Nigeria's got lots of things. They include, in no particular order, oil, oil thieves, fine arable lands, 150 million human beings whose life expectancy at birth is 48 years or so each, the river Niger, corruption, over 500 languages, about 3 million people living with HIV/Aids, cocoa plantations, some repressive media laws, a People's Democratic Party who rigged the last election in order to gain power democratically for the good of the people, a fierce rift between Muslims and Christians, even fiercer rifts between tribes, plenty of poverty, plenty of jungle, and a jingle.
I haven't been to Nigeria. I haven't seen the oil or its thieves, or the huts that the poor live in, or the splendour that the wealthy live in, or the cocoa plantations, or the jungle, but I have heard the jingle. I heard it on the radio last night. I cannot reproduce the bouncy tune, but I can provide the text: "Good people," it went, "Great nation, Nigeria." That's it.
The purpose of the jingle is to attract tourists to visit Nigeria with their cameras and their fat wallets, and commercial enterprises to settle in Nigeria with their even fatter wallets. I wish Nigeria good luck.
By having a promotional jingle Nigeria has joined a list of other countries, all of whom are trying to attract the same people and the same money.
I have seen and heard similar advertisements for Korea, Malaysia and Incredible India. Quite what is incredible about India, apart from the overloaded trains and the swarming beggars, I am unsure. And I, for one, find both the trains and the beggars perfectly credible.
The Nigerian jingle deserves analysis. By good people, does it mean saints, people without a mean bone in their bodies, concerned only with the welfare of others, self-abasing, peaceable and with smiles as wide as the Niger delta? If so, I can guarantee that the proportion of them to the rest of the Nigerian population is as tiny as it is anywhere else. Saints are rare beasts.
If by good people it means people who are generally well disposed towards others, while remaining capable of snarling when threatened, people, in other words, like you and me, then I am equally confident that the proportions are similar to any other human population, though good Nigerians may be obliged to do a bit more snarling than, say, we good New Zealanders, because their lives are generally tougher than ours.
So much then for the good people. As for the great nation, it depends how you define greatness. If, as is commonly though unwisely presupposed, it means imperial, then Nigeria is not great. It has no empire.
It was, poor thing, once part of the British Empire, a circumstance to which it probably owes many of its current problems, but that, in jingle terms, is by the by.
If great means large, well, Nigeria is one of the more populous nations of Africa and because of its oil it is also comparatively rich. But I am not sure those qualities confer greatness. And anyway, the tone of the jingle suggests a less tangible quality.
It implies superiority over other nations with which it might be compared. And since Nigeria is by all reports as corrupt and unfair as most human societies, I can only conclude that the claim of greatness is at best an exaggeration, at worst a fib.
Fibbing nations are nothing new, or at least people in power fibbing on behalf of their nations is nothing new. Leaders throughout history have extolled the greatness of their people, their superiority to their neighbours and averred that God is rooting for them alone. It's just tribal ra-ra.
You can find it in any national anthem. But national anthems and tribal ra-ra are generally for internal consumption. It Must Be Malaysia, Incredible India, 100% Pure New Zealand and Good people, Great nation, Nigeria are for external consumption.
They are designed to create belief in people resident beyond their borders. They are a sales pitch. They are branding. They are advertising. And in being so they represent a strange shift of style. Here we have nation states behaving like corporations.
Corporations are famously loose with the truth. They are concerned only with their own ends. They value appearance over substance, style over content, image over truth. So if the world of international relations follows their lead, then reason is pushed another few metres into the background and poor old truth gets yet another thumping.
I don't blame Nigeria. It is only following the herd. But I do wonder how big the herd is. Will some satellite dish in Arizona soon receive and decode the following message: "Great climate. Magnificent dominant species. Visit Alpha Centauri." It wouldn't surprise me. But it would sadden me.
• Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton writer.
