As a British-Nigerian-American attorney and activist, I have learned a thing or two about the strength of foreign currency. My diverse background informs my worldview on the delicate dance between two of the monetary superpowers that be: the almighty American dollar and the British Pound sterling. As it stands, the exchange rate for the American dollar to the British pound is $1 to £0.65, while the Nigerian Naira touts a deflated $1 to N201 exchange rate. Similar calculations plague the FOREX market when comparing the value of currency in the developed versus developing world. This reality, coupled with my worldview, has led me to conclude that the value of human life is often determined, not by its sanctity, but by the strength of a country’s currency exchange rate on the global market. Justice, for those left dangling on the “developing” end of this matrix, is therefore often fluctuating and convertible.
As a Nigerian, I have watched thousands slaughtered by an unrelenting insurgency in its “holy war” against Africa’s most populous nation. Boko Haram has inflicted a deplorable indictment against Nigeria for its alleged chorusing of Western education. Its agenda is to create an Islamic state and it is clear that both death and life embody its aberrant definition of victory. It has declared a caliphate (Islamic government) in portions of northeast Nigeria, brazenly abducted 276 girls from their school in Chibok and killed 20,000 thousand, including 2,000 during the January Baga massacre.
More than 2.5 million people are displaced and hundreds of thousands of others are refugees. Although the Baga massacre occurred in the same week as France’s Charlie Hebdo attack, minimal international news coverage dignified those lives.
Designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., the U.S. has provided Nigeria with intelligence and anti-terror training to fight Boko Haram. Yet, it has reportedly not placed boots on Nigerian soil because American interests have not been jeopardized. Yes, we are to understand that the insidious dance between big money and political decisions is, well, complicated. Great Britain contends that it too has contributed to global efforts to end the insurgency.
However, like the U.S., it has not utilized targeted military force as it has against the Islamic State group. Again, the situation is, well, complicated. So while America and Great Britain perfect their plies, thousands perish at the hands of a group that has also uttered direct threats against the West.
“Complicated,” a word that profoundly describes Nigeria, the self-proclaimed “Giant of Africa.” It boasts the largest economy in Africa and reportedly allocated $6 billion to its national defense in 2014. Why then has Nigeria not independently come to her own rescue? Experts theorize that corruption and/or poor governance have led to her impotence in the fight against Boko Haram.
An interesting phenomenon develops, however, when one has repeatedly been valued, not by her humanity, but by the weakness of her currency in the foreign market. Like the lingering effects of colonialism, the West’s disparate value of human life has provided a prism for how Nigeria’s leadership views its own people. Blinded by greed, Nigeria has adopted the West’s prevailing view that the overwhelming majority of her own citizens, particularly women and girls, bear the value allocated by the West. This explains why, approaching 730 days later, the rallying cry to #BringBackOurGirls appears to have fallen on deaf ears. Regardless of Nigeria’s “complications,” the war against Boko Haram remains her fight to lead.
The unfortunate reality is that on a global scale, the strength of one’s currency parallels what one brings to the table and what portion of the tablecloth one ostensibly controls. In other words, based on U.S. conversion rates, one Western life maintains the same value as 201 Nigerian lives. A poignant example was 2014’s Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Just weeks in, only two Westerners had received a potentially lifesaving drug while thousands of Africans perished.
Justice is not convertible. It bears the resilient and hopeful face of every person whose plight, suffering and dreams go unheard and unaccounted for. Our collective challenge is to balance the scales by maintaining a uniform definition of human life, of justice, that is undisturbed by vacillating factors and unstable foreign exchange rates. We cannot sit idly by while 276 school girls are stolen from their school and almost 730 days later, remain political pawns. We cannot watch 2,000 slaughtered in one country, yet gather world leaders in another to march arm-in-arm in a show of solidarity that dignifies the lives of 17. Why? Because convertible justice is injustice and devaluing one facet of society inevitably results in our collective destruction. As history has proven, peace and injustice are uncommon bedfellows, for peace will not lie in the presence of injustice for long without rising.
