The travails of Nigerians abroad

Nigerian rounded up by Polish police

By Paul Arhewe

Many Nigerians believe that un-less they travel to a foreign land they cannot achieve their desires in life. But, in most cases, these Nigerians end up being worse off than their counterparts that choose to remain at home. Reports of racist attacks against foreigners, especially in the United States and Europe and, lately, South Af-rica, have continued unabated. A larger proportion of Nigerians, as with citizens of other developing nations, who travel abroad in search of a greener pasture have had sad tales to render. The recent deportation of 125 Nigeri-ans by the South African government, for allegedly carrying fake yellow fever vaccine certificates, is only one of the many abuses being suffered regularly by citizens who travel abroad, legally or otherwise.

Recent revelations have shown that the number of Nigerians in foreign prisons worldwide has greatly increased.
Minister of Youth Development, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, disclosed recently that a large number of Nigerians are cur-rently languishing in Chinese prisons. Records from the Nigerian Embassy in China show that 360 Nigerians are serving various jail terms in China, with their sentences ranging between 10 years and suspended death sentence.
The records further show that 320 of them were sentenced for drug-related offences, while the remaining 20 were jailed for other offences, including fraud, kidnapping, armed robbery and rape. Also, in India, it has been found that about 500 Nigerians are serving various jail terms.

The Nigerian High Commissioner to India, Mr. Oyebola Kuku, recently told visiting members of the House of Rep-resentatives Committee on Diaspora, led by Abike Dabiri-Erewa, that most of the inmates were convicted for offences such as drug trafficking and internet scam.
It has equally been discovered that many of the nation’s citizens are incarcerated in Malaysia, another Asian country. Many of them, who were charged with either murder or drug trafficking, have been sentenced to death without the option of appeal.

The exact number of convicted Nige-rians in this country could, however, not be ascertained.When asked recently about the num-ber of Nigerians serving jail terms in his country, the Malaysian High Commis-sioner to Nigeria, Nik Mustafa Kamal Nik Ahmad, said: “I do not know how many Nigerians are in jail in Malaysia.
There are many Nigerians in Malaysia. Last year alone, we issued over 12,000 visas. “Also, sometimes, there is a problem of identity assumption. For instance, last year, there was a report that a Nigerian committed suicide in a hostel. When I read the news, I quickly made an investigation into the case. I was surprised to find out that the deceased was not a Nigerian but a Guinean."

Contribution of a depressed economy

The depression in the nation’s econ-omy has, in no small measure, contrib-uted to the rate at which citizens flee abroad in search of greener pastures. A recent report by the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that over 100 million Nigerians, representing about 61 percent of the population, lived on less than one dollar (about N150) a day as at the end of 2010. That figure showed a sharp in-crease from the 51 percent recorded in 2004.

Roles of Nigerian embassies
Maltreatment of Nigerians abroad also stems from stereotyping, false accu-sations, harassments and other forms of racial abuses. In many cases, the affected citizens receive little assistance or pro-tection from Nigerian embassies. There have been reports of some embassy staff frustrating Nigerians who seek their assistance.
For instance, one Uzoma Aha-mefule bemoaned the fact that Nigerians live like prisoners in Austria, with the Nigerian embassy there “not showing any concern for their plights.”A clear example was the case of one Miss Edith Abuchi, who was impregnated by her Chinese boss, Yu Fei.
She narrated to National Mirror how she eloped with her boss to China with-out the consent of her parents and how the man’s family started maltreating her soon after she delivered her baby.

She said they tried various antics, including threat of deportation, in their bid to take the baby from her.“They succeeded in making sure that my papers expired, so that I won’t have any legal ground to fight for my baby. They deliberately hindered me through their local connections and made sure that my papers were not extended, so that I could lose my baby to them,” Edith said.
She eventually succeeded in running to the Nigerian Embassy in Beijing with her six-year-old son, but was disappointed by the way the embassy reacted to her situation. “I explained everything that linked me with the Chinese man to them, but for some unknown reasons, they didn’t want to protect me, rather, they supported the Chinese.“They treated me as a non-Nigerian and even insulted me in the presence of the Chinese.

They handed my baby back to his family members without any legal proof that they deserved to take posses-sion of him,” she further revealed.She said, after that incident, Yu Fei’s family prevented her from getting close to her child and was told on phone she would never see him for the rest of her life.

Edith went again to inform the embassy of the latest development, but they told her they could not go after Yu Fei’s family and advised her to solve the problem herself. “Yet they knew that I didn’t have papers to fight this matter and they also knew that I am a poor girl who would not be able to fight the matter without help.
They knew it was the man’s family that made sure that I didn’t have papers in their country, but none of those points made any sense to the embassy,” she lamented.When National Mirror contacted the Nigerian embassy in China, Ambassador Aminu Wali, in an email response, gave the embassy’s account of the story.
The embassy said Edith had no papers and therefore, was residing illegally in China.
The embassy said she needed to acquire valid documents for her to fight her cause diligently. “Having overstayed in China, she risks the consequence of imprisonment and eventual deportation, as she has no valid residence in China,” the embassy said. According to the embassy, the decision it took was also based on the fact that Edith has no visible means of liveli-hood to maintain the child in his present condition.

“Without a residence permit and valid work visa, she would be a fugi-tive of the local law enforcement author-ities,” it said.The Nigerian envoy said the embassy was not in doubt that the child has Ni-gerian blood.


“However, when Ms Edith Yu Xiao Tian, product of bi-racial relationship between a Nigerian mother and a Chinesewas asked to provide his birth certifi-cate, registration card and passport, she had nothing to show, neither was the child endorsed on her passport after his birth,” he noted.
A scanned copy of right of custody shows that both Edith and Yu Fei agreed in a document dated 10 October, 2011, which they both signed, that their child, Yu Xiao Tian, would be in the custody of the man. And also that Edith is entitled to visit and take full care and custody of the child on Saturdays and Sundays.
She is required to return the child on Mon-day mornings for school.With that information, the embassy said it invited the child’s foster grand-parents and handed him over to them, with a stern warning that Edith should be allowed full and unhindered access to the child every weekend as they had, hitherto, been doing.
The embassy, thereafter, counseled Edith against continuing with her bel-ligerent attitudes, as it could get her into trouble with the Chinese authorities. “We cautioned her to exercise some degree of restraint and not to quarrel with the foster parents until she had sorted out herself properly,” the embassy dis-closed.


Also, in order to ensure both parties maintained the terms of the agreement, the Nigerian Embassy agreed not to issue Nigerian passport or Emergency Travel Certificate (ETC) to the child, until the case of custody and paternity is legally settled.
Both parties also agreed not to take the child outside the territory of China until the determination of the right of custody and paternity by the court.The Nigerian Embassy said it should be on record that it was duly committed to protecting the welfare and wellbeing of all Nigerians living in China, “as we have done for the near 350 in various prisons here (in China).” It further affirmed: “It is also our re-sponsibility to promote bilateral relations between our two countries.

But we must not be seen to perpetuate illegality and criminal behaviour by our nationals, nor be overtly sensational about this case. Ms. Edith and her boy, under the prevailing circumstances, could not have been left in the premises and custody of the embassy, ad infinitum.
As the mother of the boy, she can lay claim to him anytime and any day. However, stay-ing in a foreign country, she must do so within the ambit of the law as she was advised.”

Dilemma of renewing Nigerian passport abroad


Another factor responsible for the difficulties experienced by Nigerians abroad is traceable to passport racke-teering. This poses a major problem es-pecially for those seeking to renew their expired passports outside the country.Some Nigerians abroad have waited in frustration for over one year without succeeding in getting their passports renewed. During this period, they are forced to live like fugitives. Some have ended up being arrested and deported in the process.

An affected Nigerian, who lives in Austria, Julius Onyedikachi, lamented that after applying for a passport since December 2010 without success, he felt really embarrassed when a staff of the Nigerian embassy in Austria warned him to stop bothering them, because he was not the only one that applied and had not paid the embassy any money.
He further stated: “Because the pass-port has got a very significant role to play in my life now, I have approached the Nigerian embassy in Vienna for authorisation that can allow me to obtain the passport in any of the Nigerian em-bassies in Europe but, again, the embas-sy refused, insisting that I pay 25 euros. For this reason, several Nigerians are stranded abroad, with those willing to come home during holiday periods sometimes unable to, because of the de-lays in obtaining new passports.
There is shortage of machines that can produce the new ECOWAS passports in Nigerian embassies, with reports say-ing that the machines are available only in five embassies in Europe. What this means is that Nigerians in other Euro-pean countries must travel to the coun-tries where the machines are available to renew expired, or replace lost pass-ports.A Nigerian in United States, Tola Adenle, in a recent report, commented on the passport racketeering, involving staff of Nigerian embassies.
She said she had come across many Nigerians who continued to tell horror stories from the Nigerian embassies and consulates in Washington D.C. and London. “Just as in the home country, civil ser-vants on diplomatic postings, as well as their underpaid non-home based staff, that is, locally-recruited, have perfected ways of demanding and receiving what are – no matter how couched – bribes.
Anyone who has ever had cause to do business with the Nigeria Police must have heard the euphemisms – we need X Naira to buy paper to write the charge sheet and so on.“The child of a friend who needed to travel to Nigeria from Washington D.C. could not get a passport for her new-born because the covers for new passports were not available.
She eventually had to apply for the baby’s U.S. passport, an application that she mailed and secured a brand new passport all within a week-and-a-half after mailing off the applica-tion,” she submitted.




‘Nigerians suffer discriminatory arrests’

The Chairman, House Committee on Diaspora, Hon. Abike Dabiri, in this interview with PAUL ARHEWE, shares her opinion on the continuous maltreatment of Nigerians abroad and more. Excerpts:

What is responsible for the rise in the number of Nigerians imprisoned abroad?
The rising spate of imprisonment of Nigerians in the Diaspora is alarming and more disturbing is the way they treat them at the point of arrest. We’ve received several reports from different parts of the world of Nigerians claiming to have been arrested unlawfully and on several occa-sions without a fair judicial process.Human beings are naturally in search of greener pastures and in instances where the person involved is overzealous or des-perate, drug, prostitution and other sun-dry crimes become quick options.
Things like these are what get them into serious mess. In Italy, we have several Nigerian girls who earn their daily living from pros-titution, some willingly, some unwillingly. People in this kind of business will defi-nitely get themselves involved in activities that will eventually lead to their arrest by the authorities of these countries.However, it sometimes becomes very difficult to assist these people as some of them don’t even have Nigerian passports. It, therefore, becomes very hard for the em-bassy or the government to intervene.

What are the major reasons for these imprisonments?

We will look inward and outward in this regard. Several things are respon-sible for the incessant arrest of Nigerians abroad; some of these arrests are lawful, while some are discriminatory. Moreover, I think we should not look at the problem but the cause of the problem. While it is obvious Nigerians suffer discriminatory arrests abroad, the question we should ask ourselves is why is it so?
Why do our youths troop out of the country in their thousands? What value does the Nigerian government attach to its citizens? What are the structures in place to make Nige-ria conducive for business? I will point out some of the root causes, but I won’t explain them in details. These include bad educa-tional system, poor leadership structure, lack of good moral and cultural orienta-tion and poor structures to support growth and development.

What is your committee doing to address some of these issues?

The committee has attended to several calls from Nigerians in prisons in different parts of the world. The committee has in-tervened in China, Brazil, UK, Libya, Tuni-sia, Morocco, Ghana and Malaysia. In 2010, over 21 Nigerians that were to be executed by the Libyan government were saved and brought back to the country through the committee’s intervention.

Has government done enough to protect Nigerians abroad?

The government is trying its best, ex-cept that it can still do better to protect the lives and property of Nigerians abroad. I think the government can still do more to address the plight of Nigerians in pris-ons abroad and those encountering other forms of problems.

Abike Dabiri