A Twitter user posted yesterday on his Twitter page a picture he took in the market, of a Chinese man who came to the market with a Nigerian military officer in his full military regalia, fully armed with ammunition acting as a bodyguard to the Chinese man.
The soldier while unashamedly brandishing his weapon was not just acting as a bodyguard but also a “houseboy” to the Chinese man because the soldier keep making frequent trips from the market stores to the car park to take some of the items they purchased to the car and rush back to the scene to “protect” the expatriate.
Scenes like these are not unusual or new to Nigerian society. An expatriate who is just an average citizen in his home country will come to Nigeria or other African nations and the government or the organization that invited him will provide him with security details, sometimes more than four police officers escorting a single person on just the basis that he is a white man.
Everything is wrong with this!!!
The irony is that Nigeria does not have enough security to go round but the government would rather give more than two police escorts to a person just because he is a foreigner.
It is even a known fact that some of these Chinese expatriates sent to Nigeria and other African nations are convicts in their home countries and the Chinese government will export them to African countries to work on government projects as a way of them serving their prison sentences.
A report in the New York Times in 1991 authored by Roberta Cohen, a trustee for the International League for Human Rights, stated that 75% of the construction workers in Benin republic and other African nations that are from China are convicts. A German politician was also quoted to have said that 80,000 “former prisoners” from China were working in Zambia and other neighboring African nations.
Also, in July 2010, the Washington Times, the Japan Times, and the Sri Lanka Guardian published a piece by an Indian-based security expert, Dr. Brahma Chellaney where he wrote that the Chinese government was engaged in “the forced dispatch of prisoners to work on overseas infrastructure projects” in third world countries.
So the news of the Chinese government sending out convicts to work in Africa is no longer a rumor or a conspiracy theory, it is verifiable news.
Little wonder most of these Chinese expatriates after enjoying these luxuries will think they have impunity and continue their criminal tendencies here in Nigeria; Some of them have been caught molesting, abusing, and physically attacking some workers under them or even their love partners here in Nigeria. A Chinese man was sentenced to prison earlier this year in Lagos for mutilating the Naira currency and treating our national symbol of unity with disdain and disrespect. Another Chinese man was remanded in prison last month in Kano for murdering his Nigerian lover…
And these are the people that are not just given police escorts but also military escorts by the Nigerian government thereby compromising highly classified military intel.
Nigerian politicians as corrupt as they are do not even have the luxury of being escorted by the military but a Chinese man who is likely to be a convict in China will come around and the ministry of defense or the Defense Headquarters or top military officers will provide him with a military escort who will be brandishing his weapon around, proudly and unashamedly escorting a person.
If the Ministry of Defense or the Army Hq are ignorant of this ongoing menace or they want to claim that they are not aware of it they should launch an internal investigation and fish out the senior officers that authorize junior military officers to go and run escort service to Chinese expatriate and if the junior military officers go on these illegal assignments by themselves then they should immediately be recalled to the barracks and punished accordingly.
Acts like these bring total disrespect and disrepute to not just the nation’s military service but also to the nation itself because the military is a national symbol. No wonder their motivation and zest to keep fighting the insurgency and insecurity keeps dwindling.
In nowhere in the Nigerian military laws or other laws providing for the functions and duties of the servicemen is providing personal security or escort to a person while on active service one of them.
The Nigerian government has to look into this recent update of using the military as escorts for the expatriates lest our service men and national heroes be reduced to mere house boys and bodyguards instead of providing security to the country at large.
