Why I was kicked out of Nigeria – Jamaican don

A Jamaican and former lecturer at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Patrick Wilmot, has explained the circumstances that led to his expulsion from by the government of former military President, Ibrahim Babangida.

Speaking in an interview with Daily Trust, Wilmot said he cannot afford to live Nigeria again, citing kidnapping, robbery and other violent crimes as reasons for his decision.

Speaking on his eviction, Wilmot, who now lives in London, said it was believed he was working as a spy even as there was no single evidence that linked him to such act.

“You see, Babangida has taken the blame. His problem was that he was obsessed with power and money. People from the ABU were very upset that I was a Jamaican and getting all the prominence, so they went to Babangida and told him, “You know this man is a danger to your government, so you have to get rid of him.” They assured him that it wouldn’t have any repercussion because they had control of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and students at the ABU, so there would not be any riot if they threw me out.

“When I was kicked out, they wanted to take me to Jamaica but they had to go through Britain. They contacted the British immigration and they contacted the home secretary; and Prime Minister Thatcher herself said, “You better do whatever he wants. If he wants to stay in this country, let him stay because if we do something to him the repercussions will not just be in Nigeria but all over the world and British interest will be damaged.”

“Babangida didn’t recognise that I was not just somebody teaching in the ABU, I was well known all over the world. And while I was in the United Kingdom, I exposed so much going on in Nigeria and other African countries in Transparency International. I showed how the corruption system worked with British banks and the British business community.

“I don’t feel any hatred for Babangida, I feel pity because he was misled. He thought he was an intellectual and smart.”

Asked on the take on some of the problems of Nigeria, Wilmot blamed poverty as the root cause of the challenges.

“The basic problem with Boko Haram is not Islam, it is poverty and these people are using Islam as a way of trying to deal with poverty. Just as you have misinterpretations of Judaism, many Jews think that Netanyahu, for example, is not a real Jew. I mean you can have distortion of Christianity like these people in Uganda who used to fight and kidnap young children and so on.

“So, Boko Haram, ISIS, all these people use Islam for their ends, but in the case of Boko Haram in Nigeria, the problem is poverty. I mean these are people who cannot afford to marry wives and cannot even afford to use prostitutes, so they go and kidnap girls from high schools. Then they find something that they say is Islam but it has nothing to do with Islam.

“So, you are not the kind of committed intellectual that uses his intellect to change the society; you are a theoretician who analyses things and leaves it at that?

” If people understand the nature of the society and understand what is wrong with it, then they want to change it. The problem with Nigeria today is poverty. The way you deal with poverty is that you have an industrial strategy and work out how to deal with the oil industry, create factories and produce cement. You work out how to produce steel and how to make your finance and industry efficient.

“You have people in Nigeria that make money from distorting the whole oil industry. They want to keep importing refined petroleum products; they don’t want the refineries to work. They steal 400,000 barrels of oil a day from the pipelines. You can’t develop your society if you have that type of thing going on.”