₦airaland Forum

light skinned, super cute, and totally manly.

Citizenship is a sore point in Nigerian life and society. Even persons who are Nigerians by birth often find themselves in situations in which they are compelled to doubt their citizenship. The distinction between indigenes and settlers in parts of the country, made worse by the politics of ethnic advantages, promotes a variant of politics of exclusion which has been accompanied by much distrust. In this connection the long residence of a Nigerian in a part of the country does not confer any rights on such a person. Women are discriminated against on the basis of state of origin and their spouse's state of origin.

The effect is that there are many Nigerians who are at best non-citizens. For Nigerwives, the refusal to allow many of them naturalisation rights should be seen in the content of this structural discrimination. It explains why such women are classified as Expatriates who are required to obtain Residence Permits. The Nigeria Immigration Service routinely dicriminates against foreign women who are married to Nigerians. By treating them as expatriates, they are made to feel as if they are unwanted, and even worse, it is the idea of the family that is attacked in the process since these women are also invariably mothers of Nigerians. Three years ago, Nigerwives nearly carried placards when following the introduction of a new scheme called Combined Expatriate Residence Permit and Alien's Card, many of them were placed in dificult circumstances.

For me, however at the Tai Solarin lecture, the high moment was the announcement that the widow of the late Tai Solarin, had only just been given Nigerian citizenship, a day earlier Mrs. Sheila Solarin now 82, arrived in Nigeria in 1952, that is 54 years ago, and together with her husband they had both established the MayFlower School, Ikenne in 1956. Sheila and Tai were/are kindred spirits. They were a husband and wife team committed to the same ideals. Although a Briton, Mrs. Sheila Solarin had taken Nigeria as her home, and for more than 50 years she has been in the forefront of all the major struggles for the transformation of Nigeria into a better place for all. Whoever is familiar with the story of expatriate wives in Nigeria, better known as NigerWives would readily attest to the fact that Mrs. Sheila Solarin is one of those foreign wives who completely adopted Nigeria as their home.

Another Nigerwife that I know who has a similar passion for Nigeria is Mrs. Doris Fafunwa, wife of the foremost educationist, Professor Babs Fafunwa. But to think that Sheila Solarin, a Nigerian wife for 52 years, mother of Nigerians and a foster-mother to generations of Nigerians who had studied at the Mayflower School, Ikenne had, all these years, been denied the right to choose to be a Nigerian? Following the disclosure I could not resist the temptation to solicit for more information:

"What happened? I had asked her. "You didn't apply for Nigerian citizenship until now?"

"I did", she said. "But they just wouldn't attend to my application. After many years of trying, Tai told me to leave then alone, "

"But now that you finally got the citizenship, how did you go about it?"

"In 2002, I decided to apply again. I put all the papers together and submitted them. But even then, it has taken them four years to grant my request."

"Very interesting".

"In England, it doesn't take Nigerian women married to British men this long to obtain British citizenship".

"Congratulations, all the same Ma".

"Thank you."

Ms. Potato:
Tpiah, everywhere is the same. . .

Lik my counry, the government is giving free passports to all he imigrants here from Bangladesh, Philippines, Indonesia, Arab, Thailand peovided they are a Muslim cause they wanted to increase the population of Muslim here in he country in order to defeat the Hindu's, Buddhist and Christians here.

Now that the counry is slowly being filld with those people, the crime rate has actualy increased dramatically.

Nigeria also contains many businesses that provide false documents used in scams; after a scam involving a forged signature of Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in summer 2005, Nigerian authorities raided a market in the Oluwole section of Lagos. The police seized thousands of Nigerian and non-Nigerian passports, 10,000 blank British Airways boarding passes, 10,000 United States money orders, customs documents, false university certificates, 500 printing plates, and 500 computers.[23]