Shameful Acts Of Nigerians In China

Shameful Acts Of Nigerians In China

Ambassador/Deputy Chief of Mission in the embassy of Nigeria in Beijing, China, Ambassador Shola Onadipe via Vanguard.

Q: It has been reported in the media in Nigeria that many of our people are being sent to jail without trial. How correct is this ?

A: That is not correct, China does not just pick somebody and put him in prison. There must be a reason for that and you know our people, that is one big problem that we have been facing even before I came here. When I was director of Asia/Pacific, I remember in 2009, we went to Guangzhou to do a consular seminar. If not that we are in democracy, I would say there are a lot of Nigerians who are living outside the shores of Nigeria who don’t have any business outside.

Invariably these are the people who find themselves in trouble here engaging in nefarious activities. A lot of people want to leave Nigeria by all means in search of greener pastures; so they can afford to pay any amount for visa. They put only $50 or $100 in their pocket and board the plane. By the time they get to China, the story changes. China does not give more than 30days visa to anybody; so after 30 days, you are an illegal resident as you have already run foul of the law.

What the law requires you to do is either seek for extension or go out and renew your visa and come back, but what do you see in China, Nigerians, those who have overstayed for three, four, five, six years, go and open shops, buying and selling. Most of them are not paying tax, most of them use fraudulent means to run the shops, and they say they don’t do retail, that they are only selling to their customers in Nigeria but that is not true. Would the Chinese authorities fold their arms and watch the foreigners, coupled with the fact that a lot of them are notorious for nefarious activities with hard drugs.

Q: Dragon Hotel was raided in August, last year, and majority of the black people picked up in that hotel were Nigerians. Those carrying Nigerian passports were more than 50, while those carrying other national passports were equally there, and some of them were having as much as $1 million equivalent cash on them, half a million, $600,000. As an embassy, how do you tackle such a thing?

A: You are already operating from a very weak position, so when the law enforcement officers do their job, 1,000 police men marched to that hotel and before then the hotel had been under surveillance for months. The Chinese police didn’t just wake up one day and went to raid the place. After this, we started having complaints from Nigeria, ‘my brother went there, he didn’t know anything about drug, he was only staying there, he was unlucky’. Another will say, ‘my brother was just passing-by’.

We have the right to allow the Chinese authorities to do their investigation. Those who were actually found not wanting were released and those who had cases to answer are still there: drug infringement carries a very heavy penalty here, death sentence, depending on the quantity of what you were caught carrying. One was executed about two months ago, he came into China with about five kilogram of heroine, how do you spare such a person?
There are many of them there and with that notoriety about Nigerians, and you know they are very loud, they will be smoking marijuana openly in another man’s country, that is ridiculous. They drink heavily, they are notorious in that area. The Cote’Ivoire people, the Ghanaians, Camerounians, the French speaking African countries, they have their own sector, the police don’t go there to harass them.

Q: So, why is it the Nigerian sector only?

A: Virtually, all those shops are closed now. I went there last month to meet with the authorities of that province, and I told him that I was there not because of those criminals but because of those honest Nigerians making an honest living, obeying the rules and regulations of their laws, but who are now suffering from the sins of their brothers.

For those ones, they have nothing to worry about even though some of them were condemning the manner of the arrests, they were being chased with dogs and all sorts of things. You know we were not there, we wouldn’t rely on hearsay. Yes, normally if you want to apprehend criminals, you probably have to use force for effective discharge of your duty. I don think that should be an issue, they just want to whip up sentiment for themselves or favor themselves, it is a big problem for us but we are doing the best we can in these circumstances.

We don’t want the problem to overwhelm us. Every week, somebody must go to Guangzhou, why Guangzhou? The notoriety of Nigerians in Guangzhou is unprecedented and I think some of them are crossing the line. I have seen them in action in the night after the day’s job, you look at somebody who could not find a job in Nigeria or probably he got a job in Nigeria and thought that the job is below him, he spends so much money to get visa and then get to Guangzhou hawking jollof rice illegally in the night and at the end of the day he settles down at night, and start smoking marijuana openly with a bottle of beer in his hand, releasing deep smoke into the air.

Can they do that in Nigeria? I can take you to somewhere here in Yanshun, in Beijing, when you get there and you will see them, they will approach you, Nigerians holding tiny patches in their hands. One was stabbed to death in that vicinity early this year, why? He said another person encroached on his territory, it became a fight and they started stabbing each other. Some Chinese guys killed one Nigerian early this year too. They wanted to buy cocaine and he sold them heroin instead. So instead of smoking, the guy injected and that was the end.

They came back on reprisal attack and that was the end for him. This is not why we are here, but once it starts happening like that, you just have to face it. We know that there are Chinese who are equally evil. If the Chinese are implementing their own laws, that retail business cannot be undertaken by any foreigner, it is left to us not to allow such things to be done in Nigeria, but when we are complacent, what do you do? They would have filled them in. So you will find them baking bread or selling Ankara in the streets, operating shops like inside Wuse Market in Abuja.

Q: How many documented immigrant Nigerians are currently living in China?

A: Very difficult to say because they don’t register. I remember when we came to the consular in 2009, we got less then 100 Nigerians for the two days we were there, because some of them thought we came with a plane to kidnap them. Virtually all of them had overstayed, so it was only on the second day we could get the hundred.

After we had negotiated and the Chinese authorities agreed that they would look the other way, and then the mandatory 5000 RAM that you pay, when you overstay, was increased to 10.000 RAM, which is about $1,600 fine. Now when they could not pay 5000 RAM, they are kept in immigration detention until such a time that they are able to pay, or their people in Nigeria are able to secure them ticket to go back. Chinese government does not deport, if the Nigerian government is not ready to deport, the family of the people must be prepared to get the ticket and their relative will be allowed to go.
We can only give you an estimate of Nigerians in Guangzhou, but then maybe 90 percent of Nigerians in China are there. There are other pockets of cities where there are Nigerians too, maybe about 200 living in Beijing, apart from the professionals, I mean those who are working with the United Nations and oil companies and other professionals. One was held about a month ago. This guy had no job, he rode in a Porch car, robbed ladies of their hand bags, got them drunk, and after robbing them, he would go and drop them off somewhere.

The police here will not jail you on unsubstantiated evidence, they investigate thoroughly. I will say they investigated this guy and he bagged only 10 years. These are disgraceful acts. When we get to know about it, we talk to them but, to them, you are talking nonsense. You know that they don’t have any visible means of income, how are they surviving, riding Porch cars, patronising the best night clubs and restaurants? Of course, let us be realistic, would we allow such things back in Nigeria?

So why do we think that as Nigerians we have the audacity to come to another man’s country and be smoking drug openly and be drinking and making noise. Things we can hardly do in Nigeria, you are doing it in China. It cannot be for a long time, they are bound to react one day and now it is reflecting on those who are legally doing their businesses here.

So, I think we need a new orientation, especially, for those young ones that are being used to carry drugs here. Everyday, I receive on my table drug related arrests. Towards the end of the year, the number continues to increase. These are young men in their prime, now they are languishing in jail. Every quarter, we have to go to various jails in different provinces to see them to boost their morale. When we can afford it, we give them stipends.
The prison condition may not be much to write home about, some of them may end up with serious health challenges. We are doing the little we can, they won’t allow us to go in there with phone or camera to take evidence of torture but sometimes we insist and we have seen changes, some of them have been removed from one notorious prison that have the penchant for maltreatment from officials; in collaboration with inmates, they beat up and torture Nigerians.

One even lost one of his eyes recently. We are still on the case on what compensation will be paid to him. These are young men that should not be here; that is what I was saying the other time that if I have my way, a good number of them would not be allowed to leave the shores of Nigeria. Some of them can’t even write their names, so you wonder, how did they get the visa to travel all the way from Nigeria to China? Give them a paper and biro to write their names, they cannot, what are they doing in China?

What has been your challenges in service and your interactions with Nigerians?
Challenges? I mentioned it while I was talking about what Nigerians do here, I served in Indonesia for six years; when I was in Abuja as Director of Asia, I had the opportunity to go with Ambassador Ojo Maduekwe ten years after I left Indonesia. When I was leaving in 1998, there was only one Nigerian lady who carried South African passport in Indonesian prison for drug trafficking. Ten years later, when I went back, there were more then 60; 22 on death row. I went back with Ambassador Maduekwe to plead for the 22, so they won’t be killed.