By Abdu Labaran Malumfashi.
The closure by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) yesterday of a Chines restaurant in Abuja, which barred Nigerians from entering, was the right step taken against the culprits, regardless of the relationship between the federal government and the home government of the offending party.
A couple of years ago, the Amigo Supermarket in Abuja was closed down by the Department of State Security, better known locally as SSS, on the suspicion that the Labenese owner of the place was involved in the act of terrorism in the country. Even though the owner was released after seven months in the custody of the SSS on the orders of a court, the supermarket was eventually sold to some local interest who changed the name of the store to ‘4 you’ and employed Nigerians as the inside staff.
The same treatment will, hopefully, be expected to be mated to the restaurant in question, and its owners barred from operating anywhere in the country in whatever name.
If they want to run such an exclusive restaurant which does not allow entry to Nigerians, let them go and do it in China, their own country, because they can not come to our country and do modern day apartheid against us and expect to go scots-free.
We know that most of these people come to Nigeria as so called ‘engineers’ and labourers working in the projects under the agreement of the contract entered between the federal government and the Chinese government, but nowhere in the contract was it agreed that they should be or play superior when they come to Nigeria.
No Nigerian or, for that matter, any foreigner, will get away with a callous murder in China if caught. Nobody does, even if you are a Chinese person in the home country, no matter how highly placed you might be.
Unless such an action was taken against the offending national, some people from other countries will follow suit, believing that the (local) government would do nothing about it.
But why do these so called ‘white skinned’ people think of themselves as special when they come to Nigeria, or other black African countries, whereas some of them are the dregs of the society where they come from?
This may be explained by the attitude of some of our compatriots who see themselves as inferior to any so called white skinned person. This self belittling is most noticeable among the fair ones, although some men exhibit the same treat.
Some of our ladies rush to marry white skinned men, regardless of their age, so that they would have a ‘mullato’ or fair skinned children at the end of the day. And most of the time, the women are left to bring up the child or children as a one parent, once the fair skinned husband gets what he wanted from the lady in the first place.
To those who know and are proud of where they come from, it is no fun finding yourself in the Western world, if you are a black person who recently went there. One has to keep on looking over his shoulder because of the hostility from both whites and some of the blacks whose grandparents were forcibly taken there as slaves.
While most of the white people, especially the illiterate ones among them, dislike, and look at a any black person with disdain, the black people living with them for ages, look at you as the ‘African whose great grandparents sold our grandparents into slavery’. They also think you are spending what, by right, belongs to them too.
But what is your fault for something that happened hundreds of years ago, long before even your grandparents were born.
But that is the way that many of them are made to think, those of them who are capable of thinking anyway, as many of them are illiterate too.
Last year, a Chinese labourer admitted to callously killing his Hausa girlfriend in Kano on the suspicion that she was cheating on him with her Nigerian boyfriend. He also mistakenly believed that his home government would do anything to get him free.
In this case also, the court did the right thing by sentencing him to a death by hanging, to serve as a message to others who might be tempted to follow his example, if no serious action was taken against the offender.
And there will be a number of it because the ladies among us will not mind the consequences from a far, that is, until it happens to them.
The FCCPC should beam its searchlights everywhere, especially in large cities like Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt, Kaduna and the rest of the places the Chinese or other foreigners have a project, especially construction of any sort. They may likely find many discriminatory businesses in one or a number of those places.
The most painful part of these things is that some of them are done with the active connivance of some highly placed Nigerians, some of who look away pretending not to notice what is happening around them.
The FCCPC has done the right thing by doing what is expected of the commission. Kudos for that.
Malam Labaran wrote from Abuja.
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