Chairperson of the Nigerians in the Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, has said that it is unfair to generalise and attribute a crime committed by a few Nigerians to the whole of the country.
Abike, who was responding to questions on the ‘Nigeria must
go’ protest going on in Ghana, called on the host nation to punish individual
offenders and not all Nigerians.
Her statement comes as a viral video on Tuesday showed a
large number of Ghanaians protesting with placards suggesting the deportation
of Nigerians.
Abike recalled an incident in Indonesia where 21 Nigerians
were put on death row and among them, 20 were from one state in the South East.
“If a few Nigerians have committed crimes on foreign soil,
they should be punished and publicly held accountable.
However, it is unfair to generalise and attribute that crime
to all Nigerians in the region,” she said on Arise News.
“You see, again we are generalizing. Don’t forget that I’ve
called people out. We have names.
“I really love calling names, and I’ve said that these
so-called Nigerians, let us know them and let them be dealt with. They can’t be
anonymous.
“So it’s the responsibility of the host country, which even
the Inspector General of Police of Ghana said. Look, I don’t want to say one
tribe. Let us know about them. We are not going to go there and beg for them.
The Nigeria embassy in Ghana has been doing a lot actually. “Look, I’ve gone to
Ghana. I can’t remember how many times I’ve gone to Ghana. If you remember when
we had cases of trafficking, we went to Ghana and brought back these girls.
“And we’ve been doing that on a regular basis, and it has
gone down, and the people behind that have been arrested. Many Nigerians and a
few Ghanaians were involved in the trafficking.
“It’s still going on, but not as much as in the past. So we
dealt with it headlong. If you say kidnapping, arrest them and jail them. Lock
them up.
“When I mention these things, sometimes this tribe you’re
kind of talking about, we say, Oh, is it because it’s us?
“No, like I said, crime as a federal character. In
Indonesia, we had 21 Nigerians on death row. We went to the Indonesia prison
and we spoke to them, and we begged them, and they said, our laws will stand.
“Four were executed, and they are still there and then one
was saved through the intervention of Barrister Emmanuel, but they are still
there. But you know what?
“When we went into that prison, I’ve said it before, and I
said again, 21 of them, 20 were from one state in the southeast 20, the other
one was one Edo state.
“But at the same time, that doesn’t mean you should
generalize and say everybody in that state is a criminal, and the governor of
that state has tackled the issue.
“However, there are some very good stories. And here’s the
problem, it’s only the bad stories that trend. What about those thousands of
Nigerians that are developing those countries? What about those thousands of
Nigerians that if they leave some countries today, it will affect them, that
those are the stories we celebrate.
“However, the media is only interested in bad news that
trends and is traffic driven. If that, in Ghana, you had 10,000 people come out
and say Nigerians are the best. Nobody would talk about it.
“So I think that’s just the way it is. Bad news travels
fast.”
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs,
Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, has appealed for calm over the matter, noting that there
is “no cause for alarm.”
Earlier, the Nigerian High Commissioner to Ghana, Ambassador
Demola, said the protest is not against all Nigerians but against some persons
with undesirable activities in Ghana.
“I think the focus is on the tertiary traders and people
whom I would describe as probably undesirable to their system, to their
economy,” he said in an interview on Arise News.
Recall that in 1983, there was a mass deportation of
Ghanaians from Nigeria under former President Shehu Shagari.
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