Agenda Papers Editorial: Canada can go to hell but Nuhu Ribadu should make Nigeria heaven for Nigerians—By Austine Uche-Ejeke

Once again Nigeria came in bad highlights last week with Canada denying chief of defence staff Christopher Musa and seventy other officers visa to come to Canada for an official engagement.

Ordinarily this wouldn’t have attracted much opprobrium and currency but for the way and manner the visa denial came and the response of the country’s national security adviser,Nuhu Ribadu.

For the purposes of clarity granting a visa to another country that is not your own is not right or privilege but at the mercy and discretion of the country one wishes to visit.

But in international relations there is what we call due process and recognition of sovereignty of countries as such Canada in their denial should have been more diplomatic than rubbing it in the face of Nigeria.

For instance if there are lacuna in the requirements expected from the defence chief and the accompanying officers the best they could have done is to contact the ministry of foreign affairs and tidy up the loose ends and grant the visa which from all indications is just for a few days and the contingent will be back in the country!

Just like the amiable chief of defence staff has said that the visa denial may be a blessing in disguise as every disappointment is a blessing, we intend to agree with him.

Before actually going into why we see that as a blessing we need to appraise the response of the national security adviser Nuhu Ribadu when he said that for all he cares Canada can go to hell.

We appreciate the angle Ribadu is coming from seeing his number one defence man being humiliated by not approving his visa. It is so nauseating and annoying.

But like they say two wrongs don’t make a right as such that kind of uncouth and undiplomatic gutter language from such a highly placed government official shouldn’t have been made in the first place.

Added to that the defence minister Matawale responded in a way that some international relations experts and lawyers have criticized when he said that Nigeria will retaliate the actions of Canada. Granted in international relations there is what we call doctrine of reciprocity which loosely interpreted means tit for tat and in Nigeria we call it Do me I Do You God No Go Vex. The question is this supposed to come out this time without first of all investigating what caused the visa denial.

Like one human right activist and professor of law, Chidi Odinkalu has pointed out that it’s foolishness on the part of the military and Nigeria to apply for visa to attend a winter game with 70 military officers and chief of defence staff. Whether that is right or wrong is what can be sorted out diplomatically.

To make matters worse it is the same Canada a fortnight ago that a retired senior police officer was denied asylum as the judge said that the reason was predicated on the fact that Nigerian police is notorious for bribery, extortion and all manner of evil.

Like we have alluded earlier on that it could be a blessing in disguise and we are seeing it in the angle that with this international humiliation it’s time for Nigeria the self acclaimed giant of Africa to say enough is enough and put their house in order.

For some time now Nigerians have been passing through a lot of rubbish and humiliation in their bid to find greener pasture in other countries even down to some West African countries. Some Nigerians even go as far as selling off their properties, inheritance, borrow money and undergo some rituals and oath taking just for them to travel out of the country.

In a bid to achieve that a mere visit to some foreign country’s embassies will show the level of depravity the whole thing has gone. Nigerians leave their houses as early as 3am to go and queue in these embassies to keep visa appointments. At the entrance of these embassies gate they treat Nigerians like shit and animals, leaving them in open spaces to be dealt with by the elements as rain and sun beat them mercilessly as they fight, sholve , struggle and curse themselves to be attended to by the embassy officials.

For those that are lucky to gain entrance they are further humiliated and talked down by mostly young embassy officials who may not be up to their age or the age of their children.

A horrible scenario played back around 2009 in a bid to travel to South Africa for vacation. After several days of trials to get inside for the visa and when finally inside a top South African embassy staff told me to my face that Nigeria brags about helping South Africa gain independence, that Nigeria should tell them how much they spent in that regard and they will pay us back so that we can stay put in our country and stop disturbing them. With that statement I remembered what our government went through to secure full independence for South Africans and I as a young student contributed money to emancipate this same South Africa that has now turned destination choice of Nigerians .

That is one stage of humiliation, the next stage starts on arrival of your destination and Nigerians are usually subjected to all manner of checks, fingering, frisking. In fact I understand that in some international airports they ask Nigerians to stay in a particular line to be attended to at the leisure and convenience of the country’s immigration officials.

As that is not enough coming to your host country Nigerians are meant to perform all kinds of ‘dirty and menial jobs’ which the host country’s citizens or citizens of other countries will not accept to do. They are literally forced to wash dead bodies, pack shit and urine of physically challenged, old men and women, do tedious factory work just to acquire the proverbial almighty dollars and pounds to pay their bills and repatriate some back home for investments and assistance to their folks. Imagine a situation where a 60 year old man in Canada will work in a factory standing up for ten hours, packaging products all through the night!

In fact the suffering and humiliation is out of this world but many Nigerians gladly do it because when they weigh what they suffer back home in Nigeria they will prefer to work and die in foreign countries than die in Nigeria.

The question then is what is the cause of all these and succinctly put it is the result of the wickedness of our rulers over the years which has ruined the country economically, politically, socially and otherwise. They have plundered our common wealth and patrimony, thereby making Nigerians to start a new era of slave trade but this time around it’s not the whites coming to take us but we spending our last card and begging them to take us in as slaves in this 21st century!

Somebody like Nuhu Ribadu has been in government for close to three decades as senior police officer to EFCC chairman and now national security adviser. As such he can attest to the rot in the system and what has he done
to salvage the country. Currently he is in the government where billions if not trillions are looted through phony and inflated contracts, budget padding, pillage of national resources and wealth on a daily basis and he thinks counties like Canada and others don’t hear about it and make their decisions based on that.

The same Canada he is telling to go to hell is hosting thousands of Nigerians and their annual dollar repatriation is making a huge difference in the economy of Nigeria today.

The only relevance and place of his go to hell outburst can make a difference is if he can do his best to restore the dignity of Nigeria by manning his post as national security adviser very well so that Nigerians and other nationals can feel safe to go about their normal businesses without being kidnapped and killed. This will attract direct foreign investments and even encourage Nigerians abroad to return home to rebuild the country.

Ribadu and other government officials including Tinubu as the President must see this as a challenge and affront on Nigerians and should use this opportunity to say enough is enough. They should repent and stop all this primitive accumulation of wealth and treasury looting that they have been involved in all these years.

One assurance I’m giving the country is that if things start turning around today many Nigerians in their thousands are ready to come back home to contribute their quota to the development of the country as most of them have openly voiced out that they are not happy staying in foreign man’s country. They keep on saying East or West home is the best!

On a final note it is time for Nigeria to call off the bluff of these countries which keep on insulting them, even countries like Ghana keep on humiliating Nigerians because of the situation back home that has made many Nigerians to troop to the country forgetting that there was once an era of Ghana Must Go in Nigeria.

The only remedy to Nuhu Ribadu’s go to hell is when they are ready to make Nigeria a heaven for Nigerians and this will in turn attract those in Canada and other countries back to their fatherland.

**Austine Uche-Ejeke, a public affairs analyst and publisher of Agenda Papers wrote vide eaustineuche@yahoo.com