{"id":1274,"date":"2011-07-01T01:37:04","date_gmt":"2011-07-01T06:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.verastic.com\/?p=1274"},"modified":"2012-10-18T02:31:13","modified_gmt":"2012-10-18T06:31:13","slug":"the-little-nigerian-that-didnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/verastic.com\/site\/vl\/the-little-nigerian-that-didnt.html","title":{"rendered":"The Little Nigerian That Didn’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

If Nigeria gets in the news and they are not talking about something bad that one of us have done, then that means the news is not hundred percent. And today was no different. News of the Nigerian Stowaway<\/em> filled the airwaves. A Nigerian boarded a flight from New York to Los Angeles without a boarding pass. Well, he had a boarding pass, but it was expired, and it wasn’t his. And to add insult to injury, he had ten other boarding passes in his bag – none of which had his name on it.<\/span><\/p>\n

He is not a suspected terrorist. For all they (we?) know, he is just a kid who jumped a plane for free. \u00a0His crime is punishable by up to five years imprisonment. It’s unfortunate that this free ride could cost him five years of his life. Time is not like what it used to be. They say it’s still 24 hours in a day, but I tend to think otherwise. Even if it’s still 24 hours, there’s some hanky panky going on. When you’re having a good time, it goes by really fast. When you’re in jail, time stalls.<\/span><\/p>\n

The guy in question is a Nigerian-born American citizen, but all we’ve heard is that he’s a Nigerian. This is not an attempt to \u00a0distance him from Nigeria. I just don’t want his place of birth to detract from the fact that he’s just a person who made the wrong decision. The “accused”<\/em> in question is twenty-four year old Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi, and he is currently in the custody of the police.<\/span><\/p>\n

While I was reading about Noibi’s story, I went ahead and read comments too. Before I started, I was not expecting any positive comments, of course, but still, I ventured into it. \u00a0I was swallowing all the comments until I saw this one:<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

On one hand, I wonder if I have the right to be mad at this comment. After all, we have given people reasons to think of us all as con artists. They didn’t just wake up one day and think of us as con artists; Nigeria has been associated with way too many stories of fraud. But then, I also think to myself, what kind of idiot judges an entire country and its people based on a few stories she has heard? Whatever the case may be, I am left feeling compelled to forget my hands on her face. For provoking me by her ignorant and bigoted comment, yes, I want to redesign her face. I was tempted to reply her with a few non-Verastic choice words, but what am I even fighting for?<\/span><\/p>\n

That said, I just want to state clearly that I am not in support of the actions of Noibi, nor do I find any justification for what he did. While some of us (Nigerians) may want to chastise him for daring to break an American law while being Nigerian, we need to remember that Noibi is first human before being Nigerian. I still do not understand why we think we’re “untemptable,”<\/em> why we think that we’re better than everyone else and so can never be found doing any wrong, or why we think that we do not face the same trials as everyone else. If we face temptations and trials in Nigeria, then why won’t we face the same in a foreign land? <\/span><\/p>\n

~ \u00a0Except for the one time I tricked Funmie into drinking Busola’s breast milk, I am not a con artist.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If Nigeria gets in the news and they are not talking about something bad that one of us have done, then that means the news is not hundred percent. And today was no different. News of the Nigerian Stowaway filled the airwaves. A Nigerian boarded a flight from New York to Los Angeles without aRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_14738191_14738191":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[560,1],"tags":[208],"class_list":["post-1274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-social","category-vl","tag-nigeria","entry","has-post-thumbnail"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Little Nigerian That Didn't - 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