The nose went hysterical with laughter as the eyes shed tears not knowing that it’s only a matter of time before it begins to drip uncontrollably too. An adult unlike the underage has more power of choice, which is why the weight of the law most time comes down more on him when he errs. And because it is just a thin line between what is expedient and what is good, God knowing fully well that men will attempt to hide behind the finger of expedience to perpetrate evil and hurt each other says in the Holy Bible that ‘not all that is expedient is good’. Dele Giwa paraphrasing the Bible said “Any evil done to man by man will surely be redressed if not by man definitely by God for the victory of evil over good can only be temporary. The responses to ‘The Nigerian shame in London’ part one where most Nigerians justified the shameful act of scamming is a pointer to one thing; that the Nigerian followership is as bad as the leadership. The followership is therefore fast breeding the likes of Babangida, Alamieyeseigha, Ofonogoro, Babatope, Ikimi, Abacha, Waya, Uba, Akinloye, Nzeribe, Merije, Fayoshe, Tafa, et cetera.
Since not many people agreed to the exposition on the disgraceful attitudes of some Nigerians in London I have therefore resolved to further provide more objective analysis and culls of responses for the benefit of those who may yet have change of hearts to condemn what these scammers and spoilers do to affect our lives in totality, remember they are reading as well. They are our brothers and sisters as whatever affects the nose must take it toll on the eyes as well.
We have had so many terrible and heart breaking stories about Nigerians in the UK, shall we now sweep them under the carpet and pretend everything is alright? The nose suffers too kee! We have heard and seen people suffer directly as a result of the shameful attitudes of our brothers and sisters in London. An example is Jah Guda, response to ‘The Nigerian shame in London’ – Part I on the village square;
Jah Guda
“My friend has just started a business here in London; he set up two months ago and has been unable to open a business account with any of the major banks. Now he is trying to open an account with one of the building societies. It is a problem that affects innocent Nigerians and we all know what Western societies are like, they will constantly dwell on the negative, their argument is ‘good news does not sell newspapers’. Only last week another Nigerian was jailed for swindling £2 million from the bank accounts of Halifax building society customers, this made TV, radio and print news”.
The BBC got so much commendation each time they exposed bad Nigerians, hence so much search light is placed on us. Because of the recent development it has become a way of life for Nigerians to be the most delayed and interrogated by the police when stopped on the streets of London. A friend told me recently that a police stopped a Nigerian for searching and asked for his identity; he immediately claimed to be a Jamaican, the police told him to keep quiet and said “I know a Nigerian when I see one”. ‘Omo ale ni fi owo osi juwe ile Baba re’. It is only a child that has paternity limbo surrounding his birth that will condescendingly point to his father house with a left finger.
A young Nigerian graduate who came to London to write a professional examination left his luggage that had his Nigerian passport in a car only to return to discover that the car was gone. When he reported the incident to the police he was advised to go and recover it wherever he hid it as they have countless record of false claims of missing Nigerian passports, so his report was not taken seriously by the police. He was stranded for weeks, overstayed his visitor’s visa, and lost the opportunity to ever return to the UK. Nigerians have become a source of cheap headlines for the media so much so that even the BBC Radio ran several documentaries on Nigerians. The most remarkable one was about one Mrs Owolabi whose charity organisation that was being partly funded by the government fell flat for the Somali bait set by the BBC. The undercover journalist uncovered how she has been a racketeer that was providing fake National Insurance numbers for employment purpose. I was ashamed by her denial when confronted with the recorded conversation she had with the BBC planted Somali, she even swore by her children before the BBC radio crew just to prove she was innocent.
We also read about the Nigerian born British Immigration officer that was selling British indefinite resident permits. When she was detained the newspaper reported that loads of fake resident permits were discovered in her apartment and also apprehended in the apartment was a young man who just arrived from Nigeria with one of those fake permits.
Some people dread to associate with Nigerians and those who dare to pay dearly by being on guard 24/7; an example is Patricia M. Daboh who responded to “The Nigerian shame in London part I” posted on www.nigeriansinamerica.com
10 comments
Dear Carmen,
Very unfortunate, I have quite a few friends from Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, etc your loss…You should be ashamed to display your immaturity, after all this means that you are making judgements on other people without 'knowing' them. AMAZING!!!!!
I am a Kenyan in my early 30’s and as long as i remember right from the time i was a kid,i was warned not to associate with Nigerians.I know there must be lovely Nigerians out there but when all your life all you here is negative things,you tend to be weary of them.I have no Nigerian friends because i am ashamed to say,i have never trusted them.
Excellent article!!
excellent
Ronke,
I understand your point quite well and respect your opinion as well but you can not deny the fact that there are no times you wish you could avoid these Nigerians who bring shame to the mother land. There is a popular Yoruba adage that ‘ti oju ban se ipin oye ki afi won oju, another one also says ‘Ti ako basofun obayeje pe on bayeje arope won jijo n’tunse ni’.
Posterity will not forgive us if we continue to treat this issue of image tarnishing with kid gloves. We must speak against this ills of ‘get rich by all means’ attitude otherwise it will be too late.
I am a proud Nigerian and I never hide this fact, I am an IT consultant in the UK with a Telecoms giant, everyone look forward to Fridays when I relish in the show of beauty of my African (Yoruba precisely) garb. They all know I am from Nigeria, for the singular reason that I am happy to wear my tribal clothes a white colleague who worked with shell petroleum, Nigeria in the 80s speaks Yoruba to me occasionally and eventually picked interest in me and we are very close friend now.
Shall we because other countries are into the same shameful societal ills cover or glorify our own? So, Ronke cool down and let’s bash these bad ones amongst us till they reduce in number if they can not give it up all at least. ‘Omo oson lon ko kondo ba Iya e’.
Thanks
Dele Oluwole
I am a solicitor by profession and encourage the freedom of speech and expression.
Sometimes i wish there can be laws to restricting some writeups from being published, very sorry as i feel bitter after reading all these. Ghanaians and citizens from other countries in Africa are involved in all these crimes mentioned above.it is not as if it is perculiar to nigerians.
I live in London and have lived the better part of my life here. I am proud to be a nigerian any time any day.
If you and i start working on creating a good public relations for Nigeria, we all would benefit.
Remember the children of today and tomorrow.
For once we nigerians should learn to say good things about ourselves. I would not have bothered replying to this article but i am getting sick and tired of nigerian bringing themselves down.
so many things are happening everywhere in the world,the indians,Americans even the british are involved in crimes.
can we please, please and please put an end to all these bad public relations.
There are so many goods things nigerians are doing out there why not promote all these.
Alot of young peolple who are nigerians are achieving great things out there.
Have you of recent taken time out to research. There is ‘kanu Nwak’ not sure of the spelling of his name, the greatfootballer, there is pastor Paul Adefasin of the ‘house on the Rock’, this is a man God is using to touch the lifes of young generations all over in the world.
Seyi and kunle of the ‘jungle production’ in nigeria, have you seen the quality of the adverts they produce on a daily basis.
There is ‘oluwole aduwo’ one of the greatest 3d animators in the world to mention but a few.
Please wake up.and for heavens sake stop all these type of write ups.
I once read in an article by a Nigerian that we've allowed the western newspapers to demonize us. Well, the truth is I don't need nobody to tell me what we are made of, I stayed in Nigeria for the first 30yrs of my life, I have lived in the north, east and west. I schooled and worked for years in Nigeria, I don't need anybody white or black to tell me who my people are. I know them, and I know them well. Mr. Dele, I fully support your article, some people all in the name of fake patriotism might think otherwise. Of a truth, the westerners have their own evil, but it is the Nigerians that I care about because it affects me and so many others like me. I love my country and I pray the scammers will continue to meet their downfalls.
If this article was written by a Pakistani, Arab or Kenyan it will have been thus: why are we constantly penalised by the world when we are exactly the same as them? Ah! But not a Nigerian, they prefer instead to believe exactly what agents write daily about us and totally become bamboozled into think they have a problem that no one else have, they lack the power to critique such farcical interpretations!
There are those Nigerians who affiliate with foreign agents to pour scorn on their country and fellow Nigerians, the writer of this lame article is one of such Nigerians who feel subjacent in their person and cannot stand up to face the reality that Nigerians are scammers and criminals like all other Nations of the world. Why should ours be any different? How did Nigerians let the hype happen?
Why should we bear a greater brunt for crimes less heinous than those committed by the accusers?
Highlighting only the negative in a section of society will only serve to create the perception that they are only good for unholy activities. If 150 million Nigerians are all scammers there will be nothing left in any country outside Nigeria, our precocity attests to that!
The only reason our name has been dragged thorough the mud and continues to be so is due to self-pity article like these, the British don’t go round the world discussing they have a serious paedophilia problem. They will not tell you not to leave your child with a white English person because some of them are know to sexually attack little children.
The African-Americans may know that there are hourly occurrences of black on black killings, drive by shootings, murder, and drug dealing in their community but that is not the central theme of their existence. I can say similar about other sections of the world societies. Why for the life of me has Nigerians taken crimes committed by some Nigerians as the backbone of our citizenship and given foreign agents the tool to further desecrate and subjugate our nationality?
On many occasion when Nigerian and non-Nigerians have discussed scam I have tried to talk about terrorism, scam in other sections of societies, illegal wars, arranged marriages, honour killings, racism, paedophilia, burglary, car jacking, white collar crimes but they were not interested.
The impression given and my deductions from these encounters is that….NIGERIANS ARE THE EASIEST PEOPLE TO PICK ON.
Miss or Mrs She anonymous, thanks for your response to the part II of ‘The Nigerian shame in London’ the true sons of the soil have provided whatever reply I would have loved to answer you with at nigeriavillagesquare.com
Thanks
Dele Oluwole
LOL! Anonymous villain indeed! Everybody is entitled to their own opinion…just as you are entitled to write your article. I am of the school of positive opinion and would rather read an artle by Paul Aduije who tells me how I can move my country forward from the Diaspora than to join the Western media to flog a country and a continent they have already decimated. I do not deny that there are Nigerian scammers but so are there Russian, American, British etc. It is what you project into the mind of a person that he/she will become. So I choose to project positive things. I can understand your disappointment and annoyance in your country people but what have you done lately to make Nigeria a better place? Thanks for your little scripture at the end but I will add this to it. "The curse causeless shall not alight". For your info. I am a 'She' not a 'He'!