THE JAPA GOSPEL: ITS STRANGE EVANGELISTS AND UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

 

By Aristotle

 

There was such a time, it is already passing before us, moving with such rapidity so that many would want to argue against such a time ever existing, and if it did, that it must be one of the fairy tales, not something we would identify in space.

In that time “Japa-ism” was strictly street-lingo; it was the watchword and encouragement evangelism only for the urban riffraffs oozing from all the corners of our slums. We came to the classrooms to hear our  professors tell us  there is hope—that all is not lost. That we, the youth, represent a living hope for the future of this country, a hope we must be ready to fight for, promising us victory if we fight.

Japa-ism was treated as a disease of the insufficiently schooled. Not that people were not Japa-ing but they were not evangelizing it. The Japa disease had not infected the educated classes at least.

Now the story has changed. The syndrome has reached the classroom; it is the alternative evangelism, it has displaced the hope-based orthodoxy it met in the house. Everyone is now infected. There are professors of Japa-ism, multiplying in great counts inside our classrooms.

It seemed the illusion of the hopeful evangelism has run its course, it has passed its time of accommodation by the God-ship of commonsense. Now, everyone adopts the updated truth. It is singing glory. The lyrics of its singing are that Nigeria is done for.  It is a Nazareth from where nothing good can rise. The best is to flee. And those fleeing are neither absconders nor the chicken-hearted; in fact the Japa-gospel is now the sweet sound of the most-educated. The nation is dead, or was even never alive. The emphasis of Japa-ism is that it is difficult; barring the impossible, to resurrect what is dead and had a doubtful existence even at its living days.

It is not surprising to find undergraduates cursing anyone who suggest to them, a Post-Graduate program in their Nigerian Alma-mater. What currently shocks to the bone-marrow is the swift shift in the attitude of the classroom professors. Once the priests of “Hope”, our University Dons are now the mobilizers for Brain Drain. After the sociology professor has published critical papers at the attitudes encouraging Brain Drain; the historian has interpreted the phenomenon as  a shameful resource extraction from the Nigerian source to the destinations abroad, predicting a horrific desertification in human resources to come at the source. The Economics and Political Science Chief Dons have suggested through noteworthy peer-reviewed papers, for international institutions to swing to Africa’s defense by compelling the developed world parts not to continue exacerbating the continent’s Drain of its core professionals. The same league of Dons now openly motivate the upcoming professionals in their tutelage not to wait a second longer before joining the band of the Japas’ after completing their Undergraduate studies. This is the new twist to the matter, at which many observers are soaked shock.

In the days of the Gospel of Hope, as preached by those Dons of yester-years, there were arguments they used to justify their claim that it's best for young and trained Nigerians, to remain in the country and contribute their best for it. One of the strongest of these arguments was that there is no landmass elsewhere that can accommodate all the trained youths of this country, as conveniently or otherwise, as the Nigerian land now does.

The second argument is that it is a shame to live a man without a country. By interpretation this means the Nigerian territory is the only space that can furnish all its youth with the full civic and political rights of their aspirations. These were the excuses they brandished to polish nationalist passions from the yester-year students. Thus, the question the Japa-oriented Campus Don has not answered is whether these excuses have now lost their validity, or have been proven to be only a package lies after all.

The Realism of the Japa syndrome manifests itself better not at the source but the destination. It is only the Nigerians abroad (in other African countries or in the developed Europe) that know they need a country they can proudly call their own, and a culture different from the ‘woke-full’ eccentricities abroad. Most of the aspiring Japaists have not heard the truth from many of the successfully Japa-ized. Yes they have heard of their money, which makes them translated as Kings when they visit home, but they have not heard from them, about the many interesting goods of life, which they, the Nigerian Japaized, cannot buy abroad, because they are not meant for them and are not sold to them. Many aspiring Japa-ists also do not know about the killing bills in the UK, or slave labour in Qatar,  or the desperate stairs of “arrangee” marriage with obese white ladies which male Nigerian males there use as part of their hustle kits.

Worst of the all, the negatives waiting for the Japa-ists is the fact that the majority at the destination places have dwarfed their welcoming hands. The speculation is already so popular about the Nigerian overcrowding abroad, so badly that Japa-ism as a concept itself now sounds synonymous to being a Nigerian in the international space.

It is for our proper education that the observer writes these. The Gospel of Japa-ism has not answered its most frequently asked questions, and the better our Dons continue to preach the hopeful Nigeria the more the justification for the existence of  University among us.

Japa-ism evolved from the street-lingos wherein it better remain. For the land is greener in the other side, they say, until you get there, and see for yourself.