SMG STATEMENT ON RECENT ANTI-NIGERIAN XENOPHOBIA IN GHANA

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“There are no contradictions amongst the African masses – only amongst Africa’s elites” – Amilcar Cabral..
The Socialist Movement of Ghana (SMG) condemns the calls by a tiny, but loud, group of citizens demanding that “Nigerians” leave Ghana.

These backward and shameful display of xenophobia that erupt periodically across our continent serve the diversionist and divide-and-rule agenda of tiny sections of the African elite and their imperialist masters. They do not reflect the interests or will of the suffering popular masses of Ghana, Nigeria, or any other African nation.
The frustrated youth of Ghana should think clearly and reject the fantastical rumours spread by ignorant and vicious forces that seek to use them.

What will their xenophobia yield except reprisals by equally frustrated Nigerian youth? Who wins in such a senseless confrontation? And the youth should ask historical questions? How long have communities with ancient ethnicities now arbitrarily branded “Nigerian” or “Ghanaian” (or “Ivoirienne” or “Burkinabe” etc) lived amongst each other and worked and produced our beautiful but troubled cultures? Are these colonial divisions meaningful? Do irate Ghanaian “nationalists” really believe that there are more “Nigerians” hustling here than “Ghanaians” hustling in “Nigeria”?

We face an international system of exploitation that periodically and cold-bloodedly seeks to divert the attention of its victims and channel our pent-up energy into fighting and killing one another so that we do not come together to fight our common exploiter: the exploiter that dominates our cocoa, our oil and gas, our minerals, that makes us increasingly dependent upon food imports. The exploiters’ political agents whip up ethnic, religious, and so-called “national” tensions whenever they sense that the masses are becoming politically aware and beginning to focus on grand exploitation as the root of our crises. Xenophobia must be understood as just one more attack on the African People.

Nkrumah taught us that Africa must unite, amongst other things, because he foresaw that our continued division into inconsequential neocolonies would disintegrate Africa. We see this clearly today. Our wealth, and even our youth, leave our shores at an accelerating pace.

Murderous conflicts are expanding across the Sahel. There is creeping genocide in the DRC and Sudan. Our regional institutions are disintegrating and becoming increasingly irrelevant. Even neo-colonial constitutionalism is collapsing in country after country as Imperialism seeks to prop up its strongmen to protect the system of exploitation. The solution to our problems is to collectively take control of our resources and use them to serve our people’s needs and not the West’s greed. There is no alternative to the hard work of building a continental unity based on the interests of Africa’s working people. There is no alternative to a socialist Africa.

SMG calls on all socialist revolutionaries, Pan-Africanists, Organised Labour, student bodies, and working-class organisations to resist xenophobia in Ghana and across Africa. We must educate, organise, and mobilise for what matters: collective ownership and peaceful planned development of Africa’s vast resources to meet the needs of our people; and
socio-economic rights – work, education, housing, and healthcare of our people; We stand in solidarity with the Nigerian communities living in Ghana and against those who seek to victimise them.

Down with xenophobia! Forward to African unity! Forward to socialism.

We stand in solidarity with the Nigerian communities living in Ghana and against those who seek to victimise them.
Down with xenophobia! Forward to African unity! Forward to socialism

Signed.

Kwesi Pratt, Jnr. General Secretary, SMG.