Many years ago, I was qualified for a U.S. passport but I did not bother to apply. My wife applied for U.S. passport days she was qualified. I felt I could navigate the world with the green passport. Yes, the Nigerian passport.
Then, one day, I went to Moscow to give a speech. The Mayor of Moscow and the Economic Minister of Russian Federation had jointly invited me to keynote the Moscow Open Innovations (invitation below)- an event that attracts 6,000 leading visionaries. It was a minister in Brazil that recommended me to the Russians.
Everything went fine – they gave me red carpet in Moscow. Then, my handlers who were “guiding” me said bye at the Moscow airport; I had just passed the automated check-out to Customs.
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At Customs, wahala began: Russians did not believe I was a Nigerian. Let me leave what happened out. But the simple story is this: upon arriving U.S., I went the next day and applied for a U.S. passport. Since I began flying with U.S. passport, all the issues disappeared.
But not many can flip between passports. So, in the midst of this paralysis, what can Nigeria do?
Some are tribalizing the FBI arrests as Igbos messing Nigeria up. That is very unfortunate for a national shame. Perhaps, they forgot that Saudi Arabia executed 23 drug criminals who came mainly from southwest and north a few months ago. Nigeria has tribal criminal expertise: Yahoo Yahoo for southeast, corporate sleaze for southwest and government’s supervised corruption from the north [ask a friend in EFCC to share statistics with you]. Of course, each tribe has secondary participation across board! So, if you think your area is clean because your “tribe” is not in the recent FBI list, wake up – Nigeria is rotten.
Adeniyi Adebayo Zikri
Tunde Ibrahim
Jimoh Idhola Lawal
Lolo Babatunde
Sulaiman Tunde
Idris Adewuumi Adepoju
Abdul Raimi Awela Ajibola
Yusuf Makeen Ajiboye
Adam Idris Abubakar
Saka Zakaria
Biola Lawal
Isa Abubakar Adam
Ibrahim Chiroma
Hafis Amosu
Aliu Muhammad
Funmilayo Omoyemi Bishi
Mistura Yekini
Amina Ajoke Alobi
Kuburat Ibrahim
Alaja Olufunke Alalaoe Abdulqadir
Fawsat Balagun Alabi
Aisha Muhammad Amira
Adebayo Zakariya.
The question is thus: what can Nigeria do?
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