Nigerians' reputation for crime has made them unwelcome in Britain, says country's president
Muhammadu Buhari tells Telegraph that too many Nigerians are in jail abroad - and that they shouldn't try to claim asylum
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By Colin Freeman, Chief foreign correspondent
7:44PM GMT 05 Feb 2016
Nigeria's president has warned his fellow citizens to stop trying to make asylum claims in Britain, saying that their reputation for criminality has made it hard for them to be "accepted" abroad.
Muhammadu Buhari, the tough ex-general elected last year, said those who had joined the migrant exodus to Europe were doing so purely for economic reasons rather than because they were in danger.
He added that because of the number of Nigerians imprisoned for law-breaking in Britain and elsewhere, they were also unlikely to get much sympathy.
"Some Nigerians claim is that life is too difficult back home, but they have also made it difficult for Europeans and Americans to accept them because of the number of Nigerians in prisons all over the world accused of drug trafficking or human trafficking," he told The Telegraph.
"I don't think Nigerians have anybody to blame. They can remain at home, where their services are required to rebuild the country."
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari Photo: Paul Grover/The Telegraph
Mr Buhari's remarks may upset refugees' rights groups, who claim that the vast majority of asylum cases lodged by Nigerians are genuine. In recent years, many have said they are fleeing Boko Haram, the Islamist group that Mr Buhari's army is now struggling to stamp out in northern Nigeria.
However, only around one in ten of the 13,000 asylum claims lodged by Nigerians in Britain in the last 15 years have been accepted.
And the claims of persecution appear to cut no ice at all with Mr Buhari, a headmasterly figure who famously waged a "war on indiscipline" on his fellow Nigerians while serving as the country's military ruler in the 1980s.
• At least 50 killed as Boko Haram attacks Nigerian village
Back then, Nigerians could be whipped if they did not stand in line at bus queues, while lazy civil servants were forced to do frog jumps in the office if they arrived for work late.
Mohammedu Buhari as a young military commander
While he has not re-introduced such measures as a civilian ruler, he makes it clear that a minority of his countrymen could still do with improving their behaviour. "We have an image problem abroad and we are on our way to salvage that," he said.
• Nigerian president threatens new 'war on indiscipline'
Mr Buhari, 73, made his remarks in a wide-ranging interview during a three-day trip to London, where he was among world leaders attending Thursday's international conference on the Syrian crisis and the ongoing war on terror.
He won power last year on a pledge to take a firmer line with Boko Haram than his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, under whose watch the group kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls from Chibok in Nigeria's north east in 2014.
While Boko Haram has lost most of the territory that it controlled until last year, it has continued to mount savage guerrilla attacks, killing 65 people during a raid on a last weekend.
There is still no sign of the missing girls either, whose plight attracted worldwide publicity via a celebrity-backed social media campaign.
Despite pressure from Western governments not to make any concessions to Boko Haram, Mr Buhari said that he was willing to negotiate for the girls' release if reliable interlocutors could be found.
"As long as we can establish the bona fides of the leadership of Boko Haram, we are prepared as a government to discuss with them how to get the girls back," he said. "But we have not established any evidence of a credible leadership."
A screen capture from a Boko Haram video purporting to show the kidnapped girls Photo: AFP/Getty Images
He also said it was possible that Boko Haram's leader, Abubakr Shekau, had been replaced by another commander, although there was "conflicting information" as to his fate.
Some believe that Shekau is now either dead or on the run, while other reports last week suggested up that large numbers of Boko Haram commanders had now taken refuge in Sudan.
The prospect of Islamist fighters proliferating all over the porous Sahel region of west and central Africa is one that Mr Buhari and other African leaders are now increasingly alarmed about.
The Islamic State now controls the city of Sirte in Libya, while a resurgent Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has carried out massacres of foreigners in hotels in Mali last November and in Burkina Faso last month.
Mr Buhari traced the rising violence back partly to the fall in 2011 of Libya's Colonel Gaddafi, who used large numbers of African mercenaries from Sahel countries in his armies.
"For Africa and the Sahel, the demise of Gaddafi's regime led to a lot of armed and trained people being dispersed," he said. "Fighting is all they know, and they are available at a fee."
Born into an aristocratic family in Nigeria's Muslim north, Mr Buhari's return to power after an absence of three decades speaks volumes about Nigerian's ongoing discontent with the civilian political leaders who have served them in recent years. In the 1980s, he was one of a succession of uniformed leaders during the country's period of military rule, who argued that "a flawed democracy was worse than no democracy at all".
He pursued his vision of a more orderly Nigeria with single-minded ruthlessness, beefing up the country's secret police, prosecuting around 500 officials for corruption, and throwing journalists and anyone else who dared criticise him into jail.
In 1984, his government notoriously despatched agents to London to drug kidnap Umaru Dikko, a minister in the previous government accused of embezzlement.
The plot was only rumbled when a customs officer at Stansted Airport became suspicious about a crate marked "diplomatic baggage" that was due to be picked up by a Nigerian airliner, and opened it to find an unconscious Mr Dikko inside.
The crate in which Umaru Dikko was kidnapped in Photo: Paul Armiger/The Telegraph
The incident sparked a major diplomatic fall-out with Britain and saw four men jailed for kidnapping.
Today, Mr Buhari is again on the trail of alleged embezzlers, some of whom are accused of stealing billions of pounds from the Nigerian government during Mr Jonathan's administration. However, while one of them has already been arrested in Britain - with more arrests are expected - this time he is content to let Scotland Yard pursue them on his behalf.
"The legal process in this country is slow, sometimes a little too slow for my liking," he said. "But we still respect the system because we know it is thorough and fair."
Hi Farooq:I understand your concerns about why the leader ofa country like Nigeria, whose citizens are living onthe margins in another country should not be lendingthe weight of his office to further marginalize, criminalizeand stigmatize his own people beyond what the hostsociety already does.This incident reminds me of the broadcast of a documehtaryby CNN about 10 years ago.The documentary titled:"How To Rob a Bank" featured a young Nigerian awaiting trialfor charges relating to 419 fraulent crimes and identity theft.The young Nigerian, stated in an interview thatthere are many NIgerians like himself who are committingfraudulent crimes in Houston, Tx and many other jurisdictionsin the USA.As then Chairman of NIDO Americas, I worked with other Nigerian communityleaders to form a coalition which successfully protested and ultimatelyobtained an apology and a retraction from CNN for stigmatizing all Nigeriansin the USA by airing uncontested opinion about Nigerians from a co-compatriotwho was in a Houston jail awaiting trial for crimes he was alleged to have commited.The difference between my reaction to the CNN documentary and Buhari's statementwhich is alleged to have stigmatized Diaspora Nigerians resides in the audience and the venueof the statement.President Buhari was fielding questions at a Town Hall Meeting he heldwith Nigerians in the UK during which he was asked a question which elicitedhis response. President Buhari was addressing his own people at a special gathering to discussthe internal affairs of Nigeria and the welfare of Nigerians living and working in the UK.It is in this restricted and private setting that President Buhari uttered the words that have now becomecontroversial.If the President Buhari as the father and leader of the nation cannot speak candidly to an audienceof fellow citizens in a private setting about a matter that has ongoing major adverse impact on the imageof Nigerians at home and abroad, who else is better places to address this important topic?I would also have joined the protesters if President Buhari had mounted the podium at the British or EU parliamentor during a Press Conference anywhere in the world and uttered the same words.Bye,Ola.I would have been equally livid---- Original Message ----
From: Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tue, Feb 9, 2016 12:13 pm
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - 'We are not criminals' Nigerians tell their president
Ola,
This isn't about the verisimilitude of what the president said; it's about the reckless, boneheaded misuse of his symbolic power to perpetrate a stereotype. As president, Buhari has disproportionate symbolic powers to define and redefine national identity--and to entrench and exacerbate hurtful stereotypes.
Because immigrant Nigerians in the UK are already on the social and cultural margins of their new host communities and don't fit easily into the dominant, prevailing imagery of the society--like other marginal groups elsewhere--the infractions and transgressions of their compatriots tend to be unduly magnified and, worse, externalized to all members of the group. That's why it's dangerous and irresponsible for the president to lend symbolic imprimatur to superficial stereotypes about his people.
If a Briton, for instance, were to commit a mass murder this moment, his crime would be individualized to him. No one would be suspicious of all Britons. Britons won't lose sleep over the heinous transgression of one them because they enjoy a symbolic social and cultural privilege that normalizes and individualizes them. Not so for members of marginal groups; they always have to bear the vicarious burdens of the transgressions of their members.
That's why Muslims almost always have to apologize each time a Muslim perpetrates a terrorists act. That's why members of the Korean community in America had to apologize and live in ice-cold dread after one of them perpetrated a detestable mass murder of innocents at Virginia Tech some years ago. The examples are legion, but the point I am making is that marginal groups often feel a heightened sense of insecurity and vulnerability when any member of their group commits a crime because such instances often provide a vent for bigoted people in the host community to exteriorize their pent-up prejudices against them.
Members of of dominant, mainstream groups never have to deal with this. They never have to apologize for the crimes of people who share their incidental primordial identities.
I am saying all this to make the case that when the president of a country goes to another country where some of his compatriots have reterritorialized--and often on the margins--it is profoundly hardhearted, even conscienceless, for him to call attention to negative stereotypes about them. The only thing such ill-advised statements do is to ossify the stereotypes against his people and authorize the mistreatment and injustices the people may suffer as a consequence of the stereotypes.
This is all the more painful because in spite of Nigeria's reputation for crime and fraud, it isn't even in the top 25 most crime-infested countries. This is not to say, of course, that there are no Nigerian criminals in Nigeria and elsewhere. There are--just like there are American, Malaysian, British, French, Senegalese, Chinese, etc. criminals.
A 2014 story shows that Poland has the highest number of foreign prisoners in British jails. This is followed by Ireland, Jamaica, Romania, and Pakistan. Nigeria is a distant 6th. There is no record of any president from Poland, Ireland, Jamaica, Romania or Pakistan going to the British media to talk about "some" of their citizens being criminals.
Buhari's utterance was irresponsible and out of line. There is no way to sugarcoat this.
Farooq Kperogi--
Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media
Kennesaw State University
402 Bartow Avenue, MD 2207Social Science Building 22 Room 5092
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogAuthor of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 10:24 AM, olakassimmd via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Dear All:The Nigerian protesters are not criminals;their only problem is they can't comprehendwritten or spoken English language very well..President Buhari did not refer to Nigerians residingand working abroad as criminals.What he did was to acknowledge in open forum thatthat there are too many of us in jail in foreigncountries. This is an undisputable fact.Even though one can protest and refuse to acknowledge the truth,such denial is unlikely to change the truth into falsehood.The first step in the healing process is to accept that one hasa problem. The rest follows in a short order!Instead of protesting Diaspora Nigerians should be acknowledgingthe truth and brainstorming amongst ourselves to find solutions to apervasive problemwhich is giving Nigeria a bad name throughout the world.Bye,Ola---- Original Message ------
From: Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tue, Feb 9, 2016 10:10 am
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - fwd : 'We are not criminals' Nigerians tell their president
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