Time and again, the stories are the same. Nigerians abroad are being targeted and killed with impunity.
And while their loved ones back home demand answers, they are often met with silence and inaction from both the foreign and the Nigerian governments.
DARE OLAWIN chronicles the heartbreaking stories of innocent Nigerians who have been killed unjustly abroad in recent years, as well as the struggle of their families back home to get justice.
While the Israelites were driven from their homeland by persecution, Nigerians of today are driven by the hope of a better life. Like the Israelites, they defy the elements and brave the unknown, seeking a Promised Land of their own. But this land is not Canaan; it is the rest of the world.
From Europe to America to Asia and even Africa, Nigerians have spread their wings and taken flight, searching for opportunities and a better life for themselves and their families.
They are a people of courage and resilience, persevering through hardship and holding fast to their dreams. They defy the weather conditions of their various places of refuge; whether freezing, snowy or scorching, Nigerians endure, focusing on how to earn their daily bread or to get higher certificates.
As a people, Nigerians possess the vigour to devour the rigour of challenges confronting them anywhere they find themselves.
Nigerians are unarguably one of the most migrating set of people in Africa. The Japa syndrome of late has seen doctors, nurses, lecturers, students and other productive youths relocating in droves.
Today, millions of ethnic Nigerians live abroad, the largest communities can be found in the United Kingdom’ (500,000–3,000,000) and the United States (600,000–1,000,000 Nigerians); other countries that followed closely are South Africa, Gambia, and Canada respectively, a report by Family Search said.
The report asserts that there are between 90,000 and 100,000 Nigerians in Brazil. Additionally, there were around 100,000 Nigerians living in China in 2012, mostly in the city of Guangzhou, but have since declined to about 10,000.
Death in foreign land
But in their voyage to ‘labour in exile’, little did they know that agents of death were waiting to shatter the dreams of some of them and send them to the great beyond.
In the last seven years, about 300 Nigerians have been murdered extrajudicially in foreign nations.
The majority of these individuals were killed by non-state actors for no just reasons.
Unfortunately, no one seems to care about getting justice for these innocent Nigerians whose major ‘sin’ was the fact that they deserted their fatherland to seek fortune elsewhere.