Those that snigger that Nigeria is a joke may not be entirely wrong. They have their reasons. This is a system that twists opportunity to problem and vice-versa. Consider how elections that should ordinarily serve as celebration of democracy and moments of selecting new set of leaders or returning performing ones always turn out war among the people. Look at how bad governance, which has boxed the people in the corner and should have galvanised them into a common force, is being manipulated to divide them, while the rapacious rulers bond in maltreating them. The same divisive narrative of “us and them’, is being extended to the recent prisoner transfer agreement between Nigeria and the Ethiopian government. The deal aims at facilitating the repatriation of over 100 Nigerian inmates serving jail terms in Ethiopia, for them to complete their sentences in Nigeria.
Calls for the agreement dated back to 2019 when a Nigerian inmate, Odemu Efe, died at the Kaliti Prisons in Addis Ababa as a result of alleged medical negligence. Further reports alleged maltreatment of Nigerian inmates in Ethiopian prisons, prompting advocacy groups to urge intervention from the government.
The agitation peaked in March 2023, when another Nigerian prisoner in Ethiopia, Chizoba Favor Eze, was reported dead following alleged maltreatment by prison officials. In September of same year, another inmate, Uchenna Nwanneneme reportedly died from tuberculosis, after receiving little or no medical attention. Basil Lawrence Ilobi also died in custody.
The accusations of neglect, at times resulting to death, prompted the Nigerian mission in Ethiopia to propose a memorandum of understanding from the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCS) on the transfer of sentenced persons to Nigeria via the Ethiopian authorities to complete their respective jail terms in Nigeria. The deal was finally signed on June 12 by Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, and his Ethiopian counterpart, Hanna Arayaselassie. To conclude the process, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Iyom Bianca Odumegwu Ojukwu, visited Ethiopia, met with the inmates, assured them of the government’s commitment to their transfer, and shared moments of encouragement, including a brief song-and-dance session with them.
This is a commendable feat by the government. It is a rare incident that has seen the government demonstrating concern over the plight of its citizens abroad. For this bold step, the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration deserves some kudos. But as in other outings by the government, the underlining patriotic principle behind the gesture is being rubbished by the trademark bigotry of some supporters and foot soldiers of the administration. Because the greater percentage of the prisoners bear names that suggest that they are of Igbo extraction, some ethnic jingoists have literally been on rampage profiling the entire Igbo ethnic group as criminals and drug traffickers. On social media platforms, the Igbo have become the butt of derisive jokes. The mockery is even being extended at opponents of the Tinubu presidency from the East. This is always where we get it wrong – lumping the serious with the hilarious; not knowing when to separate the sacred from the profane. But that is hardly surprising. Literary giant, Chinua Achebe, had noted such in his ‘The trouble with Nigeria’, that “Nigerians of all other ethnic groups will probably achieve consensus on no other matter than their common resentment of the Igbo”. He added: They (other Nigerians) would all describe them (the Igbo) as aggressive, arrogant and clannish. Most would add grasping and greedy”. The tag has not ebbed but has rather increased in dimensions, in the process stereotyping the people and obfuscating particular issues of the time.
Such is the situation in the Ethiopian prisoner swap, where some disturbing developments are emerging. Some of the inmates, for instance, claim that they did not commit any crime but were detained without trial and had their money confiscated by Ethiopian authorities. A trending video by a citizen, Francis Uzoh, who admitted being a victim of such frame-up by Ethiopian Airline officials, deserves thorough scrutiny and relevant actions by the government. Uzoh rendered a chilling account of how he was in Ethiopia in transit but was arrested, harassed and had his money confiscated. What saved him from being thrown into jail was that he had European passport. But his money has remained trapped in Ethiopia, despite a court judgement in his favour in the country. Uzoh was lucky not to be in prison, others were not; they were jailed.
The Uzoh case is worth exploring, to establish those who actually committed the crimes for which they were jailed and those that were victims of connivance and mischief. Inmates that are found to have committed the crimes entered against them and thus brought odium to the country, should face the law and bear the consequences of their malfeasance. No one is holding brief for them. The innocent should be set free. But on no account should the infraction by a few from any section of the country be used in classifying the group. That, unfortunately, is what obtains here, even at official levels.
Chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM), Abike Dabiri-Erewa is guilty of this lousy attitude. In September 2025, Dabiri-Erewa, a former member of the House of Representatives retweeted a vile post referring to Igbo as “monkeys, children of gorillas and bastards”. She just did not retweet it; she added multiple laughing emojis to her retweet. It was that bad. Earlier in August, she made a nauseating comment that out of the 21 Nigerians on death row in Indonesia, 20 were from one South-East state, while one was from Edo State. Only an unwary would ignore the import of the sinister outing. But while Dabiri-Erewa was busy talking down the Igbo, cases of Nigerians of other ethnic groups running prostitution rings all over the world, those in internet financial scams, and some on death row in Saudi Arabia, including her kinsmen and women, did not matter. For her, it was simply a case of ‘crucify the Igbo’ for whatever reasons.
Dabiri-Erewa, the NiDCOM chair, had a dubious model in President Tinubu’s media adviser, Bayo Onanuga – incidentally, a senior journalist – in her anti-Igbo stance. Onanuga, had shortly after the 2023 presidential election, mocked; “Let 2023 be the last time of Igbo interference in Lagos politics. Let there be no repeat in 2027. Lagos is like Anambra, Imo, any Nigerian state. It is not No Man’s Land, not Federal Capital Territory. It is Yoruba land. Mind your business”. Calls on him to pull the brake on the dangerous path he was toeing did not deter Onanuga. He rather boasted, “Let me make myself abundantly clear: the views I express on Twitter are my personal views. I don’t owe anyone any apology for addressing the existential threats of our people. I am after all, first of all a Yoruba, before being a Nigerian”.
It is instructive that Onanuga and Dabiri-Erewa carried on with these direct and subtle ethnic profiling without being penalised by the government. The danger in these sloppy comments and the covert complicity by the government in not reprimanding them, is that some perhaps, unintended messages are being sent to other countries or organisations on how Nigeria does not bother about its citizens, especially those from unfavoured sections at home. Such poor attitudes, are invariably visited to the citizens by governments in their host countries. No country treats a resident better than his home state.
- When therefore the South Africans are hitting hard on Nigerians in their ongoing xenophobia, it is a reflection of how the Nigerian government treats its citizens at home. When Nigerians are isolated at major airports abroad, searched to the pants and their bags run through by sniffer-dogs, it is an indication of how poorly they are treated at home. That could be the lot of the Nigerian inmates in Ethiopian prisons.