we are the most populated black country in the world, and that means we are ubiquitous like viruses. That has helped to percolate our culture and criminality to other places. But demographics and culture are very inconsequential reasons to base our exceptionalism on. I would rather Nigerians were famous for stellar contributions to science, technology, academia, startups, cutting-edge innovation, development, and other things that make great nations great. And, of course, there are Nigerians doing amazing things in these areas. Unfortunately, their successes are being dwarfed by all the noise about our successes in entertainment. As a Nigerian, I don’t want foreigners to think of entertainment or jollof rice when they think of my nationality. I would rather they think of someone like Oluyinka O. Olutoye, a Nigerian doctor based in the US who made the news for performing a successful foetal surgery to remove a tumour from a baby at 23 weeks of pregnancy. He enclosed the baby back in the womb and the the baby was successfully born (again) at the ninth month. For the first time in history, a baby was born twice!

Admittedly, focusing on stories like this would still not suffice in eclipsing the many negative things we are infamous for. The country is generally in a mess. Despite all the Naija to the world sloganising, we remain poor and underdeveloped. Our cultural and demographic achievements have not translated into meaningful prosperity. Nigeria has slipped to the fourth biggest economy in Africa. Our GDP per capita is very low. A few years back, we overtook India as the poverty capital of the world. Many states are not economically viable. They barely generate any internal revenue to even pay salaries. Our currency is in a devaluation tailspin. The little foreign investments we have are exiting the country. Like South Africans once mocked us, we are the generator republic. Cost of living is high, but standard of living is low. Wages are stagnant. Universities frequently go on strike for various reasons that border on unpaid salaries. Insecurity has worsened. Elections are not free and fair. To pretend these problems do not exist while making chest-thumping claims about Nigeria being the giant of Africa helps no one. We can win online wars. We can make denigrating remarks like small Ghana there or choose not to accept that Rwanda is the Singapore of Africa. At the end of the day, after winning the trophies of meaningless online battles, we get to suffer the consequences of the dysfunctionality of the Nigerian system. Naija to the world is an anodyne that quickly fades off when you get off the internet and face reality.