© Numero Unoma
It really irks me when people jump onto other people’s bandwagons and ride them like gravy trains.
Case in point, about ten years ago, give or take, the development space was awash with funds earmarked for women’s issues and the girl child. I was shocked and amazed by the number of men who surfed that wave using their thirsty NGO’s as vessels. These were men who possessed little or no no sensibilities, nor showed any sensitivities toward the everyday issues that women face, and being themselves chauvinistic, had done nothing specific for females within their communities, or even families, along the lines of the maxim ‘charity begins at home’. Note that NGO is just a synonym for a not-for-profit entity also known in the UK as a charity. I wish I could call it wordplay, but I’m not playing at all o! These are people whose lip- and eye-service posturing enabled them to legitimately profit from their not-for-profit entities, even as they half-heartedly devised projects more for their own qualification to be awarded funds than because they actually understood the problem, felt the pain or believed in abolition, alleviation or solution.
And nobody thought anything of it. As we say in Anioma “ife niine bu afia” (ihe niine bu ahia) everyting na market, abi?
Then we had our very own internationally recognised, though home-grown activism campaign when 276 girls were abducted by Boko Haram from their dormitories one fateful night in Chibok. At first the passion was palpable and seemed real. But soon enough the activists eked out their niche in the globally ballooning campaign and got some spin out of it. I attended very many protests and events and from where I stood, virtually every Nigerian who was involved in the Bring Back Our Girls campaign was nothing more than a loud wailer, and please do me the favour of correcting me if I am wrong. Nine years later we still have not accounted for 96 of our daughters, yet everyone has managed to elevate their careers off the back of the BBOG campaign.
Similar stuff happens in the arts, whether visual, performing or literary. I recently attended an event in the Caribbean organised by a lady from the diaspora who had returned to the island after a lengthy sojourn in New York and London, and had perhaps not enough to show for it. So she was reinventing herself as a big fish in a very small pond. Okay that’s shade, I will consider taking it back. Truth be told, that is not how I initially approached her. At first I was genuinely open-minded and interested in participating in, and possibly collaborating with her program. That was until I heard her narrative. This was a narrative that you could only get away with on a faraway island where nobody knows the facts. She built herself up by saying that she had found that Caribbean people and cultures were not at all represented in the arts in London, and that nor were women, and so here she was making a difference. She cited the Victoria and Albert Museum, saying there was no representation there. Does she think we do not use the internet, or what? Her wail was much more elaborate and pathetic than my summary of it. It was much more driven by sef-pity. She thought that she was putting out a strong and positive message, and indeed it could have been one, were it not premised in disingenuous self-victimhood. I mentioned it to my Jamaican and gay friend, Shaun, who is doing amazing work in the arts in London, representing Caribbean gay men, and he reminded me that one medium that black people all too often use to get people to come together is shared self-hate.
I was disgusted! I am a Londoner and I used to work for the Arts Council as far back as when it was still called London Arts in the 90s. One of the reasons I had been taken on was because of their diversity drive, and I have been involved in many projects in the visual and performing arts in London that involved the African, Asian and Caribbean cultures, the tribes that make London such a diverse, rich and vibrant city. Did any of it come on a silver platter? Heck no! But as minorities, we have to know our place, right, which was why I named my (now no longer existent) company Ethnic Majority. So go figure.
The LGBTQ card is another one that is often played by imposters, or overplayed by the community themselves. I am talking about in Nigerian context here. I know Nigerians who are not remotely LGBTQ who have done the LGBTQ japa in which they make claims of persecution, and paint the Nigeria in a much darker shade than it deserves on this count. There are Nigerian genuine LGBTQ people who have gone abroad into self-exile because the say they fear for their lives. On the other hand, there are several gay public figures who live fulfilled and hugely successful lives, and nobody has attacked them or hindered their progress.
I remember when Richard Quest visited Nigeria in 2017, everybody wanted a selfie with him. Then I read Temitayo Olufinlua’s article on the website “Africa is a country” and was dismayed at its clickbait title: “Nigerians: Gays, as long as they are not our gays, are okay”. What a load of toss! Is there homophobia in Nigeria? Sure there is, just like there is pretty much everywhere else in the world, to varying degrees. But you only have to go on social media to see our very own children of the rainbow up to all manner of antics, many of them burgeoning influencers, and some even featuring their own very Nigerian parents, so please!…cut me some slack. Besides, my erstwhile acquaintance, the late Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina, who was openly gay travelled our country widely, and had many lovers here, and when he had a stroke, does anyone remember the outpouring of support in the form of fundraising for his medical costs? And for Olufinlua to claim that Nigerians did not know Quest was gay is absurd, after we all heard about him getting caught in an uncompromising position in New York’s Central Park.
The other sort of Nigerian LGBTQ loud wailer is the one who lives in diaspora and has done so for a loooong time. Every year without fail they visit Nigeria and hang out with Nigeria’s LGBTQ illuminati, welcoming young Nigerians to the fold, whom they seduce into short flings, with the promise of enabling them in the country of their residence. That wailer lives a secure life abroad in which they have the freedom of gay gene-expression, but they grossly exaggerate LGBTQ stories coming out of Nigeria, that is, when they are not entirely making them up.
I remember witnessing normal interaction between a straight Nigerian man and a gay man in the gym at National Stadium, Surulere, way back in 1997. “How your husband?” said the straight man to the gay man matter-of-factly, as he jogged up and down the gritty aisle between the equipment in the long and narrow gym. I also recall witnessing the predatory way in which the arts vilify countries like Nigeria in order to push a foreign agenda, a so-called soft diplomacy and a neo-colonising. Book prizes, and pow-wows in Marrakech are examples of the bait thrown into the waters to lure us into towing the line on their LGBTQ agenda. There is an interactive map of the world on the internet called “When was homosexuality legalised?” on which it might shock you to see how recently some so-called developed countries legalised it.
I know that writing this will bring out a batch of wailers out of the woodwork, whose dirge unintelligently insists that any criticism of all things LGBTQ is tantamount to homophobia. Too often that accusation is in and of itself a loud wail because what are you saying?…Nobody can critique anything LGBTQ? And if they do then that makes them homophobic? That may be academic, but it’s not very intellectual. And certainly not at all practical.
My favourite loud wailer of them al has got to be Rachel Dolezal.l If you have somehow managed not to hear about the white lady who claimed to be black, then you should definitely read about her.
Anyway, as wailers go, I have nothing against legitimate wailers like the bereaved. Or like Bob Marley and the Wailers, who gave us the beautiful ‘Redemption Song’.
But is it just me or doesn’t it irk you too, when a white guy wearing dreadlocks strums soulfully at his guitar and sings that song…..?