ASSAULT ON NIGERIAN DIPLOMAT IN INDONESIA

While Nigerians contend with police brutality at home, it seems that police in other countries are following events back home. Or how else can one explain the torture of a Nigerian diplomat in faraway Indonesia by Indonesian policemen in broad daylight?

How can one explain the video that went viral and the hapless man`s haunting wails that were roundly ignored by the Indonesian police men?

Nigeria is certainly not the best country in which to be a citizen. For many years now, life in Nigeria has become cheap and expendable. It is not only the harsh economic conditions which keep parents up at night listening to the stomachs of their children rumble out of hunger, it is the insecurity which has ensured that so many Nigerian roads are closed for travel and countless citizens have met their end or abducted for ransom at the hands of faceless criminals.

Countless Nigerian citizens within Nigeria leave their homes in the morning unsure thy would return home when the day ends. As a result of the uncertainty here, many Nigerians look forward to migrating to whichever country is willing to take them. The luckier Nigerians find government patronage in their haste to flee the country. They are mostly diplomatic personnel seeking refuge in diplomatic posts in far flung but relatively less chaotic countries than Nigeria.

For the unlucky and the uninitiated, the nightmare begins. The road to hell usually passes through the Libyan deserts before cutting through water bodies churning out fury in their quest to drown intruders. When they finally make it, they take to the streets of those countries where the backbreaking conditions of life are blissful compared to the chaos in Nigeria.

So, other countries consider Nigeria a shipwrecked country of weather-beaten citizens who may well become baits in elaborate but insidious attacks on human dignity. Indonesia is the theatre this time around but Nigerian citizens have been similarly shabbily treated in other countries with little consequences.

It is true that Nigeria has its own fair share of criminals who are more interested in their bulging pockets than in the image of the country abroad, but no one country is a saint in the geopolitics of international crime.

It is true that Nigeria has many Hushpuppis but countless countries have embraced far more sophisticated criminals with little consequences. So why is it that once Nigerians are concerned, what is sauce for the goose is summarily denied the gander? Most crucially, how does Nigeria respond when any of its citizens is made a bait in practice games of incompetent foreign police agencies?

It is galling that the response has more often than not been one of inertia. Whenever something like this happens, the Ministry of Foreign affairs routinely goes through its tepid rituals that amount to no more than slaps on the wrists, and silently prays that such incidents are not reprised lest retaliatory actions lead to breakdown of diplomatic relations.

One wonders how Indonesia is doing as a country. From the stories which have rent the pages of international news media about one of the world`s most populous countries, one can safely conclude that the country is managing to keep its head above the waters which literally submerged Jakarta, its capital, forcing it to seek out a new capital. That their police have brutalised a Nigerian is unforgivable. That the police anywhere brutalise any Nigerian is unforgivable.

While a lot of countries treat our citizens with dreadful disdain, our security forces tremble at the sight of their citizens. We do everything to protect them here so that it will not be said that it was while they visited Nigeria that they came to harm.

The worth of any country can be measured in the worth it attaches to its citizens wherever they may be. It is not enough that one is called a Nigerian citizen. Every Nigerian citizen must be able to feel the support of the country no matter the twist and turn. This support invariably means holding to the strictest accounts those who victimise Nigerians anywhere in the world.

But this may be yet farfetched. The actions of the Indonesian police seem a mere re-enactment of the brutal police reality Nigerians live at home. There can be no faking it. If Nigeria is not ready to confront its internal demons here at home, it is only a matter of time before those demons recruit foreign counterparts, and make every country a living hell for long-suffering Nigerians.

The Nigerian government must seize the opportunity offered by this ignominy from Indonesia to raise a loud hue and cry so that other countries will not only sit up, but take notice and accord Nigerians the dignity that other countries have denied them for so long.

Kene Obiezu, Abuja