Operation Positive Identification (OPI) and the True Nigerian Identity -By Gbenga Oloniniran

The moment you step into an American or European embassy as a Nigerian, they know what your prayer is, they know where you are coming from and the conditions chasing you from your homeland. Automatically, your migration to their countries becomes a threat; securing a visa from them then becomes harder than a camel attempting to pass through the needle hole. You immediately realize that indeed the kingdom of God thus suffereth violence! Not because the couching of your intentions to suit the screening processes are not genuine to earn you a visa, but you are just a Nigerian and that identity earns you such gestures that throws back your passport at you. Such kinds of discriminations are what Nigerians face in diaspora, and it makes some of us become afraid of this national identity. We are afraid for being here.

From the National anthem and pledge that a Nigerian child is made to master, to the National Youths service he undertakes after graduation, one could see a country trying to nurture patriotism. In the reverse, when you see that an average adult even an elected political officer finds it hard to recite that same anthem without making blunders, and you see that some of them have boycotted the National youths service, and you equally find out that the motives of the rest who did not boycott it were merely borne out of attempts to fulfill all righteousness for such purpose of making a living. We do not need much tales again to know that this patriotism is forced and our type of identity looks imposed.

Operation Positive Identification (OPI) is the latest form of planned harassment. In the name of fighting terrorism, another terrorism is declared on the people. In the search for terrorists, Nigerian government is unleashing assaults on Nigerians, plans to disrupt movements and people’s daily businesses. What are they looking for? Negative identities? I think we all have it! You identify a Nigerian Police man when he struggles to the verge of getting hit by vehicles just to take 50 naira from a driver who is equally running to escape the next extortion after the many payments he had already made to similar forces at countless checkpoints or extortion points. With that scenario, you are seeing a frustrated driver and a frustrated Police officer. They are just a tip of the iceberg among the numerous instances of how several frustrated Nigerians behave to survive. That is one of the identities, frustration!

The identity of a Nigerian is not in the IDs he carries, especially where National ID cards are no longer cheap to carry. With renewal of national ID card costing 3000 naira and replacement goes for 5000 naira, you know it feels like an offence already to be a Nigerian. That is another identity. Living like slaves in the mother land, with taxes and cost of living that question your being alive, one feels guilty for being a Nigerian and sometimes curse the stars that brought us here. What an identity!

In this part of the world, there are only two identities, the rich and the poor. The former is well identified and the latter is treated like a nobody, he has no identity and he is not equal before the law when he has a case with a ruling or wealthy elite. The identity of a political officer in Nigeria is seen in the fleet of SUVs and wailing sirens that accompany him on roads. I doubt our OPI will be checking on those ones on the roads too. It does not matter if their convoy is conveying terrorists or illegal items, identity covers them. We should not forget this is a country where government negotiates with terrorists and bandits but announces to the whole world it wants to counter same terrorists with OPI. Apparently, the rest of us are just the terrorists they target.

No doubts the aim of this is another intimidation of the poor and harmless citizens whom the military wants to demonstrate their jungle skills at. If the military has conquered Sambisa forests and no longer have works at the borders except to flood our streets to check ID Cards, tax clearance, vehicle particulars, transport tickets, dressing and maybe hairstyles and our shoe sizes too, let’s scrap the military rather than make them take over work of other forces in the country if they are that jobless.

We don’t know how many times our government has made efforts to check the countless number of homeless and out-of-school children turned beggars and hawkers on the streets. They are also Nigerians and they do not have identities except that of poverty. We have not seen our National emergency agency taking statistics of the teeming unemployed population for due consideration of employment. No, we just must harass them again for being jobless.

We have had enough of harassment and brutalization on citizens by the Nigerian armed forces. To deploy more into the civil environment is to brazen up these harassments simply because our own government has preconceived that the citizens are with negative Identifications. Indeed, many have nothing positive to identify with as Nigerians. We are attacked and jailed in foreign lands because we run from the attacks and impoverishment in our homeland. We are in a country where democratic rights, press freedom, and rule of law are not regarded because they have different meanings in the government’s dictionary. Certainly, there is absolutely nothing left to identify with except such identity as being the poverty capital of the world too.

To be in a country like ours where everyone is a victim of a deep economic, judicial and social repression, and to be amidst such political arrangements that work for a few elite and render the majority helpless and hopeless do not make the country a good place to be, needless to say a place where the people become proud to identify with.

If the militarisation of our streets to harass the liberty of people is the ‘positive identification,’ some of us plead the negative identity, and the very little sense of liberty remaining in us should call for a resistance to this, because being a Nigerian already gives us a fundamental negative identity by default!

Gbenga Oloniniran -Von. gbengaoloniniran@gmail.com