Chidi Anselm Odinkalu is the senior legal officer for Interights, the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights, based in London. He is attending the third African Development Forum (ADF III), organised by the UN Economic Commission for Africa, in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. Odinkalu is Nigerian and, in this interview with allAfrica.com was speaking in his personal capacity, as an African. On Tuesday, he addressed the forum and asked a question that set tongues wagging in the corridors after the session.

What did you mean in your speech when you asked why African leaders and governments hate their own people so much?

As an African you need anywhere between six weeks and three months to process a visa to another African country. A European can go there without a visa. That means that, whatever we discuss here (in Addis) about regional integration, if we focus on the economic dimensions of integration, we have sold our competition advantage to the Europeans.

A European will leave Europe, come to an African country, do business and turn around in 24-36 hours. The African meanwhile is trying to submit their passport for visa processes that have to go back to the capital to be cleared. In six weeks, you haven’t made your trip, and so you cannot compete on equal terms.

That was the question I was trying to pose and trying to get an understanding, and also a political commitment from the leadership in Africa, so that we can do something about it. Remove visa restrictions, so that we can get faster movement, labour can move, capital can move, we don’t have any clearing systems, working people can move, people can generate solidarity with one another.

So are you saying what’s the point of talking about an African Union when so many things that should be a natural part of it don’t already exist on this continent?

Absolutely, yes. What union is it for a Senegalese who needs three months before they can get to Kenya, it doesn’t make sense. No it doesn’t.

The project of the African Union is a project every African needs to commit to, but we need as much commitment from our government as we need from our people. If you looked at the relationship of the African Union to Nepad (New Partnership for Africa’s Development), you see that the 'p’ in Nepad is the partnership of a few African leaders with the G7 and Europe and North America. It is not a partnership of African peoples with one another and with their own governments. And, until we get that compact, Europe and America are not going to look at us favourably. They are not going to like us one bit.

And, as the secretary-general of the East African Community said today, the single most despised person in the whole world is the African. Why is the African despised? Because our governments despise us! It’s unfortunate to say this, but the reality is that our governments despise us. They kill us in industrial proportions. They imprison us in industrial proportions.

We cannot move around and sell our goods to our own people. And, therefore, we cannot compete. And if we cannot compete, the rest of the world sees nothing in us to get excited about. And that really is what we’ve got to deal with. If we cannot create mechanisms to eliminate these in an African Union, we’re finished.

You sound very bitter!

Well, you see there are so many of us who are making love and creating children. And where are children going to live? They are not going to live in Europe. They are not going to live in North America. Because, you know, you can be a black person with a British passport, but if you’re not Irish, Welsh, English or Scottish, your Britishness can go to hell. So, if I sound bitter, it’s because I have had very bitter experiences of travelling within Africa.

I have stood at an immigration point, where a European has come by me, waved their identity card and walked by. And, with my bl**** Nigerian passport, I’ve been detained for four hours, being asked questions on matters that didn’t have to do with anything. And this in a supposedly independent African country! I’m entitled to be bitter. I’m very bitter. Yes!

I’m not asking that Europeans be treated worse than they are currently treated, no! But I ask that on my own continent, I should not be treated worse than a European is treated, than an American is treated. If nothing else, let our governments, our states, treat us like they treat foreigners. That’s not asking for too much is it?

So this is a strong message to Africa’s leaders, isn’t it?

If African leaders cannot see that there is something fundamentally wrong with an African man, an African woman, an African child being treated worse on their own continent than foreigners from Europe and North America are being treated, then we are in sad and serious trouble.

From what you’ve said, do you think the title of this third African Development Forum in Addis Ababa 'Defining Priorities for Regional Integration’ is a misnomer?

Not necessarily. The misfortune, of course, is that so many years, so many decades after regional integration started in Africa, we are now pausing to talk and think about priorities. I hope, at least, that’s what we are trying to do here.

It either shows that we didn’t think about priorities when we started or, if we did, we have somehow lost the plot along the way. Whether we are able to recapture priorities and implement them effectively and faithfully is another matter altogether. I don’t know if the political commitment is there, but I hope that, at least, this can begin a process of gingering political commitment and generating it as we move along.


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