'Nigerians Living In China Find It Hard To Cope With Tough Laws'

Explanations have been provided as to why Nigerians living in China have been facing loads of troubles with Chinese authorities.

While fielding questions from the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, ambassadorial nominee, Ismail Abba, said that Nigerians in China have been having difficulties living in the Asian economic power because Nigerians are unable to meet the strict standards set by Chinese authorities.

Ismail added that it was a trend for Nigerians who lived in foreign countries where their laws were tough, stating that they (Nigerians) found it hard to abide by them.

He said that this is so  “because many things Nigerians take for granted in their own country are taken seriously in other climes.

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“The challenges that Nigerians are having in China are not limited to China alone.

“I discovered in the course of my career because I had worked on the consulate immigration desk, I found that anywhere that you have strict law and order, a lot of Nigerians would have problems.

“This is because a lot of things we take for granted here, others don’t; that is the number one problem.

“The second problem is that of constructive engagement. The job of a diplomat anywhere in the world is to constructively engage his host country to the benefit of his home country.

“We have a big distraction to the point that the consular issues tend to overshadow the real diplomatic issues and then your engagement with the host country would be always about prisoners, among others.

“When I was in China,  we had about 2,000 Nigerian students in China from all over the country, a lot of them on self-sponsorship and private sponsorship and they were doing very well and the Chinese respected them.

“The people that the Chinese do not respect are those who come in with tourist visas, overstayed and did nothing, that is the problem.”