FOR the second time this year, the Muhammadu Buhari administration has engaged in a tit-for-tat with our international partners over bilateral rows.

In June, Nigeria banned micro-blogging site, Twitter, from operating within the country in retaliation for the censure and suspension of President Buhari’s Twitter handle over comments that the tech giant considered an infringement of its policy.

Over the past weekend, the regime also “returned fire” at the United Kingdom, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Argentina over travel bans earlier imposed by those countries due to the upstart Omicron variant of the coronavirus pandemic.

In a peremptory move, these countries had placed travel bans on Nigeria and some other African countries, though only a tiny number of the variant had been isolated in these countries. The USA had also stopped issuing visas to Nigerians. Nigeria called the move “discriminatory and unacceptable”. The retaliation, a normal diplomatic practice, was not unexpected.

Were these travel bans on Nigeria justified or fair? Since it is about the COVID-19 pandemic, a matter of life and death, we believe every country has the right to take any action it deems necessary to protect its citizens. These countries doubted the integrity of Nigeria’s scientific responses to the pandemic. 

The low numbers in spite of our abysmal health system and also the corruption-riddled tests and vaccination led to the shunning of travellers from Nigeria by these Western countries.

In the case of the UAE, the Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, had to apply the big hammer in retaliation for the marginalisation of Nigerian carriers while the Emirates gorges on the huge Nigerian market. 

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The Emirates lands 21 flights in Nigeria every week compared to only one slot allocated to Nigeria’s Air Peace at Sharjah instead of the Dubai International Airport.

The good news is that following the diplomatic row the UAE aviation authorities have since made concessions by granting Air Peace seven flight slots. 

We commend the Federal Government for the measure taken against the UAE for its unfair trade actions against Nigeria. The same goes for Saudi Arabia which regularly treats Nigerians on its soil as scum.

But beyond these retaliatory actions, what next? There is trade inequity between Nigeria and most of these countries. The Nigerian elite, which have failed to develop our capacity to attract international trade and tourism, are voracious consumers of premium services in these countries.

We neglect our education, health, tourism and investment potentials and rush to these countries with largely stolen funds to enjoy the dividends of development. Unless we fix our system and make it attractive to the world out there, our government and citizens will continue to be disregarded.

We have the potentials for greatness, but unfortunately we are cursed with poor leadership. 

Until we produce good leaders to actualise our potentials, we must continue to endure these indignities.

Vanguard News Nigeria