‘Don’t come to TRNC to study’
NIGERIANS should not come to study in the TRNC, one of the country’s top officials for its citizens abroad has said — as African students already on the island voiced concern about their treatment, in the wake of a brutal murder.
Abike Dabiri-Erewa, senior special adviser to Nigeria’s president on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, issued the warning on Twitter in response to a social media storm over the killing of Nigerian Kennedy Taomwabwa Dede, whose battered body was found in the Çanakkale reservoir last week.
The comments came after a seventh suspect, Nidai Şanlı, named by police last week as the ringleader in the fatal attack, handed himself in and said he had not meant to kill the 28-year-old former architecture student.
Quoting another Twitter user’s comment in relation to the incident, Ms Dabiri-Erewa confirmed she had asked Nigerians not to study in North Cyprus a “few years ago”, adding: “And need to re emphasise it again. May he RIP.”
African university students this week spoke of being “duped” into coming to North Cyprus.
Nigerian “AG” told Cyprus Today’s sister newspaper Kıbrıs that she had been told the TRNC was an “EU country” where it was “easy to find a job” and the cost of living was low.
“But when I came here, things proved to be very different,” she said.
She claimed landlords “did not want to let to black people” and that if they found work they were either “unable to get their wages or were paid lower wages”.
AG said this in turn meant she had been unable to pay her tuition fees and had become an “illegal immigrant” in North Cyprus.
Another female student, “AC” from Zimbabwe, said her university had refused a request to “freeze” her registration because she “owed money” to it, but was unable to earn enough to pay the debt.
“[Employers] take advantage . . . and don’t pay us,” she said. “They say ‘make a complaint’, but we can’t because we are illegal immigrants.”
Last year Cyprus Today exposed concerns that some desperate students from Zimbabwe had turned to prostitution and drug dealing to make ends meet after being tricked into applying for bogus scholarships.
New National Education and Culture Minister Cemal Özyiğit said every foreign student coming to study in the TRNC was an “ambassador”, and authorities needed to ensure they “leave the island with a good experience”.
He described Mr Dede’s killing as “a black mark” for North Cyprus and expressed condolences to the family, but added: “I don’t agree with calls on people not to come to the TRNC for study. We need to identify and address the problems and this is what we will be trying to do.”
Mr Dede’s sister, Miriam, and his friends, who have launched a “Justice for Kennedy” social media campaign, were at Gazimağusa District Court yesterday for the latest hearing, amid tight security, at which all seven suspects were remanded in custody for seven days. Şanlı, 28, who had fled to South Cyprus on January 30 but was arrested when he crossed back to the TRNC at about 3am last Saturday, told a hearing that day: “I am sorry, I did not want to kill . . . I [just] wanted to scare him.”
Police inspector Erkan Yahat told the court on Tuesday Şanlı had said in a statement that he and the others had attacked Mr Dede “to take back 1,000TL that he owed them”.