Why Do African Leaders Want To Look Un-African?
If you go through African Union group photos of African Heads of State, only Nigerian leaders have consistently dressed in exclusively Nigerian clothes from head to toe (I can't vouch for their shoes). Leaders from other nations consistently wear Western suits. And it is even sad that since the death of Muammar Gaddafi, North African Arab leaders have joined this trend.
If not for Nigerian leaders, the group photos of African Union leaders would not have featured African fashion.
For example, please look at this group photo of the ongoing 38th Ordinary Session of the ****** embly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union.
This could be mistaken for a fashion shoot at Paris Fashion Week. The only person wearing African Indigenous clothing made from made-in-Africa fabric and designed and produced in Africa is President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria.
What does that say about us as a people, race and continent?
Two immediate things telegraph your cultural values: your name and your appearance. Sadly, African leaders largely fail in both regards. They have either a Western, Middle Eastern or Asian first or last name or sometimes even both.
Why can't African leaders bear wholly African names and wear entirely African clothes, like most Nigerian leaders? Your culture is your anchor. And without prioritising our culture, Africa will continue to be a carcass that vultures from other continents feed on.
This is why we have the lowest intraregional trade and travel in the world. 68% of Europe’s trade is intraregional, compared with an abysmal 18% for Africa.
The whole of Africa makes a paltry $2.4 billion from chocolate imports. In comparison, Germany alone makes over €4.5 billion (Euros, not dollars) annually refining and re-exporting cocoa imported from #Africa . That is double what the entire African continent makes from her sweat.
A Black African will need visas to visit a fellow Black African country, whereas that country has a visa-free policy for #Europeans , #Americans and Canadians. What better way to project your inferiority complex than to have a lane at your international airport for Whites to enter your country unimpeded while another lane has your sternest immigration officials projecting animosity and looking down on your own kind?
Again, it boils down to how we perceive ourselves. If we continue to see ourselves as less than enough unless we attach a foreign name and dress in foreign clothes, we will never trust each other enough to collaborate. This means that we will always be in competition, and the end result is that economic and political completion will continue to elude us.
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Until we accept ourselves and our Blackness, warts and all.
Thank God for Nigeria, which gave Africa and the Black diaspora Nollywood. If not, we would have continued brainwashing ourselves and our children on Hollywood and Bollywood movies that project only lighter skin as the highest measure of physical beauty.
Ditto for Afrobeats and Amapiano (may God bless South Africans for giving us that musical experience), which have helped our youths develop a paradigm shift and see African music as being just as good, or even better, than other musical genres.
Recently, one paid hack wrote that I could not get an American passport. What nonsense! I have been eligible for an American passport for years. I first became a resident of California in 1983, at age nine.
When I was Presidential spokesman, I stayed away from the United States for more than six months, which violated the conditions of my residence. This necessitated me getting a special re-entry permit. If I want an American passport, I could get one in a jiffy, even under President Trump.
I do not have an American passport because I do not want an American passport, not because I cannot get an American passport. An American passport is my privilege as a resident of the United States for decades.
I am a Nigerian and proud of my green Nigerian passport, which I use to travel everywhere on Earth.
©️ Reno Omokri
Gospeller. Deep Thinker. #TableShaker . Ruffler of the Feathers of Obidents. #1 Bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years. Hodophile. Hollywood Magazine Humanitarian of the Year, 2019. Business Insider Influencer of the Year 2022. 21st Most Talked About Person in Africa, 2024.
