Behind the beautiful scenery and modernity that is Dubai in the United Arab Emirate (UAE) lurks the danger of individual callousness and wickedness, and of course official attempt to foreclose an alleged murder case in haste. This conclusion, on the surface, may sound harsh, but not until you read the story of the death or murder (?) of a Nigerian student in that country. Oloruntoba Falode, the son of a celebrity sports administrator and TV personality, was until his death a student of SAE Institute, Dubai. He was said to have fallen off the railing of the 17th floor of his Manchester Towers’ apartment in Marina, Dubai. The contents of the police report suggested conclusively that Toba, as he was called, must have killed himself.
However his mother, Aisha Folade, at a press conference two weeks ago questioned the authenticity of the Dubai police report and accused them of a cover-up, in a hurried attempt to protect Toba’s estranged friend fingered in the death, Faisal Aldakmary Al-Nasser, whose father is said to have huge business interests in the UAE. According to Aisha, Toba and Faisal had a quarrel over a supposed girlfriend leading to a heated argument. She also alleged foul play on the part of Dubai Police, who disposed of the vital evidence for the prosecution of the case—Faisal’s blood-stained shirt, indicating a scuffle between the duo before the fatal fall. Aisha at the press briefing also called on Nigeria and her embassy in the UAE to intervene, since it is diplomatically impossible for an individual to take up a case against another country.
It is painful that a woman had to lose an only son in this manner, when all she wanted was to expose her son to the best education she could afford, in the face of the country’s failing education system.
In a Sahara TV interview earlier, Aisha said what she heard from the Nigerian embassy staff in the UAE was disturbing; they told her Nigerian students’ death was a common occurrence and Toba’s was about the fifth in recent time. She used the opportunity to warn parents about the negative sides to some of the countries we send our children to.
The Dubai tragedy for the Falodes was not the first. Nigerian students have become vulnerable in many sought-after countries like Ghana, Ukraine, Cyprus, Malaysia, China, South Africa, etc, and very much like the days of Abacha when Nigeria was scorned as a pariah nation all over the world.
In January this year, I wrote about this same subject in a piece entitled: “Think twice before you rush your kids abroad”: “There is an emerging and disturbing trend that our education regulators are not focusing attention on. How good are these universities? What kind of environments do they operate from? How free and friendly are the environments? Do they have legislation to protect everyone resident in their countries without racial and doctrinal discriminations? These questions have become pertinent in view of the recent happenings in some of these universities. There have been complaints of untimely deaths/murders of Nigerian students due to negligence or lack of interest by the school authorities in the welfare of foreign students in their midst. A recent case in point is the alarm raised by the chairman of the House of Representatives committee on Diaspora, Honourable Abike Dabiri Erewa, about a Nigerian student who died in a Cyprus university. The school was accused of not doing enough to prosecute the drunk –driver, a lady at that who caused the accident.
“Another example is that of a university in Ukraine, whose Nigerian Students Union wrote a Save-our-Souls letter to the Nigerian government to intervene over the death of a Nigerian student who had some health challenges and was rushed to a hospital. According to the student leader, the ailing Nigerian student was not immediately attended to, which invariably led to his death; the Nigerian students therefore rose in unison to condemn and demand for justice and fair treatment. Pity, that the authorities in Nigeria do not care. If they did, they would not allow education to suffer the neglect that necessitated sending our children to their schools in the first place.
“There is yet another case of a Nigerian student that was killed in an assumed cult-related activities in Ghana. Again, the boy’s parents visited the House committee to demand for justice and explanation on how their son died. What made the Ghanaian story pathetic is that the deceased was only a secondary school student. For God’s sake why should a parent throw an under-age boy into the world of unknown in a foreign country? With all the good and expensive state of the art secondary schools in Nigeria, I’m surprised someone would send a youngster to far away Ghana for a secondary education. (Not to talk of four other Nigerian students who died in Ghanaian higher institutions last year; two were said to have drowned during an excursion.)
“There are also cases of Nigerian students turning into drug addicts and prostitutes in Malaysia, Egypt and the UAE…
“The responsibility of returning to the glory of the past and the good old days lies on all of us—government, policy makers, lawmakers and parents. Government should ensure that tertiary education is firmly rooted in research, well funded and be made to serve the need of the country. Parents resort to some of these measures with the hope that their children’s future can be secured, or at best give them a competitive edge. They even wish those children sent abroad will graduate and get jobs there, because back home, there are no industries to absorb them. All these will further alienate them and strip them of any form of patriotism for their country. How do we hope to nurture citizens to love and contribute to nation-building, if that same nation does not care about their education, where they get the education from, and the indoctrination impact of such education?”
Sadly, while the federal government is yet to address the cases mentioned in my January article squarely, that of Toba happened. It therefore should compel the UAE authorities to re-open and prosecute the case.
