Along Nigeria Street in Malabo, capital city of Equatorial Guinea, Mike Francis runs a car battery shop in a commercial territory dominated by his fellow Nigerians.
He has been in the Central African country for a decade, more than half of it as an apprentice learning at the feet of a Nigerian trading family with a 50-year history there.
“Things are looking up,” he tells Nigeria Abroad, recalling the challenges of the past.
“It was so hard at the beginning. You know, this is the only African country that speaks Spanish, and I had to learn the language. Without that you probably can’t succeed here in business.”
“Things are costly here, maybe because they import almost everything. We traders import our goods from Lagos and Cameroon. Owners of the land like office work; we prefer trading.”
Equatorial Guinea’s crude oil has placed it as Africa’s richest country per capita. Power supply is 24 hours steady. Road infrastructure is commendable. Water is free in most parts of the country, as is education for children up to 14 years. But the enormous wealth has also entrenched a dictatorship too difficult to upend.
Francisco Nguema, country’s first president upon independence in 1968, ruled tyrannically for 10 years until he was deposed by his nephew, a lieutenant, now current civilian president, Teodoro Obiang. Nguema executed many Equatoguineans, including members of his own family in what seemed like a psychotic rampage, before Obiang intervened.
But then the intervention has seen Obiang stay rooted in power now for 40 years. His son is the vice-president, with some other family members holding key positions in what appears like state capture. It is a dictatorship oiled, as if literally, by crude; then by fear and graft. As chairperson of Africa Union, Obiang who hosted an AU summit in 2011, built 52 mansions, one for each visiting president.
Today the mansions are empty, possibly inhabited by cockroaches.
The country might have got some priorities wrong, but its economy seems stable, and the legend of its palm wine speaks to life-saving achievement. So while economic prospect might have drawn 19th-century Nigerian migrants into the Portuguese colony, perhaps finding palmy, a familiar brew in a distant land, might be why many never returned. As beer is the country’s largest import at the moment, current migrants may equally be facing an ancestral battle.
The earlier migrants mostly worked in cocoa plantations in the island of Bioko, formerly named Fernando Po after a Portuguese explorer. At home in Nigeria they were said to live in Panya, a supposed pidgin word for Español (Spanish).
Mike speaks of a strong Nigerian presence in the country, especially of the rich and middle-class, with real estate and name. They have embraced the country as ultimate home, with many hardly ever visiting Nigeria.
“Still, many of the people here don’t like foreigners, and think we are refugees. It’s not easy to have residence permit, not to talk of citizenship, and the police harass foreigners a lot. Everywhere in life there are challenges, but we focus on what we came for and we are fine.”
While most Nigerian migrants are in the country for business, others are there for study. Government’s focus on higher education has led to intense funding which, in turn, is drawing international students within the region.
That focus, however, reflects the social inequity that thrives in the country: though education is free at primary and secondary levels, facilities are broken. Systemic inequality has ensured endemic poverty on the one hand and enormous wealth on the other, both overlooking each other across the social landscape of 1.2 million Equatoguineans.
For Nigerian traders in Equatorial Guinea with capacity to import directly from China, the margins for growth can be exceedingly wide. Most of them are Igbo, perhaps Nigeria’s most dominant ethnic group in the country.
Though Igbo is listed on Wikipedia as an aboriginal language in Equatorial Guinea, Mike says there are no indigenous Igbo in the country “contrary to what people have been saying online.” Indeed, the official website of the government does not include Igbo in its language listing.
But the Igbo debate speaks to how long Nigerians have been in the story of Equatorial Guinea, enough to warrant omo onile rumors. Many Nigerians today who listened to grandfather stories may remember Fernando Po and Panya—stories of men who traveled across West and Central Africa, by foot or sea, looking for meaning. Few returned as the new elites of their time, many with nothing, others trapped forever in Panya.
Today the old story endures because men, till the end of time, will continue to seek greener pastures. And Mike is here to grab his share. “We don come be say we don come,” he says, “We no de look back.”
By Frank Chijioke (Additional Reports By Immanuel J.)
Source: nigeriabroad.com
