One thing I love about Nigerians everywhere I have come across them, from London to Paris, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Dubai, India, Asia and the Big U.S.A, they are always proud and full of pride, without talking, the way they walk, dress, and their demeanour shows they are Nigerians, the biggest population in Africa!.
Nigerians always make me proud, they are eloquent, vibrant and competitive in all manner of things. Whether good or bad, Nigerians are always ahead of the game, educated to the highest level, from Oxford, to Cambridge Universities and the likes, Howard to Harvard!. The Professors, Doctors, Lecturers, highly intellect and distinct. I remembered when I was in Portugal and I saw black people there after being in town for over 1 week, I was so happy but he instantly said to me oh I am not Nigerian!, I said how did you know I was one he said the way I dressed and walk. Wow! it was either I was an American or Nigerian.
The we have the dark side the disturbing side, when you see a Nigerian Bank Manager sweeping the streets of London, Professors cleaning toilets performing jobs they wouldn’t do back home, looking after sick people wiping their bums for a few pounds. Why so, because Nigeria has become impossible to live in, the economy is so corrupt, the national kitty bank is in the hands of a few, who share it between each other, it has become a family business where people are so power hungry they are ready to die to become a politician, to lay hands on the ‘petrol money’ and leave the masses to dwindle in poverty. No infrastructure, no welfare, no basic amenities. Nigeria still has no Light and no water!
Nigerians are leaving their motherland in thousands every day, desperate to get out of the country no matter what it takes, some by plane, some by road, some by water. Hundred’s die daily, stuck underneath lorries, packed together in cargo lorries, ferry sinks and they die at sea, some trek days, travel through Africa, Libya to get to Europe, they seek solace in the hope of finding a breakthrough.
However, the shock and sharp contrast is, they are better off staying back in Nigeria, I don’t understand why anyone will go to Ukraine, Russia, Portugal, Germany Italy to stay. First of all there is a language barrier you have to overcome, they are racists, some treat Africans like dogs.
In Italy you cannot have a white collar job, so the men work as tomato pickers and the women as house maids working all hours of the day. Germans and Italians treat them like sex slaves, the men either marry their grandma or the women sleep with animals. I remembered when I was in Ukraine I was escorted everywhere I go by white guards, in case we get kidnapped and beheaded!. It is still true that blacks are classified as ‘no class’ citizens in some countries. The best country I have so far who treat their foreigners fairly is the United Kingdom and the USA.
Why am I saying this, it is in the hope that Nigerians back home will read my blog and stop being desperate to leave our homeland, Nigerians who come to UK and decide to stay illegally, loose their livelihood, they can’t work, attend school or even receive treatment in hospitals!. It is that bad. When they are caught as illegal Immigrants they are treated like dogs, crammed in prison cells, sometimes beaten, humiliated and at the end when they are fed up go back home with absolutely nothing.
Ruth Benjamin of Nigeria (C) is seen in a cell in a police station before her deportation from the Russian Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk April 23, 2012. Benjamin arrived in Krasnoyarsk as a student and is being deported for a visa violation
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| young Nigerian immigrant behind bars -Ruth Benjamin |
The question I ask is then, with all this wahala, is it truly worth it? I say NO!
my readers you agree or not?
