“Please, help us; help us; please help take us back home,” was the plea from the over 400 Nigerians trapped in Saudi Arabia in a piece last Friday on BBC Hausa. They are informal migrant workers arrested within the past six months for overstaying their visas. They described the inhumane condition in which they are being kept and how workers from other countries, arrested long after them, have already been flown home. Even a two-day hunger strike didn’t make a difference.
The suffering of the elderly and the young is especially bad. One man fell and broke his leg and hand. With no proper treatment, he now can’t even walk to answer the call of nature. But if the Saudi treatment is bad, Nigeria’s is appalling: embassy officials have been incommunicado for months. Those the Nigerian taxpayer pays to represent them abroad have abandoned the very people they are supposed to serve. Nothing can be more painful. The Saudi authorities say these Nigerians remain trapped because of our government’s failure to take them home.
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This reminded me of my experience at the Dar es Salam refugee camp in Baga Sola, western Chad. The facility houses over 10,000 Nigerians displaced by Boko Haram. Their horror was still fresh in September 2019 when I visited, but the most frustrating part for them is Nigeria’s utter neglect. No Nigerian official had visited them in their four years of stay. Several of them have diplomas and higher certificates, but no opportunity to work. Those who want to go back to school have none to attend. They are eager to go back home and pick up the pieces of their lives, but Boko Haram remains at large. As they spoke, I could see the frustration and anger written all over their faces.
The Dar es Salam occupants are just a small portion of Nigerian refugees in neighbouring countries. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), there are over 300,000 Nigerian refugees in Cameroon, Chad and Niger. These are mostly Nigerians who fled from the crisis in the North-East, but also includes some 70,000, mostly women and children, from northwestern Nigeria now living in the Maradi region of Niger Republic. An additional 7,000 joined since the start of this year.
Thanks to our abundant human and natural resources, we should be the country all Africa looks up to. At independence, the world saw a promising country that would lead other black nations to greatness and prove false the racist and colonial stereotypes doubting the intellectual and moral capacity of the black race. Nelson Mandela, the most globally acclaimed African, spoke for millions across the globe when he told our Hakeem Baba-Ahmed in 2007, “The world will not respect Africa until Nigeria earns that respect. The black people of the world need Nigeria to be great as a source of pride and confidence.” Mandela was right. But his hopes could not have been more disappointed.
How can we inspire and lead Africa to greatness if we cannot put our own house in order? Where once we opened our arms and purse to other nations across Africa, we are now unable to look after even our own citizens. Where once we sent troops to make and keep the peace across the continent; now we cannot even end the conflict plaguing our own land. In place of proud commercial commodities, we now export refugees and conflict to our neighbours. With the rare exceptions, our successive leaders seem determined to prove we are a cursed nation. I believe we are not.
Thanks to our battered reputation, Nigerians are now treated disdainfully across the world. Whether in China or in Lebanon, whether Oman or the UAE, we see horrifying footage of enslaved Nigerians begging to be rescued. Chad is threatening to stop helping us in the fight against Boko Haram. Nigerians are killed and their shops looted in xenophobic attacks in South Africa and Nigerian businesses are closed down for no reason in Ghana. Our country is fast becoming a pariah, even on the African continent.
I have come across too many stories of Nigerians abused and maltreated in different countries of the world. One such story belongs to Aisha. She contacted me in 2018 to plead for help. She was offered a fake job in Saudi Arabia and trafficked into slavery in Oman. Here she was serially raped at night by her “master” and his son, while in the daytime her mistress beat her mercilessly as Aisha worked like a donkey. At the end of the month, Aisha’s ‘agent’ (no better than the slave traders of old) went to the bank smiling. Thankfully, unlike their Saudi counterparts, Nigerian diplomats in Oman worked hard for Aisha’s return. When I visited Cameroon with a friend in 2017, Nigerians were specifically pulled aside for a special security check. I felt shamed and insulted, but I knew that the actions of Nigeria and some Nigerians were partly to blame.
It may seem unfathomable how Nigeria slid from being a beacon of hope and inspiration to being a burden on its neighbours. But the answer is not hard to understand. Nigerians are maltreated across the world because the world knows how we are maltreated by our own (democratically elected) governments. If Nigerian leaders have no respect for Nigerians, why would others? If our politicians do not value our lives and honour, why would others value us?
We are also hindered by our notoriety as cyber, financial and other transnational criminals. Nigeria has become a watchword across the world for financial scams. Add to this news such as we read this week, of two Nigerians sentenced to death for killing four Ghanaian ladies in what appears to have been some kind of demonic ritual, and the adage about the bad apple spoiling the barrel is proven true. While such criminals are few, they are all the world sees. Nigeria is not owed anyone’s good will. If we cannot sort our own problems, why should the world respect us?
The overwhelming majority of Nigerians in the diaspora passionately love their country and many want to return home. Alas, they are trapped, kept away by the insecurity, corruption and cronyism that have become so normal in our country. They see there are no opportunities unless they know someone or know someone who knows someone. They understand that their businesses will be undermined by lack of basic infrastructure and their talent will go to waste. They endure desperate homesickness and worse, simply because their leaders have failed them. Some are literally trapped, living the lives of slaves. They didn’t go out seeking for greener pasture, but just any pasture because there is none at home for them. They would rather barely live abroad than die at home. I don’t blame them.
Even the minimal life has now become impossible for hundreds in Saudi. They want to come back home. Please help them.
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