What India is to Asia, Nigeria is to Africa and Brazil to Latin America. In numbers relative to their continent, in the diversity of their populations, and in democratic aspirations, the three countries seem similar. Yet they remain very poorly linked with one another, whether in trade, international politics, art, or culture.
There are at least two reasons for admiring Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation. One is that for decades Nigeria, now holding more than 200 million people, about 45 percent of whom are Muslim and another 45 percent or so Christian, has practised a form of power-sharing. More often than not, an informal understanding has ensured that a Christian president in Nigeria would be followed by a Muslim, and vice versa.
Secondly, Nigeria is the land that gave the world Wole Soyinka, the 88-year-old playwright, novelist and poet who won the Nobel for literature in 1986 and who has always demanded democracy everywhere, including on the African continent. On a recent visit to his homeland, Soyinka, who in recent years has lived outside Nigeria, expressed his disappointment that the nation’s recent elections were “not exactly the most edifying exercise that we’ve been through”.
In fact, added Soyinka, instead of reflecting, as they should, the spirit of a “festival”, the election narratives had been “horrendous”.
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2023/04/2023-elections-why-i-did-not-endorse-any-candidate-soyinka/
Be that as it may. On May 23 this year, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the winner of these elections, is scheduled to replace Muhammadu Buhari as president, marking a change from the remarkable “alternating” convention we marked.
As in India, governance in Nigeria involves a variety of political parties, regions of diverse ethnicities, and the tricky relationship between the federal government and the country’s states, currently numbering 36.
Nigeria’s north is overwhelmingly Muslim and the south mostly Christian. However, Tinubu, the president-elect, is a Muslim from the south – from the state of Lagos, which is made up largely of Lagos the megapolis, Africa’s most populous city. Lagos was Nigeria’s capital until 1991, when for strengthening national unity Abuja, lying in the middle of the country, was made the capital.
Thanks to oil and the sea, Nigeria’s southern half is much richer than its north, but the south has its own divides, which have often (and simplistically) been seen as a Yoruba vs Igbo question, Yoruba being the dominant ethnicity in the western half of the south, and Igbo being similarly ascendant in the eastern half. President-elect Tinubu is a Yoruba.
Although around ten thousand or more Nigerians may currently be living in India (in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Kanpur, Hyderabad, Lucknow and elsewhere), many if not most of them as students, interaction between them and the Indians amidst whom they live has been limited and also, sadly, unpleasant at times. Often proclaimed as one of India’s mottos, the thought that “humanity is one” has not been underlined in these interactions.
Given the presence of Nigerian students on many Indian campuses, it is also curious that comparative discussions on how diversity is being addressed in the two countries are rare.
Although not many Brazilians may be seen in India, and although for Indians Brazil is far more distant than Nigeria, more Indians are probably familiar with the name of the current Brazilian president, 77-year-old Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as Lula da Silva or simply Lula, than with the names Buhari and Tinubu.
As of writing, Lula is in Beijing, conferring with Xi Jinping. Although the vast Pacific Ocean separates the Americas from East Asia, both China and Japan have built closer relations with Brazil and other Latin American lands than what India has managed to create. It is noteworthy, too, that Brazil’s trade with China amounts to more than twice its trade with the U.S.
Lula’s pro-poor policies, which were demonstrated, at times controversially, in his earlier spell as Brazil’s president, often made news in India. And Lula’s recent electoral success against Jair Bolsonaro enthused many across the world, including in India, who were alienated by Bolsonaro’s apparent unconcern over Covid and over the shrinking of the Amazon Forest, and by his indifferent commitment to democracy.
Football, of course, has endeared Brazil to many in India, but we should also recognize that Nigerian soccer players in some of India’s league teams have done their bit for Nigeria-India relations.
Portugal, the European power once controlling Brazil, ceased long ago to be a major factor in Brazil’s life, even though Portuguese is the language that Brazilians speak. Nonetheless, a common Portuguese connection gives Goa, Mumbai and some other parts of India a particular link to Brazil.
Now holding, like Nigeria, more than 200 million people, Brazil too, like Nigeria and India, possesses a rich variety of ethnicities. Its people carry Indigenous American, European and African blood. The last was bequeathed, centuries ago, by slavery. Unlike North America, Brazil saw no problems with inter-racial marriages or alliances, and its current population is an amazing amalgam. Yet observers say that racism is far from absent in Brazil; a white skin-colour is often said to be the unexpressed preference.
Even the terse summary given above prompts a couple of conclusions. One, India, Brazil and Nigeria have a great deal in common. Two, the state of human rights in a diverse country may be strongly connected to the respect and friendship it encourages between different communities.