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Deaths: Nigerians as endangered people at home and abroad

Nigerian-policemen-assaulting-a-fellow-Nigerian-

Nigerian policemen assaulting a fellow Nigerian

The Nigerian constitution and the United Nations’ Charter on Human Rights guarantee people’s right to life, but increasingly, many Nigerians are losing their lives at home and abroad, TUNDE AJAJA writes

Section 33 (1) in Chapter IV of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) guarantees the right of Nigerians to life. And reasonably, this provision in the nation’s supreme legal authority is enough reassurance for any law-abiding Nigerian to go to bed with their eyes closed.

Specifically, the section states, “Every person has a right to life, and no one shall be deprived intentionally of his life, save in execution of the sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence of which he has been found guilty in Nigeria.”

However, available evidence shows that death is somewhat cheap in Nigeria. This is understandably so as many Nigerians have been killed by bandits, armed robbers, assassins, kidnappers, Boko Haram terrorists, stray bullets and extrajudicial action by security agents, as well as road crashes due to bad roads (albeit those caused by human factors, like over speeding).

Many have also died during inter-communal violence, farmers-herders clashes owing to inadequate government’s response in finding a lasting solution to the perennial clashes.

The Human Rights Watch, an international non-governmental organisation, in its 2018 report on Nigeria, pointed out that no fewer than 1,200 persons were killed and nearly 200,000 persons displaced owing to Boko Haram attacks in the North-East in 2018 alone.

It added that another 1,600 persons were killed and 300,000 displaced as a result of the communal conflict between nomadic herdsmen and farmers in the Middle Belt region in 2018.

Also, inter-communal violence in Plateau, Kaduna, Adamawa and Zamfara states led to the death of about 587 persons while over 38,000 persons were displaced in Zamfara alone.

These were merely a fraction of the deaths in 2018, and one could safely presume that a large number of the victims were innocent persons.

For example, bandits killed at least 45 persons, mostly children, and razed houses on May 5, 2018, when they invaded Gwaska village in Kaduna State. The attack took place barely a week after the killing of 14 miners at a mining site in Janruwa in the same local government.

President Muhammadu Buhari

During this week, the United Nations Country Director, Edward Kallon, said in Benue State on Tuesday that over 1,400 Nigerians had been killed in Nigeria as a result of kidnapping and banditry within a period of six months.

He pointed out that killings by armed herdsmen and bandits outweighed killings by Boko Haram terrorists.

“The last statistics I saw from the government was that over 1,400 people were killed as a result of kidnapping and banditry since the elections. This is not a pleasant statistics,” he said.

The Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, had also on April 30 said a total of 1,071 people had been killed in 2019 in crime-related cases across the country.

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As if the violence inflicted on them by their fellow citizens and state agents are not enough, Nigerians have also been subjected to inhuman treatments by foreigners in their land and some die in the process. And worst still, the police often take sides with the foreigners.

The case of Maaji Meriga , a 62-year-old man, whose manhood was impaired when his Chinese boss in Abuja kicked him on his testicles, is one of many examples, while some have lost other body parts to such inhuman treatment.

This and many other incidents made the Nigeria Labour Congress picket three Chinese mining firms in Ogun State on October 9, 2018, over the alleged inhuman treatment of Nigerians (largely casual workers) in their own country, to the apparent lukewarm attitude of the government.

Therefore, given the widespread insecurity and some other factors, like unemployment, many Nigerians have fled the country for foreign countries in search of greener pasture and perhaps, a quest to live in safer climes.

But, as it has turned out, they soon find that even outside their country, they are still somewhat targets of attacks in their newly found climes, fuelling the feeling that anywhere they are, they are endangered species.

Prior to the recent vicious attacks on Nigerians in South Africa, which has somewhat become an annual event, as far back as 2016 and 2017, Nigerians have been victims of racist attacks in many countries across the world, like India in faraway Asia.

For example, on March 29, 2017, a Nigerian student in India, Endurance Amalawa, was a victim of a racist attack in a mall. From sticks to knife and any object in sight, the mob pounced on him and beat him thoroughly until the police came to his rescue. He landed in the hospital thereafter.

His brother, Precious, who was also at the mall during the attack, said he suspected that Indians hate blacks (Africans).

As of 2017, Nigeria was said to be the African country with the highest population of black students in India, which made them victims than others.

A BBC report on the attack quoted police as saying that there had been a number of attacks on African nationals.

Earlier that year, five Nigerian students living in Noida, near Delhi, were attacked by crowds. A student in Noida, Alkahba Solomon, later told the BBC that the situation was not “favourable for Nigerian students”, adding that some landlords were already telling African students, including Nigerians, to vacate their houses.

In Europe, a 36-year-old Nigerian, Emmanuel Chidi Namdi , who fled from Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria to seek asylum in Fermo, Italy in 2016, was killed by some racist Italians.

On July 5 of that year, Emmanuel and his wife, who were being hosted in Fermo Bishop’s seminary, were attacked while walking down the street. Some local football players had insulted his wife, Chimiary, by calling her ‘African monkey’.

When her husband reacted to the abuse, the locals attacked him with a pole until he became unconscious. They beat him to stupor before he gave up the ghost the following day.

Sadly, it’s just one of many, according to a report by the European Network Against Racism.

Just two months ago, a 34-year-old Nigerian, Thomas Orhions Ewansiha, who was studying for his PhD degree at Limkokwing University of Creative Technology in Malaysia, died in the detention of the Immigration Department.

He was detained for not having valid student pass, but after his death, the Director-General of the Immigration Department, Datuk Daud, said checks showed that he had a student pass that was still valid. But Ewansiha was dead after all.

Regarding the recent attack in South Africa, coming after several others, the Nigeria Union South Africa said recently that apart from several multimillion naira businesses that had been destroyed completely, no fewer than 200 Nigerians had been killed in the rainbow nation in the past five years.

They lost their lives to extrajudicial killings – involving excessive use of force by the police – and killings by unknown assailants, including those Nigerians tortured to death.

According to reports, the South African xenophobes accused Nigerians in their country of taking their jobs, marrying their women and involving themselves in criminal acts.

But, on a cursory look, the word xeno, a Greek word meaning foreigner, has made some Nigerians wonder why citizens of a fellow black nation could be treated as ‘foreigners’ in South Africa while whites in the country are still treated as primus inter pares.

Meanwhile, given the volume of attacks on Nigerians, the Nigerian government has evacuated 187 out of about 640 Nigerians willing to come back home.

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Apart from the stranded Nigerians repatriated from Libya, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ireland, France, Gambia, Austria, Poland, Morocco and Liberia, it’s about the first time in recent history that the Nigerian government would be evacuating its citizens from a foreign country owing to xenophobic attacks.

Nigeria does not rank among the best countries that care about human rights, despite the fact that the primary duty of any government is the security and welfare of its people, as enshrined in Section 14 (2) b of the 1999 Constitution. Yet, across continents and races, Nigerians are being killed like chickens, and even at home, they are not spared.

South African policemen assaulting a Nigerian

Reacting to the harsh treatment Nigerians get at home and abroad, a professor of International Law and Jurisprudence, Akin Oyebode, in a recent interview told our correspondent, said  that the level of respect a country and her citizens had in the international community was  a function of the country’s economy and the profile that its leadership mustered.

According to him, there is a limit to the dynamism of the foreign policy of a beggar country, like Nigeria, that has no radical stance locally and is looking for foreign direct investments.

He said, “When your economy is booming, you tend to have greater respect from other countries and as you carry yourself, so would the rest of the world carry you. We don’t have much to fight with, except emotions. That is not to say we cannot make the necessary noises (when Nigerians are attacked), but that will not curb the xenophobic attacks.

“We can harass them (countries where Nigerians are treated badly) using international law, but if push comes to shove, what else can you do than lay aside and lick your wounds, which is what we have been doing.”

“All we need is to tidy up at home and give the rest of the world the impression that we are cleaning up our acts and then we would get the deserved respect.”

Speaking on how Nigerians are being maltreated by foreign nationals in Nigeria, he said since the country depended on the FDIs to boost its economy, the capacity to criticise or stand firm against the “shenanigans and inanity of foreign investors in Nigeria is severely circumscribed.”

“Nigeria is weak, relatively speaking, but if you have a competitive economy and you produce things that find a place in the international market, then you would increase your profile,” he added.

Also speaking, the President of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, Malachy Ugwummadu, said the failure of leadership, complemented by avoidable killings in Nigeria would make foreigners believe that they could also maltreat Nigerians and there would be no consequence.

He said, “There is a proverb in the part of the country I come from that if you call your father stupid, strangers would help you to call him a mad man. They would escalate that insolence to the extent that it legitimises your own stupidity.

“I made that reference because leadership is crucial in re-ordering a society but the failure of it has very serious repercussions. So, Nigerians being aptly described as an endangered species across the world proves the failure of leadership in the country.

“Right here (at home), Nigerians are under siege and it comes in the form of extra-judicial killings, avoidable killings, termination of hopes, truncation of aspirations and the total abortion of ambitions.”

He described the world as a global village and that foreigners see how Nigeria treats its own while citing the case of Jalingo Agba, a journalist who was charged with terrorism for criticising a governor (Ben Ayade of Cross River State), as an example.

Ugwummadu, who is also a lawyer, added, “When the world sees that criticism can lead you face to face with charges that have the death penalty as punishment, they will treat your nationals in a more devastating manner. Take the case of Olufemi Sulaiman, a young Nigerian on death row in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as another example.

“He went in search of greener pasture, and then there was a raid because a policeman was killed. They invaded areas where there were clusters of immigrants and unfortunately they arrested this young, innocent Nigerian. This is a case of about 10 years.

“Today, he has been sentenced to death and he is on death row in Saudi Arabia. The statement he was forced to sign was written in Arabic and he could not read it, yet it was the same statement that the judge interpreted to be a confessional statement.

“What I’m saying is that it is convenient and easy for nationals of other countries to treat Nigerians badly because they know that life has become brutish, short and nasty even in Nigeria. Don’t forget my proverb.”

He lamented that carrying Nigeria’s green passport is almost equivalent to being a suspect, noting that even though some Nigerians abroad engage in illegal acts, giving the country a bad name, there are also many Nigerians doing well outside the country.

He added, “Indeed, we insist that Nigerians who commit crimes in foreign countries should be treated according to the law and due process. But, in the case of South Africa, Nigerians are isolated to be eliminated because we have lost our pride of place. And in Singapore, China, Malaysia, Nigerians are killed at will.”

Ugummadu, however, stressed that it was only when Nigeria as a state showed that there were consequences for abusing the rights of Nigerians that the attacks would stop, saying diplomacy alone would not work.

He warned that if all Nigeria could do in the face of the xenophobic attacks was to evacuate its citizens, with no consequences to South Africa, other nations would take a cue from it.

“Pay us compensation, but South Africa is saying it will not pay; what will happen, Ghana and Niger will soon do the same thing,” he added.

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