Nigerians Relocating To Canada: First It Was ‘Andrew’ In 1984, Today’s Voting With The Feet Is A Deluge
The Oasis Reporters
September 1, 2019
Nigerians have never felt a sense of abject hopelessness before, as they feel today. Everyone feels under siege, such that travel from one town to the other is considered a huge risk owing to the activities of kidnappers who extort millions in naira from their captives, with government being unable to secure its own citizens that live in constant fear.
Today Nigerians have seen even State governors holding meetings with rifle wielding bandits that they cannot disarm.
A former Managing Director of Access Bank (Zambia) Ltd, Dr. Jekwu Ozoemene discovered that another of his friends has relocated his family to Canada.
“This has now become a regular occurrence, I must have missed the Canada Noah’s ark memo,” he quipped in a post.
Inaugurated hours after Justin Trudeau’s swearing in.
He went on to say that during a meeting he had with the management team of a top private secondary school, the Principal told him that this year alone, over a hundred students have been withdrawn because their parents relocated to Canada.
100 students to Canada alone!
Nigerians who can afford it are voting with their feet.
“For how long will we continue to deceive ourselves that all is well? “
“Even when situations are dire, a government should sell hope to its people, convince them that there will be a better tomorrow. That is not the case in Nigeria. Our leadership has abdicated that responsibility to religious bodies, yahoo boys, churches, mosques, motivational speakers and life coaches.”
It is amazing that the government of President Muhammadu Buhari is not borrowing enough from his ability to “sell hope” to the citizenry like he did when he led a military coup to seize power from late President Shehu Shagari in 1983.
The Nigerian economy had gone to the dogs, but Buhari’s military regime made a video clip that was constantly aired on the nation’s television network, titled ‘Andrew, I’m checking out’.
It was about a seemingly disenchanted young man who wanted to emigrate because certain conveniences including “cold soft drinks” were not readily available. The story line was more about a plea for him to stay back so that all hands would be on deck, to “salvage” Nigeria “together”.
Whatever it was worth, hope was being sold.
Today it is different. Herdsmen militia and kidnappers are savaging Nigeria. Even poultry farmers in the North have abandoned their farms, let’s they be picked up by dare devil kidnappers. This time around, gloom is selling itself and fear is spreading fast.
Dr. Jekwu Ozoemene concludes his post by saying Nigerians are “confronted with hopelessness and despair everywhere you look. Industrious people are begging for money to feed, pay rent, pay their children’s school fees. And assuming they fall ill ? They resort to social media fundraising…
There is no hope here.”
