Nigerians as Endangered Species in India - Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D

It is dangerous to be a Nigerian in
a part of India called Goa,
described by Wikipedia as India’s
smallest but richest state . It is also probably one of India’s most
xenophobic states.
On October 30 this year, a Nigerian by the name of Obodo Uzoma Simon was murdered in cold blood by a gang of Indian brutes for no apparent reason. But the Indian press, taking cues from their local politicians, immediately associated the murder with a drug deal gone
bad. Well, this turned out to be
false, as you will see shortly.
A day after the murder, about 200
Nigerians in Goa staged a raucous
protest to register their outrage.
They wanted the murderer of their compatriot to be brought to justice and for Nigerian consular officers in India to supervise an autopsy of his corpse. While I admit that the manner of the protest (smashing road dividers, threatening police officers, dumping Simon’s corpse in the middle of the highway and
halting traffic for hours on end,
etc.) was condemnable and
unacceptable, the reaction of
Indians to the protest has been
even more disconcerting.

First, after the protest, scores of
Nigerians were arbitrarily arrested
and clamped in jail. After this
string of arrests, on the instruction
of the police and politicians in Goa, landlords ejected all “black”
people, not just Nigerians, from
their apartments. According to the
Times of India, “a resolution [was]
passed by a local panchayat
headed by the wife of a BJP
legislator, Michael Lobo, banning
Nigerians” from living in Goa.
“My landlord said all the 'blacks'
had to be evicted on police
instructions,” a 24-year-old
Nigerian by the name of Chioma
Ghansoli told the Times of India. “I
have nowhere to go in Goa.  Me
and my friends will spend the
night at the beach tonight with our
luggage." Talk of guilt by
association.

In justifying the onslaught on
Nigerians, an Indian minister by
the name of Dayanand Mandrekar
told local Indian media that
“Nigerians are like cancer ” that
must be eradicated from India. In
the wake of this thinly veiled call
to mass murder, a video surfaced
on YouTube of a Nigerian being
savagely clobbered with
unspeakable barbarity by a
bloodthirsty Indian mob.

We have no idea how many other
Nigerians have been lynched in
Goa because, well, there are
almost no Nigerians in Goa now.
But when a government minister
describes an entire nationality as a
“cancer,” it is reasonable that the
vulgar herd will interpret him as
giving them the license to cut off
(read: slaughter) the “cancerous”
people. The only thing cancer is
good for is total annihilation.
When Indians are not lynching
“cancerous” Nigerians physically in
Goa, they turn to the Internet to
accomplish this. The comments on
news articles involving Nigerians
on Indian websites are some of
the most nakedly negrophobic
hate-fest I’ve ever seen in my life.
Nigerians are called monkeys,
niggers, wild animals, sub-humans,
Third World scum (as if India isn’t
the leader of the Third World),
and such other dehumanizing and
unmentionable epithets.

The undiluted racist hate against
Nigerians in Indian isn’t merely
spewed under the pseudonymic
cover of the Internet; even
billboards revile and demean
Nigerians. A particularly jarring
billboard prominently displayed in
a Goa town, which a Nigerian
living in India called to my
attention to, has the following
inscription: “Say No To Nigerian
(sic), Say No to Drugs.”
Apparently, because a few
Nigerians living in India engage in
drug trafficking, all Nigerians have
been tarred with the same
xenophobic broad brush. Well, it
turned out, as I said earlier, that
the Nigerian whose murder is the
trigger for the rash of racist
assaults against Nigerians in India
was never involved in drugs,
contrary to the claims of the
Indian press, local police and
politicians.

According to the November 11
edition of the Times of India,
investigations have concluded that
“There is not a single drug related
case filed against Nigerian national
Obado [sic] Uzoma Simeon who
was murdered on the intervening
night of October 30 to 31 at Parra.”

Yet, Indians still repeat the canard
that Simon (or is it Simeon?), who
was ferociously stabbed more than
25 times, was murdered by rival
Indian drug lords. (Oh, so Indians
also do drugs? I thought only
Nigerians did!)
All this doesn’t surprise me,
frankly. India is an inexorably
racist society. According to a
global survey conducted in
October this year, India ranks as
the most racist country on earth.
The survey measured racial
intolerance by how “frequently
people in a given country said they
don't want neighbors from other
races.”  India’s racial intolerance,
according to the survey, is equaled
only by Jordan. (The most racially
tolerant societies, the survey
found, are the United States,
Canada, Brazil, Argentina,
Colombia, Guatemala, Britain,
Sweden, Norway, Latvia, Australia,
and New Zealand.)
The current anti-Nigerian hysteria
in India is fueled by two strains of
bigotry in the Indian society: a
lethal mixture of visceral
negrophobia and Islamaphobia.
India has a well-known, age-old
problem with dark skin, a
problem that is congealed in the
country’s invidious caste system.
Even dark-skinned Indians from
the country’s south are often the
victims of racist taunts and
denigration, and Africans,
according to many Indians who
spoke frankly with me, are
considered ugly, undesirable, and
worthy only of ice-cold disdain.
India is, without a doubt, a
terrible place for a black person to
call home.

It’s even more terrible if the black
person is also a Muslim. As a
consequence of India’s continuing
bitter animosities with Pakistan,
many, perhaps most, Indians gaze
at Muslims from the jaundiced
lenses of their troubled relations
with Pakistanis and instinctively
assume that every Muslim is a
Hindu-hating enemy. Of course,
this is not true of all Indians, but it
is true of most of them.
For anecdotal evidence, look at the comment sections of India’s
English-language news websites
about Nigerians. (I hear that the
local-language websites are way
worse). You will find a
disproportionate percentage of
commenters claiming that
Nigerians are doing drugs to fund
terrorism against Indians. Many
commenters on TimesofIndia.com
and other Indian websites also
described Nigerians in Goa,
including the late Simeon, as
“Boko Haram terrorists”! Yet
others called them “muzzies,”
apparently a pejorative term for
Muslims in India.
The Indians couldn’t be bothered
that the people they call “Boko
Haram terrorists” and “muzzies”
are Christian Nigerians. You would
think that a name like “Simon”
would at least make that clear to
them. Well, as I pointed out in a
previous article three years ago,
stereotyping is a great time saver;
it enables ignorant and bigoted
people to rush to quick judgment
without the pesky encumbrance of
nuance and factual information.
From what I can gather, it is now
open season on Nigerians in Goa.
Unspeakable atrocities are being
committed against innocent
Nigerians there. The Indian and
Nigerian governments must act
expeditiously to halt this
madness.

Farooq A. Kperogi is a columnist with Weekly Trust.

Below: pictures of the dead Nigerian and angry mob, and anti-Nigeria billboard.