Nigeria

The Spanish Government Should Cover its head in Shame!!!

/ Adeola / 2 Comments

Adeola Aderounmu.

A Nigerian named Osamuyia Aikpitanhi was killed by Spanish Police on June 9 2007. One year later, the policemen who killed Osamuyia have not been successfully prosecuted. The story goes that the Spanish authority will protect its officials even when they commit rape, murder and other heinous crime. What a scandalous country!

Osamuyia was killed on a notorious Iberia Flight while being forcefully deported to Nigeria. His corpse is still lying cold in a Spanish Mortuary more than 1 year after he was murdered.

Can one sane person in Spain kindly tell the government to release the body for burial in Nigeria? The father, mother and family member of Osamuyia are still mourning the death of their son and brother.

Please and please release the body of the man for burial in Nigeria and let him get a final peaceful rest.

The world is full of injustices and this act of racism which is profound in Spain needs to be totally condemned. That is a story for another day.

Please again, I am instructing the Spanish government to release the corpse of this young man so that his family can bury him. It is time for him to rest.

Here is the link to the latest news about the MURDER OF OSAMUYIA

Nigerian (Illegal) Government shows signs of weakness.

One of the conclusions I can draw from this shame of the Spanish government is that the Nigerian Government is also a very useless one.

Imagine that a Nigerian was murdered in Spain in 2007 and the government did almost nothing about it. Worse still, the government made no effort to press for the release of the corpse.

Really, who are these mad men in power? Can someone anywhere in the world please do something and help the family of Osamuyia to get his corpse released for burial.

Wale in Geneva: Are Nigerians Abroad More “Human” Than Nigerians At Home”?

/ Adeola / 8 Comments

By Adeola Aderounmu.

This article is a follow up to The French Embassy in Nigeria must be useless

Wale is now in Switzerland and I must say that while I respect the views of other people I find it unbelievable that some Nigerians will defend the behavior of the French.

Why do the foreign embassies respect Nigerians living abroad but disrespect Nigerians at home? Why are they more relaxed with their visa application rules with the same Nigerians abroad than at home? Are Nigerians abroad more human than Nigerians at home?

It is true that many of us have travelled out on visiting visas and never returned home. It is also true that many of us have travelled abroad to study and established niches for ourselves after our studies instead of returning home. However, it is still not the duty of the embassies to deny visas to prospective/regular travelers, students, private persons or civil servants who can demonstrate the genuineness of their proposed trips.

These various countries have functional immigration monitoring authorities. However, on a global basis, immigrants have found ways to beat different systems and stay illegally in various countries. In other cases, some temporary migrants have gone through normal procedures to prolong their resident permits. Sometimes employment, businesses and new family ties offered the ways to settle in another country. With the arrival of the internet, there are now no limits to travel opportunities.

As an illustration on the title on this essay, let me take just two examples. In 1999 Tayo was denied a UK visa in Lagos. In 2002 after studying in Sweden for just 5 months he was offered a 6 months visa to the UK. It was on that occasion only that Tayo had to apply using an invitation letter from a friend who resides in London.

With subsequent applications, he put his forms and passport in the mail and each time the passport was returned with UK visa affixed. He didn’t have to appear for the other UK visas that he got and there were times that he didn’t even bother to make the trip after obtaining the visas! To obtain a UK visa now, he has to show only that his permit in Sweden is still valid!

In what ways are Tayo’s applications more credible nowadays than when he was living in Lagos? Why was Tayo’s application to the UK acceptable in Stockholm but not in Lagos? Why was Wale’s application to France unacceptable in Lagos? Why doesn’t it matter that Wale had a valid Swiss visa to attend a course? Why does it not matter to the embassy of France in Nigeria that Wale’s passport contains valid visas to several countries including UK and USA or that he had traveled extensively in Europe before? Why is a hotel booking in Paris more important than Wale’s travel possibilities and options?

The difference of course is that Wale still resides in Nigeria and Tayo is now studying in Sweden. So it is essentially useless to these foreign embassies how many times you have travelled before or how many Nigerian passports you have exhausted. Are they not telling us that we are less human at home? Doesn’t it mean that they are using their "so called" discretion to humiliate us?

So Tayo is now more human than Wale, abi be ko ? I also know Femi. Femi was denied a visa to the UK as well. He is a vet doctor and he had been admitted to a school in the UK. He failed to secure a visa that would have enabled him to attend the Masters program. Anyway in 2005 Femi landed in Uppsala in Sweden for a similar Masters program and he told me that he would still like to go to the UK to make enquiries about his school. What happened next?

Femi secured a visiting visa to the UK. Just like Tayo he never had to go to the embassy twice. As I write this article, Femi is on his second summer holiday visit to the UK and he didn’t have to visit the UK embassy in Stockholm. He also got his visa by post and didn’t have to do any useless interview. By the way, he is now studying for his PhD degree.

Suddenly Femi is more human now because he is living in Sweden. If he had been given the UK visa in Nigeria (by my interpretation of the embassy’s decision to deny him a student visa) he would have gone to the UK and disappear into thin air like some other people did. The foreign missions and embassies in Nigeria must learn how to judge individual applications on its own merit irrespective of what others have done after being granted entry visas.

Indeed, Nigerians travel daily and MMA is never empty but the conditions under which we get the visas to travel out of Nigeria makes me wonder if applying for a visa makes us less human than when we are repeating the same application on another soil. If it is because of a hotel booking that the French denied Wale an entry visa, then they probably consider him less human and untrustworthy.

Yes, thank you! I know that they have standard procedures…why are these procedures not followed when we start to live abroad legitimately? Is it because we are now suddenly more human or is it a direct consequence of the society that we live in. Yea, it’s so cheap to blame the arrogance and the ineptitude of the embassies on Nigeria and Nigerians even if those are strong factors. In my own opinion, an embassy that cannot refund money for visas not granted is a looting organ.

In the meantime, many other questions and humiliating rules are begging for answers. Why do the embassy shield applicants away for a specified period of time when it is actually possible to provide missing items in less than 24 hours. A hotel booking can be provided in less than 1 hour-it’s just a phone call away. There are other questions and legitimate/ genuine travelers who are still suffering in the hands of the embassies can fill them in.

I hope that my friend

    Hakeem Babalola

can see one of the reasons why many Nigerians will pick up dual citizenships or a single foreign citizenship when the opportunity beckons. Ever heard about the expression: visaless countries? The experiences at the embassies can be frustrating, heartbreaking and humiliating (in your own country and abroad too). I wish Wale a nice stay in Geneva and Lugano and a safe trip back to Abuja come July 5.

Those Nigerian Tropical Gangsters Again?

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Adeola Aderounmu.

Babangida, Buhari and Abdulsalami are obviously sick men. Abacha is one of these mad men but he died to the abundant joy of millions of Nigerians.

These men are among the people who brought shame and dishonour to our dear country Nigeria. It is still very amazing how we have been fooling around in this country. As a matter of fact, we are still dancing around in circles since the independence in 1960.

Why are these mad men still seen dancing naked in public places? It is very difficult to blame these shameless men who continue to parade themselves around like nonentities.

The fact is that no one has been bold enough to tell them their real names to their faces. Babangida is a thief. Buhari is a thief and Abdulsalami is a thief. The most untold truth in Nigeria is that all our politicians and autocratic leaders are thieves. The difference and the battle among them is how much they are capable of stealing yet escaping the Nigerian short arm of the law.

In 2008, 21st century jet age and globalize world, some idiots who stole, looted and ripped Nigeria to pieces will open their dirty stinking mouths that Abacha did not steal! Nonsense! These people are mad. If we follow the sharia law that they are supposed to be practicing, they should all be amputated and thereafter stone to death in open places.

Since the rule of law has died a natural and sudden death in Nigeria, people who stole and merry with our commonwealth can have the audacity to return into our lives anytime they like and tell us what they think in their korofo skull.

If there is rule of law in Nigeria, where does Babangida thinks that his correspondence address would be since 1993? Where does Buhari, Abdulsalami and the other thieves think that they would have been receiving visitors? Please o, I am tired of this rubbish. Let these men just shut up and continue to enjoy their loots until they rot away. Every living thing must rot anyway. Vanity of men!

Enough of these insults to our collective intelligence. In their idleness and madness if they have nothing to do, they should just sleep or take a trip to a place of solitude where no one can hear or record the insanity emanating from their fractured cerebrals.

Abacha did not steal from Nigeria? Ok, it is my mother who stole billions and stashed them away in several banks at home and abroad. What a way to go? Even madam Abacha had the guts to appear in public places. What is she parading? Shame? Insanity? Both?

This country remains in square one all the time. Few are enjoying and millions are suffering. The calamities of this nation continue despite all the attempts by the present illegal leadership and past dictators to paint it otherwise.

No regime or leadership in Nigeria should be taken seriously at all. Any leader that wants to be taken seriously must be ready to do the unthinkable and lay his or her life for the prosperity of Nigeria. History of corruption had been written and re-written time and time over again. Almost no tangible positivity has emerged on the war on corruption.

If people like Babangida continue to live as freemen and as a matter of fact if he dies a freeman, the coffin of Nigeria would have been laid forever. It will be cited in our annals as a reference for the ability to loot, steal, kill and walk free. He should face the consequences of his misdeeds before anything else

If Nigeria must make progress, the biggest giant step will be to round up these thieves and murderers in and out of power and send them to where they belong. That will immediately awaken all the present and current looters to know that governance means service and not looting and killing.

There is nothing that has not been said about Nigeria but there is a lot that has not been done to set the records straight. One of our biggest deficiencies is the mentality that governance is a means to acquire wealth and make money. The lack of prosecution or the use of selective prosecution has made many sacred but mad cows to roam our biosphere and parade their ineptitudes.

What a pity that we can still be fed with these types of jargons by the men who catalysed and accelerated the destruction of our great country. It is very annoying. It is inexplicable and it shows that this country is in bondage. It is absolutely within the fangs of some tropical gangsters whose folds continue to multiply and manifest in various forms. This country Nigeria needs Deliverance

The French Embassy in Nigeria must be useless!

/ Adeola / 42 Comments

Adeola Aderounmu.

It is annoying that one stupid and ignorant person at the Embassy with probably a Secondary School Certificate was the one that attended to me and turned me down- Wale A.

I am very angry right now.

What are the roles of the foreign embassies in Nigeria? Why do the semi-literates in these embassies deny Nigerian professionals and others the basic right to acquire entry visas that will allow them visit many countries in Europe and other places?

A recent case at the French embassy in Nigeria is still causing a source of agitation in my mind and here I will narrate the story. Wale has worked as a professional banker for more than 15 years. In these 15 years or more, he has travelled to all the continents on planet earth. First he worked in Lagos on Marina Street with Nigerian’s foremost merchant bank.

About 5 years ago like many of his contemporaries Wale relocated to Abuja and took up another job but still in the banking industry. This year alone, Wale has travelled to the United States on a number of occasions. He has also been to the United Kingdom, Dubai and Malaysia. Wale has travelled the entire length and breadth of Nigeria and Africa. As I write this article, he is on his way to Asaba, then to Onitsha and then Aba.

This has been the nature of Wale’s job for over a decade-travelling and meeting with clients and seeking the prosperity of Nigeria. When he leaves Aba at the end of this week, he would be on his way to Switzerland but this time for the purpose of education to advance his professional life and this is where the crux of my anger with the French Embassy in Nigeria sets in.

Wale will attend a professional course in Switzerland for 3 weeks starting June 16. At the end of the course, the school is offering a school trip to Paris by bus. Wale would definitely like to be part of the trip after which he would also like to take a flight to Sweden where his younger brother lives.

Switzerland is not a member of the EU and she is also not a Schengen state. Hence, Wale turned to the French Embassy for a schengen visa since all schengen countries offer that. Unfortunately, Wale was denied a schengen visa by the French. It was only at the interview that they told him to present a hotel booking in Paris.

Wale explained to them at the embassy that he was not going to stay in Paris, that his destination is Sweden. But anyway if they wanted a booking for a hotel in Paris, this would have been easily done by Wale or his brother in Sweden. Wale spent a great deal of time explaining the entire situation to the nonentities at the French embassy, but they were hell-bent on denying him the visa. If he was to present the hotel booking in Paris, he cannot do that until another 15 days at which time the course would have started in Geneva. The embassies have a silly rule that keeps a failed applicant away for minimum 15 days.

How can a man who is going to Geneva be denied a schengen visa to Paris? It is totally despicable and nonsensical. It is absolute rubbish! Wale has been to Sweden before in 2005. Then he was on a business trip to Brussels and he had a Schengen visa so it was easy to take a flight to Sweden. He stayed for only 5 days and went back to Nigeria.

I don’t know how many Nigerian passports wale has used in the last 15 years but it must be quite a number. Why didn’t the half-educated people at the French embassy have a thorough look at the visas and stamps on these passports? I am very mad right now as I imagine the trauma that they put Wale through.

He was really upset at this development and he regretted that he didn’t turn to the Swedish Embassy in the first place. I mean what difference does it make? A man is going to Paris and would like to touch Sweden before he returns to work in Abuja. He presented his ticket to those fools but that didn’t matter. How could he have known that the people working at the French embassy in Nigeria have no initiatives of their own? That they are completely stereotyped dummies.

Wale is just one of the several legitimate cases of Nigerians who have been denied the right to travel out of Nigeria to pursue one thing or the other. A number of students have been traumatized because they cannot obtain visa to further their education abroad. Many legitimate Nigerian tourists are locked down there without right to get back their application fees or to even re-apply. In a way, the foreign embassies in Nigeria have continued to rip millions of naira from Nigeria every year.

If the embassy is in doubt of an application, what does it take them to crosscheck with the destination of the applicant? In Wale’s case, what is the doubt about? He has a visa to Switzerland and I am pretty sure he still has valid entry visas to the US and UK? What is their problem? They should give me one reason why Wale will stay in Paris if he was given a Schengen visa.

I am actually using this medium to call the French Embassy to order. If this is what they do to legitimate travelers, then they should pack out of Nigeria forthwith. If there are more embassies like the French Embassy, then the Federal Government should wake up and have a chat with them. They cannot continue to threat Nigerians with contempt in Nigeria? We don’t do similar things to them when they apply to visit our country. That is unacceptable and this is the message Wale wanted me to get across to the Nigerian Government.

The mad militants; Nigerians killing Nigerians

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Adeola Aderounmu

It is up to the federal government of Nigeria to acknowledge or deny the existence of the several wars going on in Nigeria. This is so because even the government itself is at war with the people. Imagine a country where the people, the ordinary masses cannot determine the state of affairs through the power of their votes. Imagine the country where the men and women who should be doing time in prisons continue to hold sway at the helm of governance albeit illegitimately.

Recently, women and children in some parts of the Niger Delta came out to vehemently protest the spate of kidnapping that had continued unabated. In our dear country, the security of individuals is not one of the responsibilities of the state. Instead, your safety and security are a function of how much care you can grant yourself both physically and spiritually.

The killings of Nigerians by Nigerians are usually never met by stiff condemnations. If an unpopular government sees itself to be at war with the ordinary citizenry, it will definitely care less if the citizenry turns fire on itself. Thousands of lives have been wasted in Nigeria under military and civilian dictatorships but life goes on, just like that! One can easily loose count of innocent citizens whose lives were prematurely terminated under the different regimes in Nigeria. The leadership under Obasanjo wiped away an entire community with its own hand. No one has been charged with genocide.

In Nigeria if you are very influential politically or economically, you can kill as many as you like and walk away free. No major breakthroughs have been achieved in the murder cases of senior citizens and big politicians in Nigeria. The list continues to grow as the chickens continue to eat the intestines of their kinds. It is sad then that the government (itself a killing machine in many ways) is not showing any concern or sign of awareness regarding the conversion of the Delta region into a major killing field in Nigeria.

The militants in the Niger Delta are not only kidnapping expatriates or indigenes in order to obtain ransom but are also on a daily basis sending tens of Nigerians to their early graves. The activities of the militants have been diversified and proliferated probably due to the emergence of hundreds (thousands maybe)of factions and counter factions in the Niger Delta.

On the 30th of May 2008, a cook on one of the shipping trawlers met his untimely death when he got hit by a stray bullet. What the militants do is that they approach trawlers in their own speed boats while shooting randomly at the same time. They stop the boats or trawlers; rip the occupants of major items, money and valuables. Sometimes at very close range, they gun down one or two occupants of the trawlers and disappear into thin air. If you are lucky, they give you only verbal warnings while they cart away valuables.

On a daily basis, lives are lost in this region. This type of news or information is not what you get on the pages of newspapers. You have to be affected one way or the other by this menace to know about it. I have a family member who is a marine engineer and this is his 20th year on African waters. Just to ensure that they conduct their business and fishing in normal way, the fishing companies have bribed and settled the major militant groups or warlords but out of insatiable greed some fresh factions would emerge from nowhere to make new demands and unwarranted incursions. The fishing entrepreneurs, marine engineers, sailors, fishermen, hustlers, casual workers and just ordinary Nigerians carrying on decent living are left perplexed and worried by this development. It has been going on for a long time.

The persistence of this menace is very worrying and like every other ill in Nigeria, it looks like another Nigerian problem that will last forever. The Nigerian Navy or coast guards are either helpless or irresponsible in this scenario. As an arm of the Nigerian defense, they are irresponsible. They cannot offer security to people doing legitimate businesses in their motherland. As fallout of the malady of the Nigerian state or federation, it is helplessness. Nigeria is definitely not a normal country.

The problems in the Niger Delta have been allowed to drag on for too long. It is now clear that the solutions to these problems are beyond the workings of any insensitive or illegitimate leadership steering the nation from in Abuja. For several years, the leadership in Nigeria has ignored the genuine plights of the Niger Delta masses. These genuine plights have now become fireballs which invariably have led to the unannounced but silent declarations of war on the larger Nigerian state.

The regional leaders, past and present governors in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria share larger portions of the blame concerning the troubled delta. They have contributed to making the region volatile, unstable and ungovernable. The winner takes all attitudes of our politics and politicians have deprived millions of Nigeria of decent existence. These deprived millions; about 90m to be sure, are voiceless and powerless. They are disenfranchised, suffering and smiling.

A fragment of these aggrieved souls found some voice and aggression; they possess firearms and ammunition (no thanks to politics, corruption and smuggling), they fight for what they thought they deserved. They are the supposedly true militants of the Niger Delta. Unfortunately, their struggles have been converted to armed robberies, arsons, senseless murders and an aggression turned towards the wrong set of people in the country. This message is clear; the disoriented and fragmented Niger Delta militants have now intensified their unannounced war on the rest of us instead of the people in power who continue to deprive them of their demands.

Related article: The Troubled Delta