‘Nigerians must go’ protest: Ghana vows to protect non-citizens

Ghana’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Hon. Samuel Ablakwa, has assured the safety of all non-citizens in Ghana, including Nigerians, following the ‘Nigerians must go’ protest in Accra earlier in the week, as some Ghanaians demanded the deportation of Nigerians from their country. While acknowledging the long-standing cordial and brotherly relationship between both nations and their citizens, […]

Ghana’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Hon. Samuel Ablakwa, has assured the safety of all non-citizens in Ghana, including Nigerians, following the ‘Nigerians must go’ protest in Accra earlier in the week, as some Ghanaians demanded the deportation of Nigerians from their country.

While acknowledging the long-standing cordial and brotherly relationship between both nations and their citizens, he said the trending videos were not reflective of the actual situation on the ground.

The Minister disclosed that he had met with the Nigerian accused of attempting to form a kingdom in Ghana, and it was explained that territorial ambitions were never the intention nor the plan.

He stated that Ghana has a lot of population in Nigeria, adding that both nations needed to manage their citizens’ relations very well to avoid the recurrence of the Aliens Repatriation Order in Ghana and the Ghana Must Go protests of 1983 in Nigeria.

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He said the ministry was addressing the matter and had met with some leaders of the Nigerian community as well as engaged positively with the citizens of Ghana.

“The Ghanaian government will ensure that everyone in the country — citizens and non-citizens — is protected,” he said.

He added that while the country will protect everyone, people also need to be “law-abiding and avoid criminal activities and actions that could divide us.

On her part, Nigerian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, appealed for calm, declaring that there was no cause for alarm. She said the viral videos indicating disturbances had caused anxiety, prompting President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to dispatch her as a special envoy to the country for a firsthand assessment of the situation.

Odumegwu-Ojukwu, in a statement on Thursday by her media aide, Magnus Eze, said: “We had a very constructive engagement with the Honourable Minister of Foreign Affairs and he assured us on behalf of President John Dramani Mahama of the safety of our nationals in Ghana and that they are free to go about their daily activities without fear and without anxiety bearing in mind the history, the references and the painful memories of the past that neither of us are keen on witnessing.”

She also harped on the need to institutionalise the Nigeria-Ghana Joint Commission, noting that this would help in engendering closer relations, including at the citizen-to-citizen level.