We pamper your people in our country but you tag us ‘thieves, criminals’ – Nigerians bemoan

It is unfortunate that some Ghanaians have taken to ‘destroying’ the imagery of Nigerians based on the corrupt attitude of a few, particularly because the same cannot be said with the reverse; Ghanaians are welcomed and suffer no or little ‘criminal tagging’, this is according to some Nigerians resident in Ghana.

Their grievances come in the wake of recent protests against ‘bad reportage’ by Ghanaian media platforms, which they say is tainting their image on the international front.

Though they acknowledge there may some Nigerians engaged in illegal or criminal activities, they argue that such crimes should solely be attributed to the perpetrators and not generalized to every other innocent citizen.

Speaking to Ghanaweb in an interview, some pained Nigerians said it was unreasonable that all Nigerians are tagged ‘evil’ and deviant because of crimes committed by just a few ones.

Just like there are deviant persons in all parts of the world, it is so in this case and hence such individuals ought to be dealt with based on their individual crimes.

“Behaviour of the few Nigerians did not call for tagging all Nigerians as criminals, we have many good Nigerians here doing legal things here. So let’s not tag all Nigerians to be bad people”, one person said.

Another added; “They tag Nigerians as bad people. Let them hear me right, it is not like that. Everybody is not the same. The fact that some people display some erotic things does not mean all Nigerians are bad. It is not good. Even in Ghana here, there are some Ghanaians that are even worse than so many bad Nigerians but they overlook them because they think we are strangers. There are some Ghanaians in our country which is Nigeria, we are doing them well, we welcome them and we even pamper them than our own people but here, they are just treating us bad and everything that happens they tag it to Nigerians”.

“It is not a surprise to me because when you are not in your country that is the kind of things you keep on experiencing. But the truth is that, there are a lot of bad people in Nigeria so it is in other countries and even here in Ghana, there are also bad and good people but using one scenario to generalise that everyone is a criminal is wrong”, a third said.

Recent events in this regard have prompted reactions from the High Commissioner of Nigeria who in a statement condemned negative reports of Nigerians and noted that “xenophobic tendencies” had the potential to mar Ghana-Nigeria relations.

The relationship between Ghana and Nigeria has been cordial in recent years but allegations of kidnapping being levelled against Nigerians seek to re-enact a history of repatriations which played out between the two nations in 1969 and 1973 respectively, following perceived maltreatment of citizens living in the other’s country.