In a bid to enhance the fruitful stay of Nigerian youths and other Africans in West Midlands, the President of the Niger Delta Youth Association worldwide, Comrade Victor James, presented a 10 point agenda to the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner, Mr. Simon Foster.

James, a fearless anti-corruption crusader gave the 10 point demand when the Crime Commissioner played host to the activist.

The 10 point demand read in part, “ Students’ placement from Nigeria and other African communities – students from our community would like to do placement in your office, to maximise their chances of employability, enhance their CV and expand their job experience.

We will be grateful if you could mandate your Commission to provide link or an email address through which interested student can apply to do placement with your commission and they will need a certified reference with your letter head once they successfully complete their placement please; In pursuant of the equality, diversity and inclusion Act 2010,  Nigerian and African youths community would like your office to provide job vacancies, specifically to deploy certain number of people from our community without bureaucratic hindrances; We need more police recruitment from African community for the purpose of fairness & equal  representation; more commitment from the Police commission when people from African community go missing, as statistics suggest that it takes more than 24 hours to get response for the family of the missing person (citing case study: Ozi Akerele who went missing during a night out on January 31, 2015, in Coventry; it took the police 15 months to locate his corpse. 

Similarly, in the case of Tapi Matuwi, 21 year old, went missing in Swansea during a night out since February 2019, till date he is yet to be found; We appeal that you write to all the African country’s embassies, requesting their high commissioners to mandate all students coming from their respective countries to register their current addresses with the local police so that the police authority will have updated record of international students record to mitigate delay in the event of missing cases.

Others are “ to facilitate a meeting between  and the Nigerian high commissioner to address some issues of concern; we will like all the file of prisoners from Nigeria and the African community to be revisited and carefully looked into again to determine whether they are unlawfully incarcerated in prison; we will like to see a better approach by the community and police when approaching suspects from Nigeria and other African community to encourage our youths to see the police as their friend rather than enemy; established  mediator – someone the police should go to for information or peace talk, such as African community leaders, youth leaders and clerics- pastors or imams, and teachers etc. ; the police should use these channels to send messages to our youths in the communities; we demand that any Police officers found guilty of abuse of power should face the wrath of the law to serve as deterrent to intending officers so that the tenets of constitutionalism and respect for human rights and dignity of our community members be upheld.”

He thanked the brave police officers working remarkably and courageously to protect the African community and, advocated for a pay rise, just as he expressed the readiness of the African community to partner the West Midlands Police and Crime Commission.

They are on Twitter @SimonFoster4PCC @InfoNdya