Nigerians as victims of country risk

We live in a world full of risk in whatever we do. The risk facing every Nigerian in the comity of nations is that the world has become cautious of anything, indeed everything associated with Nigeria. The conduct of those that exercise power in government institutions has willy nilly put Nigerians in bondage.

On a personal note , the risk associated with being a Nigerian citizen became clear to me in September, 1992 when I was sent to London for training before I assumed the position of Chief Inspector at Crystal Bank of Africa ( later Standard Trust Bank now merged to form new United Bank for Africa) . The bank sent me to London to understudy the rudiments of Globus banking software installed for their online, realtime operations.

On arrival at Gatwick airport, we disembarked and went straight to arrival hall for immigration protocols. The disembarked passengers were of mixed nationalities. All of us with Nigerian green passport were asked to stay one side while the other passengers from other countries were promptly cleared .When it came to my turn, the official sternly looked at me and asked me to go to one room and pull down my clothes for thorough searching. I vehemently refused. But some other more liberal Nigerians submitted and were later cleared with no incident.

One of the immigration senior officers came to me and asked “, by the way what have you come to do in London?” I replied rather in anger “I have come to make a poor British company rich.” He said “what,?” I replied,” you heard me very well because I shouted on top of my voice.”

He asked further “what do you mean you have come to make a poor British company rich?” I replie ,”exactly what I said and we are two.” That was when my colleague, Dennis came to the arrival hall with one of the officials from the software vendor company to clear me after identifying me as their guest.

Fast forward to September, 2024. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) being unable to satisfy the foreign exchange demand of importers has a policy allowing them to source for foreign exchange from independent sources. So I designed a financial product, Standby Letter of Credit in which I leveraged with foreign banks on consulting basis.

Below is unedited reply to a correspondence with my associate in the USA (name witheld).“Hi Chris , I went to the bank today. My bank manager said they have stopped doing Standby Letter of Credit with Nigeria for reasons he will not discuss with me. Apart from this, all my accounts are in both our names, myself and my wife. My wife after our visit to the bank said she wouldn’t want to go ahead with the proposal. I don’t know if you know she is a Methodist church minister. They are very mindful what they get involved in.”

What is playing out is the integrity and image Nigeria projects in the international community. The point is that the integrity of the integrity of the government of Nigeria and by extension the character of people in leadership position in Nigeria negatively affects her citizens’s privacy and business.

It is important we look at the power equation, the way leaders emerge. Political power, unlike religious power is vested in the position not the person occupying the position. Because political parties, not Nigerian people nominate people that end up occupying the position, all kinds of people that lack integrity find themselves occupying high political positions.

From charges read in courts of law, people without integrity, political touts and jobbers, drug pushers, certificate forgers, pen robbers find themselves elected into positions like President, Governor, Senator, House of Assembly member, Local government Chairman and Counsellors. Once in position of power, these people exercise political power without integrity. Some others are above board in their conduct while in power.

For the avoidance of doubt, these people are the face of Nigeria. And when people who are the face of Nigeria do not obey court orders it negatively affects the citizens who become victims of a country that does not uphold the rule of law even in a democracy.

For example, in 2001 or thereabout, I was a victim of the Chief Obasanjo led government’s impunity in refusing to obey Supreme Court order in a revenue suit between Lagos State Government and the Federal Government that refused to release allocation to Lagos State on the ground that it unconstitutionally created 57 Local government areas from the 20 listed in the constitution.

The action amounted to the executive arm of government disrespecting the Judicial arm of government thus undermining the latter’s independence.

During that period, I was to sign an Estate development agreement with some foreigners for mixed housing development in Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja. I even brought American and Swedish nationals as Executive Directors in my company. Because of the refusal of federal government to obey Supreme Court order, they lost interest in the project and refused to sign the agreement for fear that they may not get an enforceable judgement from Nigeria’s judiciary in case of dispute.

Lack of integrity on the part of government and people in government has caused Nigerian business men to lose business opportunities and money. If Nigeria must command respect in international relations as well as domestic affairs, it must do away with the culture of impunity and begin to obey court orders.

In this connection, it is heart warming that the newly sworn in Chief Justice of the Federation Mrs Kekere Ekun promised to deal with the disobedience of court orders. This is so because the disobedience of court orders has reached a crises limit where, like the Nnamdi Kanu,’s case even lower courts don’t obey the orders of the Supreme Court.

This paradigm shift has become urgent because as things stand, Nigerians have suffered injuries due to the misconduct of their home government which ought not to be the case in an orderly society.

Enyinnaya is Fellow, Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria [email protected]