NIGERIANS: UNCOMFORTABLE AT HOME, UNWANTED ABROAD
I very much sympathize with my fellow country men and women, the people of Nigeria, the giant of Africa, the largest concentration of black people in the world, a land flowing with milk and honey, whose people have been forced by economic circumstances to emigrate to different countries of the world in search of greener pastures, but where they are now being insulted, maltreated, treated as pariah, and as engendered species.
At the initial stage of her evolution as a sovereign nation, Nigeria had held high hopes to many people around the world, and showed positive signs of greatness, due to her enormous resources, human and natural.
This had made Nigeria a Mecca of sorts, as many people from both far and near began to troop into the country, either to tap from its richness, or to make it their home. Remember the “Ghana must go” of the late 1970s and early 1980 as many Ghanaians flooded to Nigeria doing all sorts of menial jobs?
Now, things have changed. The reverse has become the case. Due to several years of bad political leaderships and mismanaged economy, things began to change in Nigeria, to change for the worse. Things became hard in the country, too hot and too difficult to handle. The Nigerian environment began to suffocate, became uncomfortable to live in.
As a result, many Nigerians were forced to begin to emigrate to different countries of the world: to the United States of America, to the United Kingdom, to Canada, Germany, South Africa, Libya, and even to some countries of less importance, like Ghana, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Congo, Malaysia, Bangkok, etc., to take up different kinds of jobs, legitimate and illegitimate, in order to make ends meet.
In some of those countries, because of the ubiquitousness of Nigerians there, the people were usually made their foot mats, made to carry shit and subjected to all forms of indignities and humiliations, etc.
Sometimes, they would declare Nigerians persona non grata, as unwanted. They would begin to chase them about, from pillar to post, their properties and shops looted, or confiscated. At other times, Nigerians would be clamped into long years in jail, even for the sins they did not commit, or they would be outrightly gunned them down, killed.
Perhaps, has the Nigerian economy been more friendly and been more accommodating, majority of these our unfortunate brothers and sisters would not have emigrated and they would not have been made to suffer these indignities, these humiliations, these man’s inhumanity to man.
This, therefore, is a wake up call for those in positions of authority to rise to the challenge and try to bring back the country to its past glory, to its good shape so as to stop the needless emigration of our youths to countries which are no better than Nigeria, where they are being subjected to different kinds of suffering.
