To start with, if you haven't seen the movie, don't. You will probably get angry and hateful if you are patriotic.

After watching the film it is quite clear that they singled out Nigerians. Nigerians are a hardworking and resourceful people despite the fact that the western media tends to give more attention to the criminals amongst us.

Everyone seems to be putting the cart before the horse. The film is not racist, Neill Blomkamp the writer/director is. This is a man who with his family fled SA to Canada soon after the abolition of apartheid. There are a good number of white South Africans who fled similarly because they could not bear being ruled by Black people.

Funny enough, Neill Blomkamp's mentors are Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, the husband-and-wife team behind Lord of the Rings. Jackson, who produced the $30 million District 9 project, called District 9 a "tiny" film. He's got his own standards, whatever they are.

Although his portrayal of Nigerians in the film is appalling, Neill Blomkamp's portrayal of black South Africans is worse and shows his innate racial tendencies. The film is set in modern day South Africa yet all the people with power are all white, the sociologist, the journalists, the engineers etc.

An alien ship docks over Jo'burg and at no time do we see any government officials, why? because they would have to be black which is why he chose to use the fictitious company MNU which just happens to be run by white South Africans, the way the heads of this company were acting you would think they were the ones running the country! What they actually said in the film was that the government contracted out the running/evacuation of district 9 to the white run MNU makes perfect sense to the delusional racist South African, "the blacks may rule but we still run the country".

All black South African characters in the film were still subservient to the whites to the extent that the black military personnel still called the main character "boss" and another black official had to be protected like a child by Wikus when they were carrying out evictions in the slum. The director/writers could have called the gang anything they wanted without specifically identifying them as people from a specific nation. He could have chosen any name for the leader of the gang besides Obasanjo which was pronounced as "Obasedjo, ".

I recently read a review of a book The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith. In most films about Africa, the assumption is that Black Africans are good and white people are usually evil or uncaring. Most of sub-Saharan Africa has been in shambles since independence. The deaths caused by war, corruption and bad leadership in countries like Rwanda, Somalia, Ethiopia Congo, Angolo, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Nigeria has been staggering. It's not politically correct to dwell on these issues because it's not like it doesn't get discussed much. Over the years it's been easier to just focus on South Africa and ignore corrupt and racist governments in black African countries. If the Nigerians in the film were instead white South Africans that would be politically correct, I guess. As for the Nigerians, they didn't need to be Nigerians at all, it seemed a bit of needless finger pointing and an unhelpful distinction.

Besides, I had a problem with District 9's treatment of the Nigerians: the subtitles on the screen when , the Nigerian characters (who were not even really Nigerian, not in the least, every Nigerian and South African that watches the movie can tell with ease) are speaking clear English. It's something that is happening more and more when African people are on television and it's patronising and damaging.

Throughout the movie, whiteness is portrayed as superior and sophisticated. Dont believe me? Check it. Throughout the movie, while all the intelligent insights about the situation regarding the aliens are provided by white people, all that blacks have to say is basically "We just want them out of here" (that sort of reminds me of the same sentence I have heard so very often from South Africans, telling Nigerians "Just leave our country". How sad, in a flattening global world. Imagine what would happen in the U.S. if the Red Indians inanely insisted, "Just leave our country"?)

While the racist whites are portrayed as government officials and the army, the racist blacks are either subordinate officers or Nigerian gangsters. While whites express either repulsion to the aliens or compassion to their situation, blacks are the only ones who are willing to do business and even have sex with them. That would not be a problem if the Aliens were not portrayed as savage, trash-eating creatures. In fact, the only white that ends up getting so close to the aliens is Wikus (the white hero). Unsurprisingly, the aliens with which he deals so closely are the only ones that are portrayed as intelligent and sophisticated creatures (alien Christopher and his little son).

The message: while all people are capable of being racist, regardless of their skin color, blacks, besides being as racist as whites, can only be subordinate officers, gangsters, prostitutes, flesh-eating witches, or never have anything intelligent to say.

The cartoon below is one of the many cartoons people have made about District 9, making Nigeria a laughing stock.