Recently, the news broke of the death of a young Nigerian trader, Itunu Babalola, who was abandoned to her fate, leading to her death in a prison in Ivory Coast.
The ordeal of the young Citizen Babalola began sometime in 2019 after she reported a case of burglary at her apartment in Bondoukou area to the police. She had visited her mother in Nigeria and discovered on her return that her apartment had been burgled and some items made away with.
According to media reports, a suspect was arrested by the police but a police investigating officer reportedly related to the suspect, prevailed on and intimidated Babalola to drop the case which she declined.
In a strange twist, she was later accused of human trafficking, tried and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment and was in jail for eight months before she eventually died.
Her ordeal was first brought to the limelight by a journalist and while the ordeal lasted, the most audible voices speaking up against her unjust sentence were Nigerians in the West African country who started a hashtag #JusticeforItunu on social media to create awareness about her plight and also raised money to fight her cause.
In all of this, not much was heard from the Nigerian government till her sad demise on November 14. After her death, Chairperson of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, in an interview, rather blamed her for not bringing her plight to the attention of either the commission or the Nigerian Commission in Ivory Coast early enough.
This is one death that has raised concerns about the value the Nigerian government places on the lives of citizens.
There seems to be growing Nigeriaphobia across the world, especially in Africa, where Nigerians are daily targeted for all manner of oppression, sometimes leading to their death.
The situation is not any different at home where there have been many unresolved deaths of Nigerians. Some allegedly sponsored by state actors, leading to the question of whether the Nigerian government places any value at all on the Nigerian life.
In contrast, cases abound in other countries where the governments go all out and pull diplomatic plugs where necessary, when it concerns the lives of their citizens both at home and abroad.
Around October 2020, the US government initiated a mission leading to the rescue of one of its citizens, Philip Walton, who was kidnapped in Niger and held hostage in a neighbourig village in Nigeria. The mission was carried out by the US Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6 which was conveyed to the spot by the US Air Force Special Operations.
Sometime in 2016, I was in Istanbul, Turkey and one day, while taking a walk around the famous Taksim Square, I came across a scene where a man climbed the roof of a very tall building and threatened to commit suicide.
Taksim Square is one of the busiest streets in the area with a lot of shopping malls, restaurants and hotels lining the street. It is also the central station of the Istanbul Metro Network. All of these combine to make it one of the busiest tourist areas in the European side of Turkey.
Not long after the suicidal man was spotted at the top of the building, an ambulance was dispatched to the scene with two other emergency vehicles fitted with cranes in tow. The emergency team lined shock absorbing mattresses around the building while some emergency police officers were sent up to persuade the man not to jump down. While this was going on, the medics were getting set to offer their services in the event that the police failed in their mission.
All this happened within minutes. The State didn’t ask if he was a Turk or a tourist. What mattered was that a life was about to be lost and the State moved in to ensure this life was saved. This life was saved eventually. The police were able to persuade him to step back from the edge of the building after which they gently held him and made their way down the building to cheers from the crowd that had now gathered, waiting in bathed breaths.
The reverse, however, seems to be the case here.
What then has gone wrong with Nigeria’s strength in diplomacy? What happened to the respect Nigeria once enjoyed especially in Africa where it gave elaborate financial, military, and political support in South Africa, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Liberia, and Guinea-Bissau?
The latest case of Citizen Babalola should, therefore, serve as a wakeup call for Nigeria to re-examine its foreign policy and afro-centric stance. And in cases like this, swift action, including recalling its ambassador to Ivory Coast, deporting some Ivorian nationals and summoning the Ivorian ambassador should be considered and or taken without delay, in line with the tenets of international diplomacy.
The Nigerian state is duty bound to protect the lives of Nigerians anywhere they find themselves as long as they are holders of the Nigerian passport and it is such support that elicits feelings of national pride and patriotism in citizens, knowing that they matter and are valued by their government.
Love, devotion, loyalty and patriotism of citizens to their country is one thing that helps countries to grow and become great.
In the meantime, the country needs to press hard for a thorough investigation into the circumstances leading to the unjust framing, trial and incarceration of Citizen Babalola by the Ivorian authorities and demand compensation for her family.
This will, hopefully, serve as a deterrent to other countries where Nigerians have become targets for all manner of profiling and harassment.
