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Much Ado About Nigerians And Their Image Abroad By M. T. Usman
Talk, they say, is cheap. As Nigerians, our penchant for talk is legendary. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has an opinion (however warped) on every subject matter and we are never shy to express it at any opportunity. At conferences, meetings and, even on international flights (wherever they may be headed), I doubt whether there is any group of people that can command as much attention as Nigerians in our loud, almost argumentative expression of views. We call it gist, perhaps to connote substance, the rest of the world calls it noise.
As the reader may well sense from the title to this piece, our being loud (often needlessly) is not the crux of the matter, as important as it is to the definition of our global image. What it is, that seems to have agitated Nigerians of late, especially on social media, is the statement of President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) in an interview with the UK newspaper, the Telegraph, to the effect that "Nigerians' reputation for crime has made them unwelcome in Britain". A casual look at the statement, as has been the attitude of many a commentator, would make it appear as a condemnation of Nigerians in Britain. Quite naturally, the hardworking majority of those resident there are not happy with this much-touted implication of the statement. They think it is too one-sided a story of Nigerians in the UK, and in the diaspora, generally. Expectedly too, those that will latch unto any opportunity to tongue-lash PMB and his administration, have joined the fray and are waxing lyrical about how unpatriotic the statement is. A closer examination of the report will however show that the implication is being drawn without any balance. I doubt that most of the 'agitators' have had the luxury of access to the full report of the interview by Colin Freeman. If they did, they would have seen the clear reference to asylum seekers. This group of Nigerians (13,000 in the last 15 years as reported by Colin) is the one PMB was referring to as suffering rejection in Britain because of the stereotypical view that Nigerians have some affinity to criminality. For this group of fair-weather commentators, it may be pertinent to add here that PMB did state in clear language and in agreement with their advertised position that (only) a minority of his countrymen could still do with improving their behaviour.
For some, they would rather PMB played the ostrich and not acknowledge that others think Nigerians are bad people. They think his statement, "We have an image problem abroad and we are on our way to salvage that", is not patriotic. He should have refused to accept that notion, they say. While I share this desire for a feel-good view of my motherland, and will readily defend the dignity of a hardworking compatriot any day, I find it preposterous that my countrymen appear to want (PMB) to condition what others think of us by demanding it and not by earning it. How else does one understand the demand for PMB to ignore the oft-reported incidents of Nigerians involved in acts of criminality in other people's lands? Are these go-easy patriots unaware of these reports? Don’t they know that whether PMB acknowledges or not, each time any Nigerian is associated with criminality, it robs off on us all? Yes, it is morally wrong to condemn a whole group of people because of the acts of a few of its members. Be that as it may, does that absolve us of the responsibility to do two simple things?
1) Don't we owe ourselves the duty to acknowledge, that which is glaringly wrong with us? Isn't such an acknowledgement a necessary pre-condition for corrective action? 2) Isn't it trite wisdom that we need to self-regulate and take requisite actions to tackle any identified bad eggs?
We cannot hope to reverse the negative stereotyping of Nigerians if we are not prepared or unable to do these. The facts are clear that Nigerians have been caught committing crimes around the globe. While this does not mean that Nigerians are the most criminally-minded, the arrest of any Nigerian for card fraud or visa offences in the United States of America (USA), for drug and human trafficking in Spain, France or Germany, for drug trafficking anywhere in Asia, etc, simply reinforces the notion of mass criminality. Sadly, this notion has since been made popular by our seeming disproportionate expertise in perpetrating online scams, a la 419.
The US National Criminal Justice Reference System quotes the US Secret Service as reporting that one-quarter of all major fraud crimes it investigates, involves Nigerians. One-quarter! It is therefore not surprising that a multiagency programme led by the Department of Justice had to be established to handle crimes by Nigerians. The programme is called the Nigerian Crimes Initiative (NCI). As part of its contribution to the NCI, the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) under its African Criminal Enterprises focus of Crime Threats & Programs, had this to say about our criminally-minded countrymen. "Nigerian criminal enterprises are the most significant of these (African) groups and operate in more than 80 other countries of the world. They are among the most aggressive and expansionist international criminal groups and are primarily engaged in drug trafficking and financial frauds.” The same page reports that crimes by Nigerians "cost the U.S. alone an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion each year." On the other side of the Atlantic, the UK newspaper, The Independent, reports that as far back as 1998, the National Crime Intelligence Service (NCIS) was estimating the cost of fraud committed by Nigerians at about £3.5billion a year. This is staggering! Even more worrying perhaps, is that these included crimes committed by Nigerians working in government offices. The Independent report indicates that the criminals were "discovered working inside government departments, the police and tax offices".
Similarly, the 2014 Annual Report on Organised Crime in Germany listed 14 criminal gangs in which Nigerians were dominant, placing Nigeria as the 8th (the only African) country of consequence to organised crime there. Need I add the running battles Spanish authorities have been having with Nigerian sex cum drug-trafficking and robbery gangs? See reports aired by the BBC on the 10th of November 2013, by TheNews on September 25, 2015 and again by the BBC on the 27th of January 2016.
There is absolutely no need to ignore the obvious. The rest of the world is as thrilled by our intellect and serious development potentials as it is of our crafty ability to engage in organised crime. Our non-Nigerian brethren seeking to perpetrate intellectual mischief even go as far linking our perceived criminality to relatively higher IQ levels compared to the rest of Africa. So, while we are still in denial, intelligence services are busy working out how to curtail our negative expertise and their academics are busy postulating on the whys and hows. To bring this aspect of this piece to an end, I recommend Stephen Ellis' book: This Present Darkness - A History of Nigerian Organised Crime due in paperback in April 2016 from Hurst Publishers, London. It should make an interesting reading.
In the light of the foregoing, rather than agonise needlessly, why don't we try to take a few simple steps in addition of course to an open acknowledgement of the problem?
i) Let Nigerians living in foreign lands organise themselves into associations (where these do not already exist) and work with Nigerian Missions to maintain effective contact networks through which they can entrench not only community support but also self regulate. If they demonstrate to their host countries that they are able to keep a tab on the activities of bad eggs and even work with legal and social services to keep them in check, the stereotypes will change in no time. Rather than a collective condemnation, we are likely to be better appreciated as a collection of good and bad people with the former in larger numbers. It is for this reason that I commend the stated commitments (in part) of the current Chairman of the Central Association of Nigerians in the UK (CANUK), Mr Babatunde Loye, viz. a. Develop a standard database for Nigerians in the UK in collaboration with the High Commission. b. Provide the needed support for Nigerians with immigration problems and those in prison c. Empowering the Nigerian youths in the UK to reduce the incidents of gang violence.
ii) Let Nigerian Mission staff be more interested in the lives of Nigerians visiting or resident in their countries of assignment. The Missions exist for Nigeria and Nigerians. There have been cases of Mission Staff turning away Nigerians from Mission gates and treating them off-handedly, where they are lucky to have had access, that is. I had the misfortune of being the recipient of a snub at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi in the days before airlines started insisting on sighting a passenger's vaccination card before boarding. I had arrived Nairobi to join meetings at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) headquarters and at the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) and had unfortunately left the card in an envelope when I went to collect the ticket from the UN-accredited travel agent in Lagos. It took a while obviously to convince the immigration officials (and avoid being quarantined), by which time the vehicles conveying international participants to their hotels had left. Since this was before Internet access became a given and mobile phones were not available, being stranded was surely discomforting. A Nigerian High Commission official also at the airport to welcome a visitor couldn't be bothered to be of help even to alert the contact person at UNEP - the intervention of the Kenyan officials notwithstanding. The guy simply uttered some empty words, let off a wry smile, and sauntered off in the direction of the arrival gates with a promise to get back to me. The Kenyan officials, convinced apparently by the UN letters, had to make the contacts for my airport transfer after it became clear the 'Nigerian' diplomat was not going to come back with any help. The abandonment was most disrespectful and undiplomatic. I will love to add, for proper context, very ‘un-Nigerian’. There are friends with worse tales of frustration in the hands of Nigerian foreign mission staff, ranging from delayed or even bungled passport renewal, denied consular support on immigration matters, to ignored request for legal assistance, among others. The reported outcry by Nigerians in the UK on the nonchalance of the Nigerian High Commission in respect of planned mass deportation of Nigerians last year fits this pattern. If we treat ourselves with so much lack of care and concern in the full view of our hosts, why on earth should we expect to be respected by them?
iii) Nigerian government officials will need to learn to behave better when they travel for official duties. A nation whose officials have become popular with abandoning official engagement sessions in favour of recreation outings and pushing trolleys through shopping malls cannot expect to be taken seriously. It doesn’t show us as a serious, organised people and such acts only serve to reinforce the notion of our citizens being outcasts or criminally-minded, if you like. To illustrate the damage this attitude does to our national pride and image, let me share an experience from Singapore. In November 2011, I was part of a delegation to Singapore to hold discussions with the Institute for Information Research (I2R), part of the Singaporean Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). The meetings went so well that we contemplated official government involvement and, quite naturally, sought to meet with the Nigerian High Commissioner to Singapore. We did receive the invitation and had warm meetings with the then Acting High Commissioner in his office and in his residence. The prompt and warm reception was a welcome departure from the usual attitudes of our foreign mission staff but he had bitter experiences to share to support the notion of collective damage by the irresponsible action of a few. He lamented that as a result of the frequent abandonment of official engagements by government delegations from Nigeria, the Singaporean government had resorted to an undiplomatic demand for his office to pay for planning such visits. A diplomatic slap, yes, but undeniably deserved since members of such delegations never attended the official functions. They were always more interested in the luxury accommodations and shopping malls of the Marina Bay Sands area and in the excitement of the Resort World Sentosa. If we had the funds to waste sponsoring waves of delegations ostensibly to go and under-study the Singaporean housing model without any result to show for it, the Singaporeans had better use of their time.
From such official travel misconduct, the somewhat disproportionate ownership of high-end property in many cities across the globe, reports of criminal acts committed by miscreants, to the ongoing disclosures of theft of public funds in the recent past, the world has formed a view of Nigerians as lovers of easy, often criminal lifestyles. The onus is on us to present ourselves differently. We cannot, in all honesty, continue to play ostriches, refuse to take corrective actions and expect other nationals to judge us fairly. If we have suffered enough discrimination or dismissive stares as holders of the Nigerian passport we should do something about it. As indicated earlier, the starting point is to acknowledge that we have a reputation problem.
If we acknowledge what is widely known about us and take actions that show the world we take ourselves seriously, we shall as PMB advanced, be on our way to salvation. Before I conclude this piece, let me reiterate that this is the most fundamental element in any diplomatic engagement, especially in this era of media explosion. I have had experience working to establish functional links with US institutions and had to continually explain the frequent ethno-religious crises of the early 2000s. Attempting to claim that the clashes were not occurring or that lives were not being lost when the media was awash with reports would have been vacuous to say the least. For each engagement, every potential hitch, real or imaginary, had to be acknowledged with a demonstration of knowledge of causative factors and an indication of measures to be taken to mitigate the risks. This attitude always earns the confidence of a potential partner and allows for an informed, mutually reinforcing relationship. As Napoleon Hill once wrote (courtesy, Mark Amaza, @amasonic), "The world has a habit of making room for the man whose actions show he knows where he is going". In this wise as Nigerians, we have to be courageous enough to face our demons. Spencer Johnson once put it succinctly when he said, “Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.”
Finally, coming clean on our challenges can never damage our cause to genuinely engage with the international community. It can only make us stronger. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “Truth never damages a cause that is just.” |