Our bad apples
Nigerians are everywhere. Our talented folk are making us proud in many fields of human endeavour, but it is the criminal minority engaged in wire fraud, prostitution rings, drug peddling and gangsterism that the world notices. We have thus been stereotyped as a nation of dishonest people, a country of subhuman pathological bandits. But nothing could be farther from the truth as more than 99% of Nigerians are just like decent people anywhere else who are making an honest living and contributing to society.
The distorted perception of Nigerians as criminals is founded on the activities of the dregs of our society who have exported their worst elements to other shores. You can’t miss them in any of the major European capitals. They are loud and dirty and desperate and ruthless. Last October, in Rome, I saw some Nigerian boys with all their life’s belongings in their ubiquitous backpacks, selling $5 scarves near one of the tourist attractions. They were speaking a Nigerian language in offensively high decibels. The scene was like watching a pure water seller hustling for patrons at 10pm in Wuse Zone 4, Abuja. I wondered how they left Nigeria.
In many Italian cities, Nigerian prostitutes are running the local women of easy virtue out of business. There is a thriving human trafficking ring which imports young women from Nigeria and uses them as sex slaves. Data from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) shows that around 12,000 Nigerian women arrived in Italy by sea between 2015 and 2016 alone.
The most worrying aspect of the menace now is that Nigerian crime gangs in Italian cities have multiplied in recent times, controlling an extensive network of prostitutes. They have introduced increasingly violent tactics, including knife and machete crimes and even forging partnerships with notorious mafia groups, the Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia, and the Camorra. The Italian mafia has a rich history of using violence as a tool for enforcing its control of the economies of their regions and compromising the corrupt administrators of which Italy has its fair share.
In Ballarò, a mafia stronghold market area in the historic centre of the city, Italian dealers peddle hashish, marijuana and cocaine on behalf of Cosa Nostra. Now, Nigerian criminals have appeared on the scene in a subordinate relationship with the local crime kings. The blending of Nigerian cult-like criminal gangs with Italian mafia is a wedlock made in hell.
According to reports, armed robberies, murders and drug-related crimes have spread south to the Sicilian city of Palermo from larger Nigerian communities in the northern cities of Turin and Castel Volturno. Last year, the boss of notorious Nigerian criminal organisation, Black Axe, was sentenced to 12 years in jail after a number of Nigerian men were brutally attacked by agents of the convict in Palermo. It was the first mafia-related conviction of a Nigerian and the world took notice.
It is the same story in other countries. Take Spain, for example. The Thomson Reuters Foundation has published a report revealing that, “99 percent of prostitution in Catalonia is controlled by organised crime, much of it by a dominant Nigerian crime group known as the Supreme Eiye Confraternity (SEC) or Air Lords”. The Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan regional police force, has recorded some successes in recent times with the jailing of 25 trafficking gang members in the Barcelona region.
Last July, the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) exposed a ‘holy criminal’ who ran a wholesale drug ring under the cover of being an evangelist. The total weight of his cargo comprising Methamphetamine and Ephedrine destined for South Africa was 165 kg.
In the United States, one of the most celebrated fraud cases featured on the TV programme, “America’s Most Wanted”, was that involving a Nigerian who was eventually caught, tried and sentenced to 70 months in prison for conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and computer fraud, all in relation to a home equity line of credit fraud scheme that attempted to steal more than $38 million and caused approximately $13 million in losses.
Those criminals do not represent Nigeria at all. It is disheartening to hear foreigners speak as if crime is ingrained in the Nigerian DNA. I have had occasion to educate so many people who did not know better. But I’m tongue-tied when they ask me how these sorry specimens managed to raise the travel fare to Europe for their criminal career. What kind of social dislocation gave rise to a situation where criminals are celebrated in their native communities, thereby making crime rather glamorous.
We must face up to the challenge of encouraging nations currently hosting Nigerian criminals to repatriate them. The argument that those criminals send money home to their families is itself deplorable. We don’t have a shortage of good people making waves in various fields and contributing to the well being of Nigeria.
Doesn’t Nigerian blood flow in the veins of Basketball player, Akeem Olajuwon; forensic neuropathologist Bennet Omalu, the who first discovered Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in an NFL player; paediatrician Oluyinka Olutoye who performed surgery on a 23 weeks old foetus and returned it to the mother’s womb to heal and continue to grow until the baby girl was born at 36 weeks; NFL Hall of Fame inductee, Christian Emeka Okoye; auto designer Jelani Aliyu, who designed Chevrolet Volt for General Motors; cardiologist brothers Oluyemi and Olurotimi Badero with the latter also adding speciality in Nephrology in America where 77% of the Black doctors are Nigerians?!
There are so many positive things that can be said about Nigeria and its people but it will all continue to ring hollow if we, the people, and our government don’t act in concert to stem this wave of criminality spreading from our shores to far off places. Every nation has its criminals but no nation is entitled to export its dirty linen.