Re - Femi Kayode's Twitter Post on March 20.

  

I can't help but think of an equally absurd example : A nondescript bunch of immigrants from various African nations dreaming of taking over Stockholm and the whole of Södermanland and Uppland on the grounds that it's a " No man's land ", whatever that may mean to the beholder.

I can well imagine how the Sweden Democrats would like to respond to the proposition that Stockholm maybe by her cosmopolitan nature is a veritable " No Man's Land. "

I guess that the Sweden Democrats and other country lovers could learn a thing or two about attitude and what's going on in e.g. Nigeria by looking no further than here :

'' Femi Kayode's Twitter Post on March 20. 

In my view, those who break the law in Lagos, ought to be subject to the law that governs that part of Nigeria…

This says it all : Sizzla : Be Strong

Hopefully, this reaction is better than no reaction at all. Understandably, Femi Fani-Kayode is very concerned about what’s being reported as the current ethnic tensions  rocking the very foundations of Lagos,  and as we know, ”When the foundation itself rocks, whatever you have built upon it collapses.” and that’s why Fani-Kayode’s Twitter piece is such a strongly-worded response,  loaded with some sound advice about the way forward towards peace and harmony in that zone of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. 

He does not mince his words about the gravity of the situation when he says, "The truth is that the Ibo in Lagos are no longer welcome by the  people of Lagos”  followed by a sombre warning : “And unless they change their attitude quickly & drastically it may well be better for them to go home” 

Of course he is  presumably addressing all the Igbos who live in Lagos, including those who have made Lagos their home and  probably rejoice in the saying, "There is no place like home". It cannot be, “ Home is where the hatred is”

For Cornelius Ignoramus, the main difference between Yoruba and Igbo is language  and out of this  arises the question : How do we differentiate people who have been living together and speak the same language?

If we are to assume that  the Igbos are guests in  all of Yorubaland,  not only in Lagos, then , beyond, “When in Rome, do as the Romans” there’s this general understanding and point of agreement that I suppose we should normally share with Fani-Kayode that guests should respect the rules of the house - it is incumbent on them to do so  - or leave. 

This is generally true for all societies, beginning with family, up to nation. The opposite of that would be an invitation to anarchy, the kind of anarchy that begins with the mentality that we are living in a No Man’s Land, and that it’s a free- for -all, where you can do whatever you like, defecate under the Lagos bridge in broad daylight, on a moonlit night or under cover of NEPA darkness, the old acronym for never expect power always

Seriously, there’s nothing worse than misquoting a politician and nothing better than hearing directly from the horse’s mouth, in his own words - not a translation, and in this case what reads like a policy statement, for the occasion, in the King’s English,  a deftly worded well-considered public utterance made for wholesale consumption by indigene and “alien“ alike, published by a seasoned politician who has been at the game for some time now and from the pulpit of an elder - on the verge of being revered as an educated Nigerian Elder Statesman  -  he can address the younger generation of modern Nigeria:  Respect  us or Leave. Respect or Hit the Road Jack and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more 

 The strongest word there is “ alien” and because of the Christian charity and Good Samaritan spirit that you’d expect from a righteous  Christian nationalist. To my mind  it reeks a little of xenophobia, reeks a little  of the sort of  xenophobia that Nigerians as a collective of ethnicities were subject to in post-Apartheid South Africa not too long ago, and we all agree that xenophobia is is at odds with the civilised ideals of  cosmopolitanism in whatever melting pot, you name it , London, New York, Chicago - where Swedish emigres settled from since way back in 1846, before some of  the ancestors of Femi Fani-Kayode & Co were born to acquiesce with the new Lagos status of 1886

Will there be aliens in heaven, where obedience  is the first law.?

 Obedience, nothing to do specifically with Peter Obi and the Obidients.

In the ideal world of imagine,  there are no aliens. The word “alien” sticks out like a sore thumb. The Torah is explicit about this : Love the Stranger, just as the exemplary Abraham showed 

I arrived in Accra in early January, 1970 with the bulk sum of $500 in cash, all of which I exchanged with some Yoruba traders who were being deported from Ghana according to the draconian Aliens deportation Act and who were badly in need of foreign exchange. It was unbelievable and vicious. Africa Must Unite, indeed. As Eboe Hutchful - one of my neighbours at South Legon was to tell me a few months later, Kofi Busia had probably left his brains at Oxford where he had been teaching  Social Anthropology…

Nigeria was guilty of the same kind of atrocious behaviour in the early months of 1983. I was  on leave in Sweden then and did not witness it first-hand, but was told ( just as I was told about IPOB flag-waving in Lagos ) that the deportation of Ghanaians was vicious - certainly not in the Pan-African spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood.

The Emir of Kano was banished to Nasarawa but is there any authority that can deport Igbos en masse from  Lagos to anywhere ?

I don’t want to be too long about it, but  what to make of Fani- Kayode’s ominous, so thinly veiled threat : “Our history proves that we are slow to anger but irresistible in battle. It is not wise to provoke us or raise our sleeping sword.”

What would Kwame Anthony Appiah , Mr. Cosmopolitanism make of all this?

He has already said a lot, beginning with In My father’s House” 

We could ask him , even with the presumption that poets ( Chidi,  W.H. Auden, Wole Soyinka) don’t understand politicians  and extend the same assumption to Africana  philosophers such as Kwame Anthony Appiah and  Lewis Ricardo Gordon