By Simon Ateba
One of the greatest French books I read in high school was “Germinal,” written by Émile Zola in 1885. France had colonized the place where I was born, giving us French books, names, and their culture. They called me Simon, but my family quickly added an African name: Ateba. Like a child choosing their own parents, I chose English as my language. But where would I study it? How would I learn it? I heard about a country called Nigeria, where everything was in English. So, I boarded a flight and landed there.
Nigeria, too, had been colonized—this time by England—and they had been given the English language. My phone was stolen on my very first day. I ended up in the worst part of town, on the outskirts of Lagos, a bustling city with 20 million people—an entire country’s worth of people compared to where I was born.
Churches were everywhere. Pastors preached to the poor, promising hope and taking offerings in return. To single men and women, they had no solutions to their problems but said God could solve everything. Their “solution” often included donating 10 percent of their monthly income to the church, and the poor gladly gave.
I eventually left that poor neighborhood and went back to college. A few years later, my old neighbors couldn’t believe it when they heard me on the air, discussing the state of the Nigerian nation and explaining what the people wanted from the President. “The country is headed in the wrong direction,” I said. As a journalist, I had traveled across the country, seen the devastation caused by Boko Haram, and interviewed many people.
I covered good elections and bad elections, with ballot boxes disappearing in the dead of night. I got to know the Nigerian people, most of whom were kind and generous—nothing like the reputation they sometimes have in the United States. The bad actors? A tiny fraction of the population—people who had learned internet scams, duping others with promises of marriage or investment. But the majority of Nigerians were kind. I’ve come to believe that there is more kindness and empathy among the poor than among the rich.
In “Germinal,” Émile Zola explores the brutal lives of coal miners in 19th-century northern France, shining a light on class struggle and the tension between workers and capitalists. It is one of the greatest French novels for its unflinching examination of social and economic inequality. If I had to recommend two of the greatest French books of all time, I would choose “Germinal” and “Les Misérables” by the incomparable Victor Hugo.
For those who don’t speak French, Hugo’s “Les Misérables,” published in 1862, is an epic novel and a cornerstone of French literature. It captures the struggles of life, love, justice, and revolution in a way that transcends time. Keep in mind that during the 1860s and 1880s, France and Europe were losing influence, while the United States was beginning to emerge as a global power.
In Lagos, Nigeria, just as in Washington, D.C., I saw what Zola and Hugo described so well: the eternal struggle between the haves and the have-nots. In Nigeria, pastors promise the poor solutions to their problems and collect massive donations. In the United States, politicians make similar promises, also collecting massive donations.
They are the same people, using different elixirs. Neither group should be trusted. Many in the United States believe they are more sophisticated than Nigerians, but the truth is, human nature is the same everywhere. People are being scammed by the same tactics, only dressed in different clothes.
This is getting long, but you know, I’ve lived long enough, been there and here, and got white hair by the way, to know this: whether in Nigeria or the United States, human nature remains the same as it was when Zola and Hugo analyzed their societies in France.
Simon Ateba is a Cameroonian-born journalist and is Published of the website Today News Africa, for which he was a White House correspondent