{"id":46503,"date":"2016-02-15T11:47:23","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T10:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/?p=46503"},"modified":"2016-02-15T11:47:23","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T10:47:23","slug":"buhari-nigerias-negative-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/articles-opinions\/buhari-nigerias-negative-image\/","title":{"rendered":"Buhari And Nigeria’s Negative Image"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michael Egbejumi-David<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Some thirty years or so ago, Fela had a hit song titled, \u2018Beast Of No Nation\u2019 in which he sang, \u201cI never hear that before o, make government talk o, my people are useless, my people are senseless, my people are indisciplined.\u00a0 Which kind talk be that o…?\u201d<\/p>\n

Fela was referring to Buhari\u2019s military government.<\/p>\n

30 years on, nothing\u2019s changed: President Buhari is still socking it to his people, still disparaging his people, still bad-mouthing them in the committee of nations.\u00a0 In a recent interview\u00a0with a British newspaper, Buhari declared that Nigerians abroad have made it difficult for Europeans and Americans to accept them because of the number of Nigerians in prisons all over the world accused of drug trafficking or human trafficking.\u00a0 He finished off by saying, \u201cWe will encourage our countrymen to stay at home, work hard and make a respectable living at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

There goes our number 1 ambassador perpetrating negative stereotypes again.<\/p>\n

Really Nigeria doesn\u2019t need Buhari\u2019s type of unhelpful intervention right now.\u00a0 It will further worsen its citizens’ marginalisation abroad and increase prejudice against all Nigerians.\u00a0 Secondly, a president who habitually goes overseas for medical treatment has no standing at all to tell other Nigerians to stay home.\u00a0 The same factors, same conditions at home that propels the president into the arms of doctors in a foreign land are the same that drives many Nigerians abroad.\u00a0 Everyone\u2019s life and future is dear to them and they\u2019ll do everything possible to make sure they get the best they can get \u2013 not just presidents.<\/p>\n

No, Buhari did not say that all Nigerians abroad are criminals but he abdicated his responsibility when he threw some of his own citizens under the bus in a foreign land to a foreign media.\u00a0 That can never be cool.\u00a0 It is already hard for some Nigerians in the UK in light of the recent recession and the influx of Eastern Europeans into that country.\u00a0 For our own president to put his boot in is very disheartening.\u00a0 Buhari has handed the UK government and other racists another (official) weapon with which to further marginalise Nigerians.<\/p>\n

Is there more crime in Nigeria than in the USA?\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 Are there more criminals in Nigeria than in the UK?\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 Who are the number 1 foreign prisoners in the UK? \u00a0The Polish.\u00a0 Nigeria is not even in the top 5.<\/p>\n

Without Nigerian Doctors and Nurses, the UK NHS will struggle very badly – maybe even collapse for a short while.\u00a0 If all Nigerians in the IT and Social Work sectors in the UK pull out, those sectors will struggle.\u00a0 Nigerian Pastors nko?\u00a0 Ditto for the USA; if Nigerian Educators down tools, that sector of America will struggle.\u00a0 Perhaps these were what the president could have flagged up in his interview.\u00a0 If he later meets with Nigerians in a private Nigerian forum, he could tell them off.\u00a0 He could remind the few yahoo boys to lay off, return home and stop giving the country a bad name.\u00a0 Rather it was the President who gave the country a black eye.<\/p>\n

I spent 33 years living abroad; Brazil, USA and the UK in that order.\u00a0 I tell you, sometimes it wasn\u2019t easy image-wise.\u00a0 The first stigma we faced in those days was that we were a brilliant people under un-dignifying military yoke.\u00a0 Then the Yahoo and credit card boys came in the 1990s and made life really uncomfortable for every Nigerian.\u00a0 A few drug dealers came later.\u00a0 I never heard of human trafficking.<\/p>\n

Back then, even our Embassy and Consular staffs (from Rio de Janeiro to London) treated their fellow Nigerians like unwanted people.\u00a0 You\u2019d be lucky if you could get anyone in those places to talk to you.\u00a0 You\u2019d be luckier if you got your passport sorted in 2 months.\u00a0 At its height, one chap who went by the imaginative name of Alhaji Alhaji who happened to be our High Commissioner (Ambassador) in London, in a fit of undiplomatic hysteria, declared that most Nigerians in the UK were criminals and wondered aloud why the British government issued them visas.\u00a0 Only God and a few privileged angels knew what provoked the man.<\/p>\n

However, things began to improve in the 2000s thanks in part to the efforts of former president Obasanjo, and largely due to the excellence and achievements of 2nd<\/sup> generation Nigerian Diaspora.<\/p>\n

It is Buhari\u2019s primary task to make our image problem abroad better.\u00a0 However, in his second coming, it seems to me that Buhari is only interested in bending over backwards to please and pander to our erstwhile colonial masters when there is absolutely no need for it.\u00a0 It took the government of Murtala\/Obasanjo in the mid 1970s to take on the British head-on and get us some much deserved respect.\u00a0 We seem to be going backwards in that regard again.\u00a0 We seem to be taking instructions from Downing Street, in particular, and the European Union in general before we make any moves in Nigeria.<\/p>\n

The Wikileaks revelations of a few years ago where our very senior government officials were falling over themselves and couldn\u2019t wait to blab to low level Western diplomats was a painful read.<\/p>\n

I do not see how Buhari\u2019s latest remark would encourage any potential investor to come to Nigeria.\u00a0 The president ought to know that his main job is to defend Nigeria and Nigerians everywhere; not to put us down in foreign media in the hope to please foreign leaders.\u00a0 That is old and it is unproductive.<\/p>\n

\n

demdem@hotmail.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

Twitter: demdemdem1<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michael Egbejumi-David Some thirty years or so ago, Fela had a hit song titled, \u2018Beast Of No Nation\u2019 in which he sang, \u201cI never hear that before o, make…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-opinions"],"yoast_head":"\nBuhari And Nigeria's Negative Image - Pointblank News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/articles-opinions\/buhari-nigerias-negative-image\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Buhari And Nigeria's Negative Image - 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