Do We Really Deserve These Killings?

Been a while I really wrote something reasonable, probably because social media this days have being a form of relaxation from stress. For someone like me who works his ass off doing three part-time jobs, plus furthering in school (Msc), social media have being real break from all the total seriousness. Well, that aside, I have been reading several headlines about Xenophobia arising again in South Africa and this time, it is directed towards murdering of Nigerians.

I infact, read of a man who lost 358 million Naira to this life threatening crime, this is saddening and unfortunate. But as I read through the man’s story on naijanews.com, I saw a link that showed Kenyans tweet reactions to the killings of Nigerians in South Africa, they all directly and indirectly supported the killings of Nigerians. This didn’t exclude their rants of mischievous activities, ranging from drug smuggling, fake drug production, internet fraud-activities and other disgracing crimes that Nigerians carry out in their country.

And after going through all the rants, I asked myself a question; “Do we really deserve these killings?” Well, I won’t answer that yet or maybe, I should leave us to do the answering. Recently, I decided to source for funds and sponsor for the production of my movie internationally. Infact I made sure I followed every due process so I won’t be labelled another fraudster from Nigeria, yet every turn I took ended up in disappointment as they all claimed they have sworn never to support anything Nigerian.

The most painful part was loosing a Scottish friend who thought I only became friend with her for four years so as to use her as a fund gathering machine. Malaysia introduced capital punishment to reduce smuggling of drugs, yet with the whole capital punishment, there are records of deaths in connection with overdose of drug and this is linked to Nigerian smugglers. Different countries now have a picture painted in their mind when they hear Nigeria;

To South Africans Job Snatcher, Smugglers and Fraudsters
To Britain, US Citizens Fraudsters and Home wreckers
To Italians Prostitutes
To Germans Armed robbers and Prostitutes
To Indonesia Citizens Drug Smugglers
To Malaysia Citizens Drug Smugglers
To Indian Fraudsters and Exporters of fake products
To Kenyans Drug Smugglers, Producers of fake Drugs, fake Doctors and Fraudsters
To Chinese Importers of fake products and Dumping ground
To Benin Republicans Fetish and thieves

If I am to keep on listing countries and their perception about Nigerians, it won’t end. I recently wrote a professional exam and the first question was about corrupt leaders forcing citizens into corruption. Well, I submitted my conclusion in the exam that, ‘without denying the fact that Nigeria is made up of too many corrupt leaders who destroy our economy everyday, only a citizen who wants to be influenced criminally will be influenced’. Nigeria is not the only country going through recession, Egypt is, South Africa is and some other countries. In fact, Nigeria is fortunate to be holding on together.
It is unfortunate that, when chatting with foreigners, declaration of being a Nigerian becomes difficult because of some black sheep who shed their disgusting black wool all over the world, making them feel all of us in this country are black heartened. And so, I am popping the question again, “Do we really deserve these killings?”

Written By
Kelvin Adeoluwa Adeniyi