The Chairperson of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, has weighed in on the protest in Ghana calling for the expulsion of Nigerians. She said blaming all Nigerians for the actions of a few is unfair and counterproductive.
Reacting to the ‘Nigeria must go’ protest making the rounds online, Dabiri-Erewa urged Ghanaian authorities to hold individual offenders accountable instead of tagging all Nigerians as criminals.
Her comments followed a viral video showing Ghanaians carrying placards demanding the deportation of Nigerians.
During an interview on Arise News, she recalled a case in Indonesia where most Nigerians sentenced to death were from the same state:
“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.
She continued: “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.”
She said sustained efforts have been made to reduce cases of human trafficking, and some arrests have been made.
“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.
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“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 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.”
She also raised concerns about the media’s obsession with negative narratives:
“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.”
On the diplomatic front, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, urged Nigerians to remain calm. She said there is no reason to panic.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Ghana, Ambassador Demola, said the protest wasn’t targeted at all Nigerians, but rather at individuals involved in questionable trade practices and other activities.
“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 on Arise News.
This development recalls the 1983 mass deportation of Ghanaians from Nigeria during President Shehu Shagari’s administration.