17/09/2024
The Celebration of Tiv Nation in London: Diasporan Linkages to Development
By Uji, Wilfred Terlumun
Since the 1980s, during the Second Republic, 1979 to 1983, under the civilian administration of Governor Aper Aku that the Benue State Government through an institutionalized process launched an ambitious, visionary and dynamic project that was designed and focused to push the dispersal of Tiv human capital out to the industrialized western nations of the United States of America, Canada, Britain, France, etc, the policy was designed to create and promote a Tiv Diasporan Community in the West that would subsequently promote collaboration and partnership between the Tiv Diasporan Community and Nigeria. The Tiv Diasporan initiative was intended to recruit and mobilized the necessary human capacity resource and infrastructure in the Diaspora, as a basic prerequisite for the development of Benue State and the Tiv Nation in Nigeria. It is important to note that the Tiv Nation is bigger and larger than the narrow confines of Benue State both in philosophy, politics and economy.
In all the States of North Central Nigeria and even that of North Eastern Nigeria, there are indigenous Tiv population and settlements in States such as Niger, Kogi, Nasarawa, Taraba, Plateau etc.
In times, the Governors of some of these states such as Nasarawa and Taraba, have embarked on the official and Institutionalized policies that are anti Tiv, designed and targeted to reverse if not wipe out some of the gains and legacies of Tiv communities in such states that dates back to the pre Colonial era. Whatever were the gains and achievements of the Tiv Nation in North Central of Nigeria has been lost overtime through deliberate political action and inaction of both the Tiv and their neighbors in North Central of Nigeria.
This ought to be a basic agenda for the Tiv Day Celebration if the occasion is not designed to promote the selfish interest of the Tiv political class and elites.
There is always a great deal of relations and interface between a diaspora community and the source community in terms of the exchange of development and linkages. In recent history, the linkage benefits of a diaspora is what has inspired scholars to study diaspora experience at the world stage and how that has contributed to global development.
The creation and establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 would have been near impossible without the active inputs and contributions from the Jewish diaspora communities in Western Europe and the United States of America.
The Lord Balfour Declaration which provided the inspiration and legitimate basis for the State of Israel in Palestine was a product of European and American Jewish lobby groups at the apex system of the world system. The same Jewish Lobby Group have been responsible for the sustenance, preservation and defense of the State of Israel at the United Nations against anti Zionist Forces in World politics. The Jewish Diaspora is of global significance in the study of the linkage benefits of a diaspora.
The Japanese diaspora to the West after the Meji Meji Restoration provided the basic fulcrum for the diffusion of Western Science and technology to Japan as a major catalyst of the industrial and technological revolution of Japan. Equally, digging up on the footsteps of the Japanese, the Chinese Diaspora in the West are major force that has shaped and defined the economic transformation of China. For example, Hong Kong and Singapore which were under the informal Colonization of Britain where focal points where the Chinese Diaspora were able to domestic western science and technology thus leveraging on the western world in the achievement of scientific and technological advancement.
In the United States of America, since the second half of the twentieth century, the Japanese and Chinese Diaspora Communities came to overshadow the automobile and electronic industry in the United States of America. The Asian industrial hegemony in the United States of America has been a product of several trade wars and conflicts between America and the emerging Asian Tigers.
Is there a linkage benefit of the African Diaspora in the West to the development and the transformation of the African continent?
As far back as the 16th century, the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade represented one of major phase in the forced migration of black Africans to the New World Society as slaves confined to plantations and domestic house chores, as well as defined as chattels by legal framework and law.
The black African diaspora community in the New World was more or less a chattel whose life was characterized and defined by the burden of hard work, ruthless exploitation, degradation, dehumanization and human misery.
According to Eric Williams and Walter Rodney, Chattel Slavery developed Europe and America but underdeveloped Africa in both human and material resources. The linkage benefits were more or less disadvantaged and negative to the development of Africa.
Black Slavery was abolished through the British Empire by the end of Nineteenth Century although legislation leading to the abolition of slavery began as far back as the middle of that century.
What followed was the Back to Africa Movement and the resettlement of the Freed men in Freetown and Monrovia. The Freedmen such as Bishop Ajayi Crowther were some of the earliest products of an African Diaspora who contributed to the social development of the African continent through the evangelization of Africa.
In the post emancipation era, on paper, slavery was abolished in the America, Europe and Africa, however, the Institution was recycled through a system of Jim Crow Laws that legalized the Institutionalization of racial discrimination and separate development for the races.
The Pan Africanist Movement and the Civil Rights Movements in America fought against the tide of racism and sought for the emancipation of the black African on the world stage in both America, Europe and Africa.
These Movement laid the basic political foundation and provided the necessary platform that brought all Africans together, irrespective of creed and nationality, in a global network and solidarity, that led to the decolonization of Africa by the twentieth century. The Pan Africanist Movement had a linkage benefit to the development of the African continent which produced great African Statesmen such as Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere who led the struggle for the independence of African States.
The Post Independence era in Africa has witnessed a more dramatic and drastic migrations of Africans to the West occasioned by a plethora of both push and pull factors. Whatever the argument, the preponderance of bad governance in Africa that has led to the situation of near state collapse, with the exacerbation of poverty and destitution, has triggered off the massive African migrations to the West. In contemporary literature, this social crisis of migrations is often termed as the Japa Syndrome, a desperate and reckless migrations that has defiled all civil and legal norms of immigration of black Africans to the West.
In the United States of America, there are millions of Yoruba and Ibo migrants and diasporan population that dates back to the 1960s. In the United Kingdom, the Nigerian diaspora population is not as high as that of the United States of America due to the more strict and stringent immigration policies of European nations as well as the deep racial conservatism of Western European nations that are rigid and unfriendly in the accomodations of black migrants from Africa.
Despite the immigration policies and politics of the western nations, there are millions of Nigerian migrants and diasporan population in America and the United Kingdom.
It is important to clarify here that there is a great deal of relations between a migrations and a diaspora. Although the two concepts have different meanings to different audience, but, they are interwoven and interrelated in their philosophical and cultural setting.
A diaspora is a community in a foreign nation that has the rights of citizenship of a host nation and may have little or no ties with the source community in terms of citizenship and settlement. Although we know that some diasporan groups do hold and enjoy a dual citizenship but most migrant groups hardly have access to the right of citizenship and settlement.
There are strong ties and linkages between the Nigerian diaspora communities in the West and Nigeria. Records, facts and statistics by the Nigeria's Diaspora Commission shows that there is always an inflow of capital network through a system of reparations from the West to Nigeria. Capital inflow and reparations from the Diasporan Communities over a period of twenty years stands at billions of dollars which has helped fund the Nigerian economy.
There is extensive network and collaboration in science and technology which produced the first African launched satellite in space by a team of Nigerian engineers working in Russia and America. The launch of the Nigerian Satellite has been a major water shed that has launched Nigeria into the global race for the control of Information Communication Technology.
The Nigerian Diaspora in the West have produced strong linkages and collaboration in the fields of science education and medical science. Linkages and benefits often includes the export of medical equipments to Nigerian Teaching Universities as well as research collaboration in virology, immunization and disease control.
What benefits then should Benue State expect from her diasporan community in the West? Looking at the past, is there evidence to show that Benue State, after forty years of Governor Aper Aku diaspora initiative, has began to harvest the gains and benefits of her diaspora? What is the hope and expectation of the Governor Alia celebration of the Tiv Day in the United Kingdom?
A cursory look at the past events and celebration of the Tiv Day in America and Europe has nothing significant to offer the people of Benue State.
Tiv People in the West have replicated and reproduced the same primordial life styles that is common on the streets of Gboko and Adikpo.
Prof. Mvendaga Jibo, commented on the behavior and character of the Tiv Elites who lives in America and Europe that, rarely do the Tiv in the West discuss and interrogate intellectual issues and issues that can impact on the development of the Tiv People in Nigeria. What takes place in the exchange of discourse, often is the exchange of insults and foul language that deploys the worse verbal vulgar arsenal of the Tiv person ( Akpongo Tswarev).
Prof. Jibo who had traveled to celebrate the Tiv Day in America was disgusted and disillusioned when discussions turned sour where colleagues and brethren in a foreign land began to dish out Akpongo Tswarev.
This is the Tivman in America.
Wantaregh Paul Iyorpuu Unongo in one of his last lecture at Mutual Union of Tiv in America, MUTA, presented a thesis titled " The Man Tiv Is Dead", a thought provoking lecture that underscored the significance of the Prof. Jibo disillusionment and pessimism of the Tiv Nation. The summary of the Wantaregh's MUTA Lecture was a follow up to his earliest thesis to the Tiv Nation "Where Do We Go From Here?"
The central idea in all of the thesis is aimed at underpinning the indolence and neglect of the Tiv political ruling class in the development of the Tiv Nation. What has fueled the politics of the Tiv political ruling class since 1999, to the present, has been the politics of primitive accumulation and class interest that seeks the enthronement, immortalization and preservation of the ruling political class at the detriment of the development of ordinary people who resides in the remote but isolated rural villages of Nigeria, who have become refugees in their own country, to use the terms of Prof. Hagher, hunted and decimated by herders and herdsmen, both real and masquerading.
All over the North Central of Nigeria, the Tiv have become an endangered species, denied, dehumanized and relegated to the back of Nigerian politics.
Society in Benue State has been reduced to the Thomas Hobbes Life in the State of Nature, where life is nasty, brutish and short, where the law of the Jungle prevails. How can the Tiv People who pride themselves to be one of the most Progressive and developed people of Nigeria explain the unending circle of violence and killings in the Sankara geo political axis of Benue State! Is there an explanation why Local Governments such as Gwer West, Kwande and Guma are under the occupation of herdsmen who have displaced both population and dislocated economic activities?
The Tiv Diaspora in the West must connect with the yearnings and aspirations of the Tiv people in Nigeria. Every diasporan experience has a shared symbiotic relationship in a world of mutual interdependence. There is nothing wrong in the celebration of the Tiv Day in the United Kingdom. It is an excellent thing that Governor Hyacinth Alia has attended this year celebration. But, the Tiv Day Celebration should go beyond sharing money to the Tiv Elites in the United Kingdom and the outburst of Akpongo Tswarev. Rather, on the contrary, the expectation is that the Tiv Diaspora should adopt a leaf from the Yoruba and Ibo by the repatriation capital and resources to Benue State. We expect intellectual discussions that will produce a global communique on the Tiv Question in the Twenty First Century.
We applaud the efforts of past the Tiv Diasporan Elites who lobbied the Tiv Question at the apex Institutions of the United Nations on the planned genocide against the Tiv People in Nigeria, the humanitarian disaster that has followed with the attending consequences of food insecurity.
We expect the inauguration of a Benue State Diasporan Commission by Governor Hyacinth Alia after his return back to Benue State. The State Diasporan Commission will enter into collaboration and partnership with the National Diaspora Commission and other relevant Institutions like the National Commission on Migrations and Humanitarian Services on best global practices on how Benue State can exploit her diasporan resource for the Development of the State.
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