Who’s To Blame For Nigeria’s Troubles? Rape And Africa’s Enemies Without
Editor’s note: Professor Pius Adesanmi continues to dissect the Nigerian mentality in African context. It is hardly a good thing that we as Africans are united by a common habit of pointing accusing fingers at each other. Has the time come to start looking closer to home?
On December 5, 2015, I attended the third edition of University of Ottawa’s International Human Rights Film Festival – an annual event organized by the university’s Human Rights Research and Education Centre under the dynamic leadership of Dr. John Packer. I attended because Dr. John Packer’s centre has a growing partnership with our own Institute of African Studies at Carleton University. I attended because the festival always has a significant Africa component. Also in attendance was my colleague, Professor Blair Rutherford, the outgoing director of Carleton’s Institute of African Studies.
Last year, the Africa component of the festival was a documentary on MKO Abiola, democracy, and the June 12 struggle in Nigeria. I had served as a panel discussant of that particular documentary. This year, the Africa component is a documentary about rape and gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The documentary, Fighting the Silence, was made by Dutch filmmakers, Femke van Velzen and Ilse van Velzen. The Dutch embassy in Ottawa had flown in Femke van Velzen to be part of the festival.
Watching the graphic documentary along with other shocked and chastened members of the audience, it was neither the humongous scale of rape and gender-based violence against women in the Congo nor the overwhelming “normality” of rape in that particular African national context that made me numb and glued me to my seat. It was the response of some soldiers and security forces interviewed in the documentary to the tragedy of rape.
The consensus among those uniformed men was to blame the victim. The way they see it, Congolese women during and after the war have a way of inviting rape because of the way they dress, where they chose to be with men at odd and inappropriate times of the day, how they walk, talk, and flirt, etc.
Nothing spectacular here. In this, the Congolese men interviewed were merely echoing the opinion of many of their male counterparts in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Europe, and the United States of America. The male culture of somehow trying to find a way in which the female victim of rape played a role in her own rape is a global one. I was not surprised to find that Congolese men are part of that global fraternity. Many Nigerian men had pretty much spent the previous week talking like these Congolese men in reaction to a particular case of rape.
What shocked me was an explanation given by one officer while trying to account for the origin and prevalence of rape in Congo. During the war, he explains, soldiers from Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda came and raped our women. Congolese soldiers and insurgents watched the Burundians, Rwandans, and Ugandans and learnt how to rape from them. That is how our own people began to rape!
Once I recovered from my shock on hearing that demonized men from Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda bear responsibility for raping Congolese women and teaching Congolese men to rape Congolese women, once I recovered from the shock of hearing that it is either other African men or Congolese women who are responsible when a Congolese man rapes a Congolese woman, I began to think more broadly beyond the tragedy of rape. I began to think about Africa’s obsession with the demonized outsider. In personal spheres and national spheres across Africa, the notion of responsibility for things gone awry hardly ever lies with and within the self; there is always some demonized outsider responsible for your woes.
In Africa, there is always an enemy without responsible for your personal problems.
In Africa, there is always an enemy without responsible for your national problems.
The problem is never within.
Apart from brief spells in the 60s and 80s when Ghanaians were deemed responsible for every problem Nigeria had in Nigeria, Nigeria is now busy being too big for the game of blaming other African nationals for her problems. At 180 million, there are enough Nigerians without to be blamed. There are enough Nigerians who do not profess the same faith as you to bear responsibility for Nigeria’s problems. If you are Christian, you demonize the Muslim outsider and hold him responsible for Nigeria’s woes, and vice versa. There are enough Nigerians who are not from your ethnic enclave to be demonized and held responsible for Nigeria’s woes. The three big ethnic groups – Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa-Fulani – have pretty much spent their entire postcolonial history of cohabitation in Nigeria blaming and demonizing across ethnic trenches. Depending on who is speaking, the three ethnic groups take turns in being the demonized other who is the exclusive problem with Nigeria.
On the personal level, no Nigerian is ever responsible for anything that is not working in his or her life. The Prosperity Pentecostal Christian culture has ensured that 180 million people are pointing fingers at 180 million people. A better part of a Nigerian’s day is spent returning curses and ill-will to sender. “Back to sender; it is not my portion!” Muslims and Nigerians who profess no faith have caught that Prosperity Pentecostal bug which eventuates in shirking personal responsibility. Somebody who does not wish you well is always responsible for your problems. The solution lies in tithing your pastor heavily.
Our friends in South Africa have only one explanation for problems of chronic black poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, crime, HIV/AIDS, hunger, ghetto life, and hopelessness. Makwerekwere from Zimbabwe, armed robbers and drug barons from Nigeria, and other criminals “from Africa” are permanently and exclusively responsible for South Africa’s woes. Only white immigrants from Europe and America enjoy immunity in South Africa’s national industry of xenophobia and demonology. They are immigrants and expatriates as opposed to those black refugees, criminals from Africa who are responsible for every woe in South Africa, including the poor quality of oxygen.
Naturally, the Nigerian is the Enemy-in-Chief in South African imagination. The anti-Nigeria rhetoric of South Africa is only favourably rivalled by that of Ghana. In East Africa, the picture is not much different. The demonized African other, the enemy without, with Nigeria leading the pack of demons, is always responsible for your personal and national problems.
What accounts for this peculiar approach to personal and national responsibility in Africa? Culture? Tradition? History? We must invite the continent’s social scientists and cultural scholars like Professors Tade Aina, Paul Zeleza, Bayo Olukoshi, Ato Quayson, and Adeleke Adeeko to reflect on this and explain it to us.
Why is the victim of rape, or other demonized males outside of one’s culture or nationalisty always responsible for rape and gender-based violence in Africa as opposed to the male subject who actually commits the crime? We must seek knowledge from the continent’s gender scholars like Professors Obioma Nnaemeka, Oyeronke Oyewumi, Akosua Adomako, Wandia Njoya, and Pinkie Megwe.
While we wait for illumination from these sons and daughters of Africa, please bear in mind that I am not responsible for whatever faults of reasoning you find in this present essay. You are!
Author, Professor Pius Adesanmi
Pius Adesanmi is a professor of English and African Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. In 2010, he was awarded the inaugural Penguin Prize for African Writing. A widely-cited commentator on Nigerian and African affairs, he has lectured in African, European, and North American universities, and also regularly addresses non-academic audiences across Africa. Follow him on Twitter @pius_adesanmi.
The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of Naij.com.
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