Nigeria Should Accept Partnerships that dignify, Not Mere Ceremonial Obeisance
By Chukwudi Ebele
Human Rights Lawyer and Public Analyst Sir Ifeanyichukwu Ejiofor has in his article titled 'WHEN COURTESY BECOMES COMPLICITY : BORIS JOHNSON’S OWERRI REMARKS AND PERSISTENCE OF COLONIAL DANDRUFF' has expressed his thoughts on the remarks made by Former British Prime minister during an economic summit at Imo State.
According to the article cum press release signed by Ifeanyichukwu Ejiofor and made available to newsmen, there is a particular British talent practised, polished and never quite repentant, for turning an appearance of bonhomie into a pedagogical demonstration of patronage.
"Recently, at the Imo State Economic Summit in Owerri, that talent found a familiar vessel in Mr. Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In language at once jocular and jarring, he lauded the “exports” that bind Britain and Nigeria: oil and gas; Nollywood; “brilliant doctors, nurses, tech geniuses”; and — delivered with the comic timing of one who believes humour absolves impertinence, “huge quantities of whisky…we send you pharmaceuticals, bankers, services of all kinds and huge quantities of whiskey.” He even quipped about the exchange of political talent: “we send you former United Kingdom prime ministers, and you send us future United Kingdom prime ministers,” citing Kemi Badenoch as a proudly Nigerian-rooted example.
"Let us be plain: what Mr Johnson said, in the round, was not an analysis of trade flows nor a felicitous toast. It was a recapitulation, in jaunty patter of an imperial mindset that has been slow to take its leave. That there were eminent Africans on the dais and in the audience, among them Aliko Dangote and Benedict Oramah, former President of the African Export–Import Bank, only deepened the incomity. Their very presence made his remarks less an awkward aside than a rhetorical microcosm of unequal memory.
"A historically, grounded critique (not merely pique)
1. Words do not float free of history. The insinuation that Britain chiefly supplies “whisky and pharmaceuticals” while Nigeria supplies crude and migrants is not innocent banter; it is a shorthand evocation of centuries of asymmetric exchange. From the mercantilist traffick of the Atlantic age to the structural dependencies of the post-colonial era, the rhetoric resurrects a one-sided ledger in which African resources and human capital exist chiefly to service metropolitan consumption. To laugh at that ledger in 2025 is to be tone-deaf to history. (The Imo Summit itself, ostensibly a forum for partnership, was therefore the wrong place for such a display of rhetorical amnesia.)
2. “Colonial mentality” is not an epigram but an enduring posture. Decades of scholarship and political struggle have explained how colonialism’s afterlife persists in attitudes, institutions and habits of mind. When a guest who represents a former imperial power frames an international partnership in terms of what his country sells and what ours supplies to it in return, he revives the same ordering of worth that underwrote empire. A leader of Mr Johnson’s pedigree ought to know better, or, at the very least, to have the tact to conceal the thinking he plainly assumes. That he did not is instructive.
3. "The applause was a more telling datum than the quip. One might forgive an ill-judged joke delivered in a foreign accent. One cannot so easily forgive the rapid and robust applause that followed. Applause from a largely Nigerian and African audience, including global business titans and statespersons, betrays either a willingness to normalize condescension for the sake of conviviality, or the old transactional calculus where social currency is earned by pleasing power. If the latter, it is a sad reminder that proximity to wealth can silence dignity. Contemporary African leadership must be more wary of applause that masks self-demeaning acquiescence.
4. "There is an economic argument to be made, but it was not made. If Mr. Johnson intended satire about interdependence, he squandered the opportunity to discuss mutually beneficial trade, technology transfer, rules of origin, local pharmaceutical capacity, or skills exchange. Instead he offered a caricature of bilateral relations that spotlights consumption over collaboration. A summit framed as “Unlocking Imo’s Economic Potential” deserved nuance, not a caricature of a centuries-old imbalance.
"On the posture of elites and the politics of decorum
"It is not merely the language that offends; it is the social choreography that surrounds it. When eminent Africans, financiers, industrialists and statespersons, sit mute in the face of a public diminishment of their nation, the public spectacle shifts from a bilateral summit into a theatre of complicity. There are many reasons for diplomatic circumspection: protocol, investment courting, and the desire to avoid public rows. Yet there is also a higher duty: to refuse the ordinarying of contempt dressed as jocularity. To accept a quip that reduces thousands of years of human endeavour to commodities is to permit an intellectual slight to become policy ambience.
"What should follow is not furore for its own sake, but corrective candour. Nigeria (and Africa more widely) should:
Demand nuance from visiting statesmen. If one is invited to speak at an economic summit, one should be called upon to contribute analysis, policy ideas, or at the very least, modesty. Public appearances carry public responsibilities.
'Reframe the narrative of exchange. Trade statistics are not mere instruments of commerce; they are narratives that shape esteem. Nigeria must insist that partnership be couched in capacity building, technology transfer, value addition and regulatory reciprocity, not recycled hierarchies.
"Make symbolic choices with economic teeth. If rhetoric reduces relations to bottles of spirit and token compliments, it is reasonable for consumers, regulators and purchasers in Nigeria to be mindful of where they place their custom and how they demand better terms. Constructive reciprocity is the right path; symbolic sanctions may be an instrument where necessary.
"There is an exquisite irony in a former occupant of 10 Downing Street celebrating Nigeria’s “exports” of brilliance while excusing, with a chuckle, what looks suspiciously like an export relationship from the eighteenth century. If empire had a gift shop, one imagines the price list: crude for commodities, people for prestige, and jokes for reconciliation. Perhaps next time Mr. Johnson returns, he might bring not just “huge quantities of whisky” but also a pocket copy of contemporary economic history, and the humility to read it aloud.
"Nigeria has the right, indeed the duty to accept partnerships that dignify. Anything less is merely ceremonial obeisance with a soundtrack of applause," he stated.
