A Letter to the British High CommissionerBy

Lanre Banjo

lanreb1@juno.com

Dear High Commissioner Gozney:

On behalf of a very few farsighted and patriotic Nigerians, I want to express profound gratitude to you over your recent policy banning Nigerians between the ages of 18-30, especially first time applicants, from applying for visas to the United Kingdom.  I appreciate the decision, which must have been a product of years of unbearable agony.

The agony of your staff to have to deal with 20,000 anxious Nigerians at your Consulate both in Lagos and Abuja on daily basis is understood.  Understandably, these folks are looking for an escape outlet as a result of profound ineptitude and suffocating policies of uncaring rulers at all levels of governance in my country.  It is equally a pity that the overwhelming number of applicants harassed and caused your staff at the visa section to be overworked and stressed to the hilt.  There is also the issue of environmental nuisance constituted by the long queues of dogged visa seekers who most often sleep overnight on the queues and defecate around the premises in the dark of the night.   I discern your throes and that of your staff. 

After your forefathers had gone through pains to make your country what it is today, you and your fellow citizens should not be put in a position of going through any stress in the process of allowing the citizens of other countries into your country.  It is your country, and you have every right to ban all Nigerians, including the globe-trotting president, who are fleeing from their problems into the settled environment that your ancestors struggled and died for.  Further, you do not deserve to be harassed by kleptomanias and dim-witted chattels that occupy various ruling positions in Nigeria.  No, you don’t deserve it. 

The opponents of your decision, the rigged-in members of Nigerian National Assembly and the colonial mentality Nigerians appointed as Ministers in various ministries, threatened to retaliate by banning Britons of the same age from coming to Nigeria.  They are making a caricature of themselves because you and I know the perception of your people of that age about the entire black Africa.  They do not sleep at the Nigerian Embassy and many of them don’t even know about the existence of the country. They have been orientated to love their country that gives them virtually everything they need, even if their leaders ill-took some of those things from the slaves they imposed as rulers of African countries. 

You and I also know that many of your people who visit Nigeria don’t even go to the Nigerian Embassy for visas.  They are multinationals who fly directly without passport and visas to where our oil flows in pursuit of the interest of their nation and with the collusion of the vagabonds in power in my country.  So, what the heck are these “representa-thieves” talking about?  It is pertinent to mention that their reaction is not on or in behalf of the children of the poor.  They spoke because of their children. If not, your policy should have presented a challenge for them to improve the welfare of their own people.  But no, that is not their purpose in government.  Many of them are in power not to cater for the masses of Nigeria, but to have opportunities to send and settle their families abroad.  This explains why they would always be your thralls at all cost regardless of treatments meted out to them.  If not, how could a sensible person explain why the members of the Nigerian National Assembly had to wear badges in their own house when former President Bill Clinton was begged to address them when he visited Nigeria?  Their own president, who is always the happiest each time he stands with his Masters in Europe and America, is never considered fit to address Congress of the United States or House of Commons in your country.  I am so sorry High Commissioner, but you and your staff are reaping what your forefathers sowed in Nigeria. See, when they were turning the brains of the darker people of the world upside down, they lost sight of the indirect impact it would have on their citizens in the future.  This is now the future, and you must brace up for it.  I believe, you should be reminded of some of the deeds of those before you, which brought about the harassment and agony of your staff. 

What you are harvesting today is the fruit of the conspiracy sown inside the Church by the colonial masters who dressed the best of us, enticed them with money and sold to them the milk-toast Jesus that tolerates nonsense.   Your progenitors brainwashed their servants and named them Reverends with the mentality such as, “thou shall obey authority”, no matter how devilish such an authority is, and “if you are slapped on the right cheek, you turn your left cheek”.  Your ancestors watched their servants, who they want us to revere, preach in Churches to see how political half-wits are being multiplied.  Now your staff has to deal with the fruits of the seeds your forefathers sowed. They even told our Reverends not to get involved in politics, and that Church is not a place to discuss political affairs. Those of us who have been opportuned to live in your country have determined that they were taught what you do not practice.  The real Jesus took care of business in Israel.  He fought against governments and just like your agents in the continent of Africa arrest and murder oppositions today, the government that was in Israel then, immolated Jesus the Christ. That is not the Jesus you sold to our Reverends who served and continue to serve as the tools of the colonial masters in destroying our faculty of thinking.  Anyone who walks in the shoes of the real Jesus would never be afraid to challenge oppressors. 

Your patriarchs taught us to hate ourselves, and the hatred is now being extended to your staff.  Further, the rulers, who hate us most and pour pepper into our eyes the most, rule for a long period because of the support of your people and government.  Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo, Kamuzu Banda of Malawi, Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha of Nigeria just to mention a few.  Those who had the quality of leadership to take us out of your bondage to prevent our sleeping at your Embassy were quickly assassinated, overthrown or prevented from leading us.  Patrice Lumumba of the then Zaire and Murtala Muhammed of Nigeria (assassinated), Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Chief Obafemi Awolowo of Nigeria, all of blessed memory, readily come to mind.    I know that Pope John Paul II apologized for the role of the Church in bringing about the comatose state of the darker people of the world, but that does not erase the fact that we are suffering today from what your ancestors did in the past.

When your progenitors terrorized the entire African continent, destroyed values, and without elections, imposed Governors Macpherson, Richards etc. on us, little did they know that their servants were learning the same tricks used against us.  They came without passports and visas, and without work permits, they worked and earned “expatriate” income. They ruled us and exacted taxes in the name of a Queen that is not useful to us in Nigeria, and thus violated our territorial laws and fundamental human rights. Two such illegal aliens, Lord Lugard and his girlfriend Flora Shaw, pleased their fancies in Nigeria in the manner Nigerians could not fathom of doing in Britain.  If Nigerians had done all these to your own people, you would never allow them in your country, and I would have commended you. 

Can you imagine what your forefathers did in Cameroon? Can you imagine Mr. Gozney? Families who used to speak the same dialect can no longer communicate with themselves.  You changed their names, culture, and dialects – one is now Francophone and the other Anglophone. You remember Berlin conference of 1889 where all the Europeans vandals sat together and shared their African loots. Yet, those in servitude positions in African countries still trust you.  It is these turncoats that you imposed on us as rulers that inflicted these youngsters with pain that make them want to escape to be delivered from pain. 

Pain is the mother of creativity.  Without pain one cannot create, but those you supported to rule these youngsters in Nigeria are clueless as to how they can create with pain. Thus, these youngsters cannot use their pains to create because of the rulers you gave them. Young Nigerians see your agent in Aso Rock going to London to dash his daughter to one of you in contravention of the Yoruba culture, perhaps because Olusegun Obasanjo has banned British of the age of his in-law from being given visiting visas to Nigeria. It is monkeys see, monkeys do.  The youngsters don’t have true leaders that can reprogram them from the default servitude mode of thinking that your agents have placed them. 

This reminds me of the scheme of the British government in 1969, as the Biafran war was about to end.  To the chagrin of the British government, Nigeria prosecuted the war without borrowing a penny, deficit and with strong currency.  A rumor that later gained currency that the British government was going to devalue her currency and then instruct her former colony to follow suit began to circulate.  Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a genuine leader who was the Minister of Finance, instructed the officials of the Ministry of Finance and Central Bank to conduct a research on the impact of the scheme.  Based on their research, a decision was made that nothing in law and economic theory would cause Nigeria to devalue her currency because Britain devalued her own. Chief Awolowo called the British High Commissioner in Nigeria to confirm the rumor.  In pursuit of the naked interest of his country, the High Commissioner denied it.  Weeks later, the colonial master ordered her former colony to devalue.  In a letter to the British government, Chief Awolowo retorted that it is an affront on our sovereignty for a foreign government to dictate to us to devalue our currency.  He demanded from your government to corroborate its instruction with economic theories, failure of which it must issue a guaranty letter that if in the future the British government devalues, Nigeria would not be required to devalue.  To the credit of the British government, it gave the letter and issued an apology.  Ghana and other West African countries, which acted like zombies, have not recovered from the mess.  The British government, however, could not stand a strong free black man like Chief Awolowo. Instead, it clandestinely ensured he never assumed the leadership of the country.  Your government prefers the Yale Graduate Chief that would be instructed to “SAP” us, and the Chief would say “yes sir, how dry”, because he needs visa for his children.  So, their Excellency sir, the youngsters, queuing up in your Embassy, are running away from being sapped dry through the IMF program you imposed on us.

You also need to know that when your ancestors brought a ship labeled “JESUS” to transport slaves from various countries in Africa to Jamestown, Virginia, U.S.A, some of our forefathers with pain jumped the ship into the open mouth of sharks rather than come to America to be made slaves.  Nowadays, if you bring similar ship, my people would “praise worship” to London thanking God and you, for delivering them from the brutal hands of Obasanjo and his crews. What a transformation!

To ameliorate these pains, I request that you extend your ban to all serving and ex-public office holders at all levels that apply for visas for the following reasons:

·        Student visas for their children,

·        Annual general meetings,

·        Medical check up or urgent medical attention, vacation and asylum.

On a regular basis, your government should release to the Nigerian media all Nigerians whose source of money in your banks is not employment related and have accounts in your country with balances of more than ten thousand pounds for public consumption.

As a leach, I know these requests may be hard for you because a leach cannot survive without blood.  If you could do this for yourself and us, perhaps these rulers would be interested in the educational and health welfare of the masses. These are some of the basic needs for which those young and old Nigerians flee from Nigeria. Please join us in the effort to rid Nigeria of heartless rulers and looters.  If we are successful, you would have less harassment and stress at your Embassy.

Thank you for taking the time to read what I have to say out of excruciating pain.