The word japa, originally a Yoruba word, has easily passed into Nigerian pidgin – creole – and might well be on its way into standard international English. It means breaking loose from binds and shackles and escaping into freedom, as for instance a tethered ram or a bound captive managing to break loose and escape.
Japa´s recent popularity in Nigeria, however, is powered by huge political and economic currents that shape the modern African’s reality. So, it has come to connote breaking loose and escaping into Europe, United States, Canada, any other nation of the global north or, indeed, anywhere there is promise of a better life.
In recent times, because of its depth and pervasiveness, some people have described it as a syndrome. It depicts Nigerians (Africans) seeking escape from the captivity of arrested development and insecurity, hoping to find better life in foreign lands. Such thoughts and actions as these are deeply wired in humans. However, this does not happen on a wide scale in respect of a place a people call home unless there is an authentic existential threat to their lives and wellbeing, as for instance, the great famine in Ireland in the 19th century or the Nazi threat to Jews in early 20th century.
The Nigerian (nay African) japa encapsulates a sense of escaping from a Mephistophelian, life-consuming, elite. Japa aptly captures the peoples` consciousness of their environment as a life eviscerating trap and bondage, for which escape seems to be a triumph.
However, this alone does not make japa special. People have always migrated away from badly governed places even if those places are their homes. The ancient Chinese philosopher, Confucius, tells us that when a state is well governed it attracts people, when it is badly governed, its citizens emigrate. We can see this with Nigeria: in the 1970s and early 80s, she was relatively better off (by the sheer fortune of oil wealth) than badly governed Ghana and India. So, Ghanaians and Indians flocked to Nigeria in search of a better life.
Japa is special and captures a specific social reality when we place it in the context of African history. Africans on the continent and Diaspora Africans, have been the butt of powerful peoples from other continents who have enslaved and totally dehumanized them, from the over 1000 years of Arab slavery and the nasty life in the middle east and other Islamic lands for African slaves (attested to by the Zanj Rebellion, for instance), to the approximately three hundred years of intense cartel slavery of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Not to mention the privations and dehumanization of Black lives in the Americas and Europe.
With these slaveries, blacks were in a place of total non-being (lost humanity). This was sealed with racism which accompanied and outlived the abolition of slavery and emancipation. After the abolition, racism accompanied colonization to keep the African in a state of subhuman existence. In the Americas, this was achieved by racist-driven segregation and caste-like structures, et cetera. Racism came to symbolize a real and deep existential treat to the African person.
Living in Europe or the Americas meant living daily with this existential threat (of non-being) and indignity. with unjustifiable loss of life, property and means of sustenance. So, Africans who went to Europe and America to study or gain some skills counted their days longing for their return to the security of their homeland, which became even more secure with the successful struggle against colonization and the gaining of independence from the late 1950s onwards. Africa was home with all the security of life, property and means of sustenance (such as jobs) which that meant. Africa meant life, productivity and prosperity.
Indeed, some African Americans and Afro-Brazilians preferred to live in the African homeland. The examples of Liberia and the Brazilian quarters in Lagos aside, individuals like W.E.B. Du Bois and Maya Angelou made Africa (in this case Ghana) their home at some point in their lives.
But the homeland is now ´hot´, a land of non-being, chasing away the Nigerian, nay the African, to Europe, America, Middle East, and other historical lands of non-being for the African in a complete inversion of historical reality, so to say.
Decent existence based on security of life, property and jobs, on maximization of productivity and creativity, is spiraling downwards in Africa – chased down by the African elite´s massive abuse of power for many, diverse vulgar ends. On the contrary, these basics of the good life are guaranteed the African in some measure in the erstwhile lands of non-being, following the successes of civil rights movements especially from the 1960s onwards.
This is not to say that racism has been abolished in these places but rather to say that it has been hugely defanged as raw existential threats to life, property and the means of sustenance; hugely decoupled from impacting productivity and prosperity.
Japa thus confirms that racism decoupled from the structures and relations that constitute existential threat to the African becomes a lesser evil. And, that the bigger evil today is the loss of the means of sustenance of life and widespread insecurity of life and property – which have become the lot of many present-day African countries.
It also shows that this bigger evil proceeds from deeper recesses of abuse of power and misgovernance. In other words, then, japa confirms that existence (issues of sustainable development) precedes recognition (respect by others and identity issues). Japa thus produces an effect in us: the clarification of our priorities regarding needs and actions. Survival and development concerns and related social, political, economic and cultural demands are more basic than identitarian concerns unless the later impinges negatively on the former in basic and significant ways. Japa helps us in the demarcation of relational priorities as we seek to better our world.
Joseph C. A. Agbakoba is a professor of philosophy at the University of Nigeria.
