London riots; Federal Government ought to have issued travel advice

It’s actually not strange to hear of pockets of violence in at least one part of the country on at least a daily basis and it doesn’t stop an average Nigerian from visiting such place if a business opportunity surfaces. I have never been out of the shores of this country so don’t know if it is peculiar to Nigeria.

It is not strange when this western world issue travel advice to its citizen against visiting Nigeria whenever there is a reported case of violence. Whenever I read of such, the impression passed to people outside this country is that Nigeria is a war zone. Our successive government has done little to stop this negative PR and our press also takes a big chunk of the blame in it’s over zealousness in passing messages across to the outside world.

The London riot was bigger than how the BBC portrayed it. They made it look minimal. I was thinking at the time of the riots the Nigerian Government will issue travel advice to we Nigerians against visiting England. No, they did not. Though you and I know we would not have heeded the government’s advice. Government doing this would have succeeded in not advising us but letting the western world know that we too are capable of negative PR for their country too.

For those of you with valid visa to the United States or any European country, if you hear of any reported violence there don’t hesitate to throw the visa in the trash can. Don’t wait for our government because they will never tell you not to visit Afghan even with the spate of insecurity there.