Post by Trade facilitator on Apr 2, 2017 23:45:51 GMT 1
US President Donald Trump British Prime Minister Theresa May
Once US President Donald Trump signed his first executive order on immigration in January, my friend’s posts on Facebook started to garner fewer ‘’likes’’, as he continued his denunciation of Mr. Trump. A ’’friend’’, whom he believed was genuinely concerned about him, posted a question that suggested he was baffled by his lack of self-consideration. ‘’Don’t you want to be able to get a visa to travel to the US again?
My friend has been visiting the United States since 2003. When Financial Nigeria hosted the annual Nigeria Development and Finance Forum Conference in New York in 2014, hotel and catering cost alone amounted to 147,000:00 dollars. The US economy has always been the net financial beneficiary of most Nigerian traveller’s trip to the US, taking into account expenses on hotel accommodation, shopping and the US tax on flight tickets.
Nigeria is not so fortunate in dealing with the western world. Nigeria remains little-developed after four centuries of trade relations with the West. President Trump’s ``America First’’, and ‘Brexit’, are new faces of the longstanding practices in which the powerful Western countries basically use international trade as instrumentality for maintaining economic dominance.
Liberal visa and immigration policies of Western countries tend to legitimize globalization. Some of us easily obtain travel visas. Others have permanent residential status or even citizenship of other countries. With these, we get the idea we are global citizens. We can have dinner in New York and have our breakfast in Abuja the next morning. After our initial state-subsidized education, we can travel abroad for further studies and subsequently follow a track that leads to permanent residency and dual citizenship.
Last October, British Prime Minister Theresa May, mocked the idea of a global citizenship. She said: ``If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere.’’ The statement drew condemnation to her. In one scathing criticism, she was held to be repudiating Enlightenment.
The anti-migration stances of the current British and US governments surely run counter to enlightened self-interests of their countries. America’s is an immigration heritage. This essentially defines the greatness of the country. Similarly, London’s cosmopolitanism is the spine of the British economy. London that discontinues the welcome to immigrants will lose the talent pool that underlines its attractiveness as a financial and innovation hub.
It is odd that two of the countries that benefit from globalization the most are the ones pushing back on global citizenship. But they offer reality checks to those of us who get carried away by our visas, green cards, and passports of countries we are not natives of. These documents can be easily cancelled or policies that undermine their issuance and relevance rolled back overnight.
While being raised half-singly by my mother, here in Lagos, I knew deprivation. But the kind of training she gave me was that our more fortunate neighbours must not be the provenance of things I wanted. While she worked hard to provide the best she could for me and my other two siblings, she would impress it on us that we must work hard to be able to realize our heart desires when we become self reliance. The importance of this lesson is in the contrast that I can easily draw today between me and some of my old friends, who in those days were, without disrespect, bona fide floaters for immediate gratification.
I think Nigeria is the vintage country of these my friends. The answer to our dilapidated health care system is access to foreign medical care. President Muhammadu Buhari meets his health care needs in the UK. Collectively, Nigeria spends 3 billion dollars annually in medical tourism alone. Since our educational system has become inadequate for the middle and upper-class families, foreign institutions has been the way out.
We may therefore ask: Until our health care and educational systems are fixed, what are we supposed to do when we fall sick or have to provide good education for our children? There is no easy way. But unless the local systems are fixed, life expectancy will remain low and will continue to drop in Nigeria.
There is no viable alternative to building our country, and doing so with our brightest people and collective best efforts.
Despite significant health sector investments in recent years, Nigeria has made slow progress in improving its health indices. According to the Nigerian national primary healthcare development agency, a large number of women from low-income households in Ondo, Adamawa and Nasarawa, do not use health facilities and the chances of giving birth with skilled help can be low as one in seven.