Ghana must go

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

If you think it's chilly tonight, you probably were not a 6-year-old boy on that cold, dry, dusty January afternoon when I walked through the doors to find that my dear friend, Uncle Moses was gone.

His room was bare. No chair, no bed, no mattress. A thin film of harmattan dust was gradually forming on the Formica table where his ghetto-blaster had been sitting when I left him the night before. 

The same ghetto blaster he had bought with his first wages earned working as a gardener for my family. The same ghetto-blaster that had introduced my brothers and me to the pure joy that was the music of Bob Marley.

"Where is uncle Moses?" I asked my mother who had crept up behind me unannounced.

The full import of what had happened to uncle Moses, came back to me last week while thinking about our reading for today:

...in one spirit we were all baptized into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free. 

Moses had gone back to Ghana, one of 2 million people of West African origin expelled by executive fiat of the Nigerian government even though they had been living in and working in Nigeria for at least a decade. Having arrived during the oil boom of the 1970s, they were now, a decade later, undesirable. Designated as illegal aliens. Can a human being be illegal?

The government claimed it was acting in the interests of national security blaming the recent bloody religious riots on the migrants. However, everyone knew the real reason was the rising levels of unemployment following the economic downturn caused by falling oil prices.

I was blissfully in the dark about all this, of course. 

All I knew was Uncle Moses was gone. He hadn’t hung about to find out what lot befell illegal human beings. 

Who would help me with my English and Math? For although a harsh economic reality had turned him into a tiller of soil in Nigeria, back in his homeland he had been a man of letters.

Indeed, what had been Ghana’s loss turned out to be a massive boon to Nigeria. Sector after sector benefited from the influx of a skilled class of migrants. 

I can speak for the Education sector, my mother was a college principal and the only reason she was able to offer her students difficult subjects like Maths, Physics and Chemistry was the Ghanaians. Even the English language. Never mind that Ghana & Nigeria were both former English colonies, the Ghanaians were much better at teaching it as a second language.

But that was mommy’s problem. I missed my friend. 

I missed our Maths lessons during which I was rewarded for a budding acuity with numbers with a capful from dark green, exquisitely shaped bottles, whose exotic name I soon learnt was whiskey. Even then I had no doubts it had no place on the curriculum, the sheer thrill of partaking in the forbidden was enough to secure my silence.

I missed the sound of the gate announcing his return from another of his visits to the city. Sounds which were soon followed by tall tales about the city, fantastic tales about exploits with women... in darkened rooms...eating candy floss… whether euphemistically or in reality….to this day I do not know!

But I digress.

It's been 30 years since that expulsion. And the chickens... like curses... have come home to roost.

If there is anything you can get two Nigerians to agree on, it is that our educational system has since collapsed.  Victim of years and years of under-investment by the government as well as a dearth of skilled, passionate teachers. 

At least that's what the analysts will tell you.

The reality is different though. The real cause was that expulsion. The real cause is the Ghana must go campaign. 

You see, Uncle Moses was not the last of Ghanaian teachers I had. 

Indeed he was the first in a long line, albeit of those who had managed to secure the elusive alien residence cards.

All committed, all dedicated, all passionate disseminators of knowledge. And I am not alone

.

My mother soon retired from the government to set up her own private nursery and primary school.

It was soon blazing trails and winning accolades. Yet if she’d cared to admit it, that success was due to the tireless, dedicated graft of her core of Ghanaian teachers.

 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? 

Today I stroll through the streets of Nigerian Twitter and instagram, rifling through posts riddled with grammatical errors and arguments devoid of logic, a situation described by an eminent social commentator yesterday as “a hostility to excellence and fetishization of mediocrity and illiteracy.” - I rue the day the Ghanaians were expelled. I wonder what would have happened had Uncle Moses and his ilk been allowed to stay.

Our reading talks about ...undesirable members of the body being indispensable. 

Seems to me that 30 years ago the presence of the West African migrant was undesirable to the Nigerian political elite. I guess they spoke another tongue, they dressed differently. Their skin tone was dark like ours, but a darker shade of dark. So although they taught essential subjects which we were unable to teach. And mended our shoes and sewed our clothes. Their skilled artisans built our houses and fixed our plumbing.

Yet, they were other, and so had to go.

Is there a chance, that maybe? Just maybe, in another 30 years, March 29th 2049, a young lad will sit here, in this chair, in this room, surrounded by bright young faces as he rues Brexit.

 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it

Let us pray.