The above caption was given to me by an Ethiopian Religious leader
I ran into in Heathrow Airport in London the United Kingdom on Sunday February
8th 2015. Well before this man made this revealing and inspirational catchy
phrase during our on- the- spur of the moment conversation while waiting for a
train to arrive and take me to somewhere in central London to catch my
sleep in one of the economy hotels I booked online after a gruelling session of
traveling from Abuja my beautiful nation's capital of Nigeria something funny
happened to me as I made to pass through the British Border Post at the
prestigious Heathrow Airport [Terminal five] and these experiences will linger
in my memories for years.
I do not wish to wet your appetites any further as I intend to
just tell you what happened to me even though I do not intend to classify it as
racial profiling since the bulk of the officers of the British Border team that
I saw whilst my harsh encounters lasted were even darker in skin colour than my
humble self whose chocolate and/or ebony black colour can be mistaken for a
Black American. Americans as you may have known are well respected in Britain.
Dear beautiful readers, I was to be processed by this
beautiful looking White British Immigration officer to enter the territory of
the United Kingdom where I have chosen to spend few days holidaying after
nearly two years of working relentlessly without break but this interview that
ordinarily ought not to have lasted few minutes took approximately an hour as
this lady who is not half my age kept unleashing one question to the other
regarding why, what, when and where I planned to do in the United Kingdom and
of all the questions one of them sounded to be so awkward and revealing. She
saw my old ECOWAS passport and demanded to know when I stopped working for
ECOWAS but I repeatedly educated her that what she has before her very eyes is
Economic Community of West African Countries regional passport and
not staff identity card and its not relevant to these whole questions of
why I am in the United Kingdom.
This British Immigration officer after about twenty five
minutes of bombarding me with questions even asking why I haven't travelled
with my wife as if there is now a universal law that husbands must always
travel with their wives, she then took out a small white sheet of paper with
some printed inscriptions and signed out some few words and handed it over to
me and never allowed me the comfort of even reading through what she gave me
she matched me to a near by counter and detained me in the full glare of
thousands of international travellers. Interestingly, she excused herself with
my passports and rushed to her other colleagues and gestured to me that she
would be back in a jiffy. But who said she would? This lady kept me
detained in this open detention facility within Heathrow Airport for nearly 45
minutes and sadly while I sat down other two groups of people who were
clearly Nigerians were similarly walked into this open place and were also told
to seat and await the decision. As I glanced through that white paper served on
me I could see lots of British Immigration laws cited showing that I am
completely at the mercy of this young girl and that whatever she decides will
be followed to the last instruction regarding whether I should be allowed entry
into the United Kingdom or not. I wasn't really worried if I
would be allowed in because first of all it was my wife that practically
encouraged me to fly to the United Kingdom to take a deserved holiday
after this long period of hard work including producing a book described in a
critical The Guardian Book review page as 'Massive'. I wasn't bothered if I
would be asked to return with the next available flight since that would
greatly conserve the scarce British Pounds sterling that have become like white
falcons that can not be seen easily in Nigeria with the rapidly declining
international asking price of crude oil which Nigeria depends entirely as the only
major source of foreign revenue. So I said to myself if this girl asked that I
should be repatriated back to Nigeria at least what I have on me which I would
have spent on hotels and other freebies in the UK can comfortable finish up my
on-going building project in Owerri, the Imo state capital.
Well, discovering that she was dead wrong in keeping an innocent
man for no just cause other than she was not totally abreast of the facts
surrounding the document she saw with me, she returned and asked me to follow
her. I did. So when I thought that it is finished, she smiled and gave me back
my documents and almost like practically ushering me into 'Paradise'. Well,
before allowing me to finally go she became unusually friendly with an uncanny
sense and intelligence of still trying to discover other hidden facts about me.
She asked me why I once cancelled my trip to the United Kingdom in
December 2014 and so when I educated her that the technical hitches that
occurred in Heathrow made it impossible for flights to land for like two days
within those same times I intended to travel forcing me to cancel my trip and
further informed her that I am only recently recovering from my flight fright
or fear of flying, she looked at me with sympathy and asked if I now find it
comfortable to fly and I answered in the affirmative and so we parted ways and
I made to enter the luggage's compartments to retrieve my two bags but what I
also experienced in the hands of one hyper active customs officer is to say the
least discouraging and seriously reinforced the idea that Nigerians are
indeed the 'wretched' of the Earth if they continue to delay the much expected
revolution to fix Nigeria once and for all. If Nigeria is fixed and made to
work and all criminal elements are rein and made to pay for their heinous
crimes then some of us who even don't normally like flying around the
World would just drive by train to places like Obudu cattle ranch and even
places of interest like the Bauchi Reserves to while away time during holidays
and even save the scarce foreign currency we would blow if we travel to the
Western World. It baffles every right thinking person that Nigeria's political
elites would travel to functional nations outside the shores of Nigeria and
live in places that look like semi-paradise on Earth but would return back to
Nigeria to lord it on the poor masses and preside over the massive looting
and stealing of our commonwealth. That reminds me of this Permanent Secretary
in the current Nigerian Federal Government who once worked in the office of
Head of Service of the Federation who I saw in the first class compartments of
the British Airway flight that brought us to the United Kingdom. This same Head
of Service of Nigerian Civil Service just released a national ban on foreign
trips for top government officials and here is this same Permanent Secretary
that once worked in that office traveling to Europe in a big way
only hours after the ban on foreign trip with government fund was issued. This
same man in the days of struggle as a journalist can hardly buy himself economy
ticket but that Sunday I say him with my own eyes enjoying first class ride to
the United Kingdom even when his other political class members are dancing on
the graves of thousands of Nigerians murdered in their sleep by terrorists and
mass hunger in the land.
Away from this unmitigated digression. This custom British
officer accosted me and demanded that I opened my bags and I did. He
politely took out some of my items and run them through a computer and came
back after about five minutes and smilingly gave them back to me and wished me
happy stay in Britain.
And so when I came out after these grueling times with the British
Immigration and customs and met this Ethiopian man who saw me and asked if I am
a Nigerian and when I told him yes the next thing he told me was that he keeps
wondering why Nigerians have failed to fix their country. He said Abuja is such
a beautiful modern city and that he was shocked to constantly read in the press
that Boko Haram armed Islamic rebels are threatening to wipe out the Christian
minority tribes in North East and to ruin Nigeria and also said he was shocked
that the Nigerian military doesn't seem to know what to do to crush these
rebels and restore peace and tranquility to Nigeria. I agreed with him
particularly when he generously display good and working knowledge of Lagos and
Abuja and I too told him that I am as shocked as he s since there is no where
like home. In Nigeria Our immigration officers are so courteous that they
welcome people of different races with the smile of warmth and hospitality but
here in the Europe the immigration officers will first believe that you are a
criminal until proven otherwise by you. Why do they believe that any Nigerian
that enters legitimately into Britain may not likely take himself or herself
home? This is a hugely deficient reasoning since I myself been someone that has
travelled and returned to my home country on several counts can as well be seen
with an eye of suspicion. So you see why I said that I am dead shocked that the
Nigerian political elite are doing everything in their evil political lexicon
to destroy Nigeria so they can escape to enjoy their loots. But they are making
the worst mistake of their lives because no matter how much you may have
accumulated in your offshore accounts so long as you have no foreign passports
you would still be seen as a crook who intends to hide away from the
immigration officials. So its crazy that Nigerian can't fix Nigeria.
*Emmanuel Onwubiko heads
HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA and blogs @www.huriwa.blogspot.com;
www.rightsassociationngr.com; www.huriwa.org.
10/2/2015.
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