Nigeria has its own fair share of population of
foreigners resident in the country. I guess this is the
case with every nation of the world, considering the
fact that human beings by their nature, are wont to
distribute themselves across boundaries on account
of the considerations of work, geography, and
family relationships or plain curiousity or
eccentricity. And I have often wondered about how
the expatriate community in Nigeria feels. What do
they think of us and our wondrous ways, the twists
and turns of our social and political life, the endless
drift towards nothing that is at the heart of the
Nigerian experience? Ordinarily when you meet a
foreigner in Nigeria, except he is a West African, he
is likely to tell you what he thinks you want to hear.
He would tell you that he is enjoying the country
and that he finds the environment challenging. This
is what those embassy types are likely to say. They
would not add a word more. And they may remind
you that they have spent a year or more in Nigeria.
They are birds of passage. In another year or so,
they would be posted to another country. Diplomats
represent only one category of foreigners in Nigeria.
They are here to work, observe and report to their
home countries. As much as possible, diplomats are
insulated from the crudity of life in Nigeria. Many of
them living in Lagos, have never visited Agege,
Alakuko, Ajegunle, Okokomaiko, Ipaja, all those
funny sounding neighbourhoods which have been
painted as dens of criminality. They are in fact
advised never to go into the hinterland. They are
restricted to Ikoyi, Victoria Island, and Abuja. When
they have to travel within the country, they avoid
the local airlines. The travel advice from the home
country is that a Nigerian airline is a disaster
waiting to happen. So they put their jeeps on the
road, no matter how far the distance may be. The
real danger is that the knowledge of the diplomat in
Nigeria is often restricted to what he reads in the
pages of newspapers, and the ones among them
who read local newspapers are the ones who have
either stayed beyond two years or whose schedule
of duty requires them to do so. I doubt if there is
any diplomat in Nigeria who watches Nigerian
television except for the purpose of gathering useful
intelligence. I doubt if they drink made-in-Nigeria
water. What they know about us is restricted
therefore to contacts with select members of the
elite group: an unreliable representation of the
Nigerian community which is likely to be more
interested in whatever opportunities such contacts
may be bring; persons who are ready to sell their
country with their mouths, if this would satisfy the
psychological feeling of being recognised as an
important person! In other parts of the world,
diplomacy requires a close integration with the
community, understanding the ways and mores of
the people, getting into the groove of the
environment. But in Nigeria, the unspoken
impression is that the diplomat in Nigeria thinks
that he is on a punishment posting. He doesn't
know why he is here, what he is doing here, and
why he should have been given this punishment in
the first place. I admit nonetheless, that in the
course of my work in the public arena in the last
few years, I have met quite a few exceptions to
what I am describing: diplomats and development
workers who truly fell in love with Nigeria, men and
women who related with every Nigerian that came
their way as a brother and sister. I have had friends
whom we even gave local names: Oloye, Bature
etc, and who with their warmth, and deep
knowledge of Nigerian affairs, or their ability to
speak Nigerian languages or their closeness to
Nigerian families, or their readiness to help and
encourage, remind you effortlessly that all men are
members of the same family, irrespective of
geography or colour or tongue. I pay tribute to these
free spirits. Each time anyone of them had to leave
Nigeria, the parting was always painfully made. A
part of each and every one of them always
remained behind. But they constitute the minority.
The true face of the diplomat in Nigeria is that of
the visa officer at the various embassies. Nigerians
have many tales of woe to tell about the visa
officer. It is just as well that many of the embassies
are adopting visa application methods which reduce
contact with frowning, racist visa officers who with
one look and statement convey the embassy's
impressions about Nigeria. There is yet a second
category of foreigners: The Asians who are mostly
otherwise categorised as Indians even if they are
from Sri Lanka, Or Malaysia or Pakistan or
Myanmar. But the more distinct group is the
Chinese. They are all over Nigeria. They are in
charge of many of the businesses in the land, and in
the last few years, particularly under President
Obasanjo, Asians have been spreading across the
land, in virtually every area of our lives, like cancer.
They must be given a special credit for bringing a
special dynamism to the entrepreneurial culture in
Nigeria, for creating jobs and opportunities, for
teaching Nigerians a few lessons about service
delivery and the psychology of the consumer.
However, Nigerians like to criticise the Asians in
their midst. They claim that they are slave drivers
as employers of labour; they insist that they pay
poor wages, or that they are not committed to
Nigeria's development. But what no one can take
from the Asian in Nigeria: be he India, Sri Lankan or
Chinese, is that he or she feels truly at home. There
is no part of the city or the country that they do not
go to. They have no psychological hang-ups like the
Caucasians; they may feel superior, but they do not
wear that feeling as a defence mechanism; they
live among the people and identify with them to the
extent that cultural differences can permit. It would
be hard for example to see a Chinese girl with a
Nigerian boyfriend! Or a group of Chinese having a
meal with Nigerians in a Chinese restaurant. They
tend to maintain a certain distance. Invariably every
cultural group in a foreign land, bonds together and
seeks to maintain its own independent identity. The
third group is the Lebanese community. For some
reason, Nigerians seem to hate the Lebanese in
Nigeria, and I guess this is partly for historical and
cultural reasons. The Lebanese are a gregarious, go
and get the results type of community. They have
been in Nigeria for so long that many of them in
fact insist that they are Nigerians. They speak any
local language that you can think of. They are not
afraid of anybody. They know Nigeria inside out.
They compete with Nigerians in beating the system
and taking advantage of it. They are perhaps the
only group of foreigners with a different colour who
have resolved that they are in Nigeria to stay.
Whereas the diplomat or the Asian is here to work
and hopes to return home someday, the Lebanese
insists that he is a stakeholder in Nigeria. Indeed,
they are the only ones who speak of Lebanese-
Nigerians. If care is not taken, a Lebanese may one
day aspire to a political office in Nigeria. In spite of
this cultural integration however, the average
Nigerian thinks that the Lebanese feels unduly
superior whereas he lacks the moral basis for his
haughtiness. Besides, the Lebanese keep their
women away from adventurous Nigerian men. The
men mix, but the women are just not available;
they maintain an invisible presence. The fourth
category of foreigners is the parachuters: these are
either tourists, visiting government officials,
portfolio investors, media correspondents,
development consultants or conference
participants. These ones know nothing about
Nigeria other than the prejudicial information in
their heads, but still they pretend to be experts
about the Nigerian condition. Some of the media
correspondents may know a lot from what they pick
up on the internet, but the danger with parachuters
generally is that they do a lot damage because of
the influence that they wield. The majority of
Nigerians are not even aware of their existence.
They come in and go as their schedules demand.
The fifth category comprises the West Africans and
Africans and more integrated the brazilian creoles (saro) their highest population is in lagos, where majority of them where shipped here from brazil to lagos port . Then the west Africans n Africans in general due to cultural and racial affinity, these
ones do not particularly stand out. They find it
easier to integrate themselves into the Nigerian
community. Many of them are actually Nigerians.
They carry Nigerian passports and may have lived
here all their lives since the time of their
grandfathers. They know Nigeria as well as
everyone else. They vote during elections. They join
in the political debate. They are in the armed forces,
corporate Nigeria, and they have held political
offices. Many of them no longer publicly indicate
that they are from another country, and the ones
that do so are careful not to overstate the fact in
public. They have houses and other property in
Nigeria, in fact, there are Ghanaians who sell land in
Nigeria! Nigerians are indifferent to the presence of
their ECOWAS brothers and sisters in particular,
tension is reserved almost exclusively for those
rare moments when an ECOWAS or African tries to
put down Nigeria. Then, the Nigerian feels
compelled to act superior. He may be intimidated
by other foreigners but the average Nigerian thinks
that he is the most important person on the African
continent!
The foregoing categories are by no means
exhaustive, since I have not talked about the odd
businessman from a foreign country, with a small
population in Nigeria (may be not even up to ten)
who then chooses to stay in Nigeria, marry one of
our women and produce Nigerian children for the
future. But if we may attempt a reading of the mind
of the foreigner in Nigeria, we would discover that,
across the various categories, the impressions and
attitudes are similar. Nigeria never ceases to amaze
the outsider. They are all aware that every country
has its own problems but they are amazed how
Nigerians manage to survive from one year to
another, one government to another, under so much
chaos. The foreigners in our midst do not take us
seriously. They think this is a lawless country where
anything can be done, where there are no rules and
the leadership is infernally corrupt. So, every
foreigner tries to do in Nigeria what they would
never attempt in their own countries. Embassy
officials use racist language, Asians pay their
workers slave wages, foreign-owned businesses in
general abuse the expatriate quota. They do not
allow Nigerians in strategic positions such as the
cash office, or the leadership of sensitive
departments because they believe that the Nigerian
is a potential thief waiting for an opportunity to
steal. They do not respect Nigerian institutions
because they know that as a foreigner if you are
willing to pay the right price or offer incentives, the
Nigerian in a position of authority will treat you
more kindly than his own compatriot. Multinational
companies doing business in Nigeria do not observe
their own international standards. They do not have
to, once they bribe the men in authority. Generally,
every outsider sees how powerless Nigerians are,
how they are treated shabbily by their own leaders,
and so, they take advantage of the situation. We
cannot blame the outsider. We lack the moral right
to do so. Why should we complain about the Asian
entrepreneur who pays poor wages when many
Nigerian employers do not even pay their workers
at all? Why should we grumble about visa officials
when it is so difficult to get a Nigerian passport
from a Nigerian office? Why should we complain
about the Lebanese when Nigerians are among the
most corrupt in the world? Why do we want others
to treat us with respect when we treat one another
so badly. If I were a foreigner living in Nigeria, I
would find it difficult to respect Nigerians too.

Sorry,I dare not read it. Is copy and paste that difficult ? Which kind of spacing abi font be dis