Activist and author, Reno Omokri, recently held brief for the Ethiopian government over the alleged bad treatment of Nigerian students fleeing Sudan.
Recall that Freelanews reports how Ethiopian army turned back only Nigerians from accessing its border to escape being killed in the Sudanese war.
In a video that had since gone viral, it was alleged that Ethiopians were targeting Nigerians and sending them back to face the war. READ HERE.
In his reaction, Omokri, who is also a Nigerian, stated that the narrative might not be the true reflection of what actually transpired.
Read his full takes below.
I see a lot of Nigerians making much of a muchness about Ethiopia allowing some other African nationals to seek refuge in Ethiopia via their land borders with Sudan, but stopping Nigerian citizens. It is not as a lot of us see it.
I have been to Ethiopia 17 times. If you know what some of our citizens (sadly, almost all from a particular geopolitical zone) have done there, you may even start to pity the Ethiopian government. Ethiopia was forced to withdraw visa on arrival for Nigerian citizens in October of 2022.
Their prisons are full of Nigerians. They are just trying to resolve an internal existential crisis. As a matter of fact, the excuse they gave for withdrawing that privilege for Nigeria was because it “is aimed at better border control of movement of persons into Ethiopia in view of the ongoing armed conflict in the Northern part of the country.”
It is easy to want to make Nigerian refugees Ethiopia’s problem. But quite frankly, Ethiopia has more than enough problems to resolve right now. Our government has to step up and sit up.
For example, there are tens of thousands of Ethiopians from the Tigray region who are themselves refugees in Sudan, due to the Ethiopia-Tigray conflict. And Chad has closed her borders with Sudan. Egypt is looking like it wants to go that route.
As such, the priorities of the Ethiopians would be their own citizens first, and then members of their own subregional body, IGAD, before others.
This is not new, strange, or inhumane. It is exactly what happened when war broke out in Ukraine. The Ukrainian border guards prioritised their own citizens seeking to flee. Next came other Eastern Europeans, then the rest of the world. And then, just as now, Nigerians complained.
As a people, we Nigerians must really stop thinking emotionally, and start thinking strategically. We are after all a country that kicked out half a million Ghanaians during President Shagari’s Ghana-must-go purge. And we did it at a time when Ghana was going through political upheaval.
The violent clashes between Sudan’s army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, have already claimed an estimation of over 400 people, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Thousands of civilians have fled Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, with foreign nations making efforts to evacuate their citizens.
Ojelabi, the publisher of Freelanews, is an award winning and professionally trained mass communicator, who writes ruthlessly about pop culture, religion, politics and entertainment.
