I followed with interest a recent story that started from Harvard University called I, too, I am Harvard. It is in response to the stereotyping and the challenges faced by black students or more generally, to use the controversial term ‘people of colour.’ They were indirectly protesting against the treatment they receive from colleagues, friends, tutors etc, for being black or non-white. Soon the campaign became viral and students from Oxford and Cambridge also joined the bandwagon to protest against the misrepresentation of blacks, particularly the thinking that you have to belong to a particular race in order to belong to these elite institutions.
But I am afraid, it is not just Harvard or Cambridge or Oxford where being an African or black comes with stereotyping, almost in all aspect of life being an African as an individual, or the continent itself are shrouded in misinformation, ignorance, mystery, stereotyping, and at worst, belittling simply because of how people look.  I was once told by someone, “So black people do PhD?” Sometimes you laugh, other times you explain, and in some occasions you get angry. What is even more interesting is that the media sometimes reinforce such stereotypes.
But one of the things about this stereotyping that you find common is the thinking that Africa is a country, and so a lot of people come to you excited that they will be travelling to Africa. When you ask them where in Africa? They start murmuring and stammering to figure out what you mean.
The first time I experienced this was in March 2004, about ten years ago. I was dressed in white Babbar Riga (a traditional attire common in sub-Saharan Africa). It was a brief visit to London at the time, and I was trying to get a bureau de change in Oxford Street, when I heard a voice across the road shouting “African brother, African brother.” The man crossed the road and came towards me. “I like your dress, please how do I get one. Can you give me your address in Africa so that I can send you the money?”
My address in Africa? I asked, confused. I told him that I am from Nigeria in West Africa. He didn’t have the time to listen to my lecture and so we said goodbye. Interestingly, he is a fellow black guy, who told me that his ancestors were from Africa, and he has consumed the stereotype that Africa is a country.
Sometime in 2005, I was approached by the kids of one of my friends in Sheffield. A very nice family. The children were so happy to see me, and so was I.
“We have been to Africa on holiday,” the young kids told me. “That was great,” I responded and asked: “where in Africa?” Instead of answering my question, they looked at their elder sister, with their father watching by the side, “which part of Africa have we been to?” after a little silence, she responded, “Gambia.”
But don’t blame the local people for not understanding the African continent. Sometimes even the educated people, in fact some of whom supposed to educate us, you will be shocked by their perception of Africa. Here is the story I always laugh at when I remember. It was at the BBC World Service when the language services introduced Premier League commentary in local languages. And one of the best commentators, works for the Swahili Service. He has an excellent mastery of football commentary in Swahili. He has become a household name in his region. In fact, you don’t have to understand Swahili to know which team is performing well, and when he says it’s a Goaaaaaaaal. Almost everyone in the African hub will stop his work or at least smile at the skills of our friend. Then one day, one of the journalists, in fact a senior one, asked whether our colleague could do the commentary for Hausa and other languages. If it were possible I would have been very happy, because that would have saved me from struggling to translate certain football terms in Hausa language. Luckily, we had my friend Aminu Abdulkadir who came up with such excellent terms like ‘bugun lauje” for Conner-kick etc.
But the one that remains fresh in my memory was in the autumn of 2012. I was teaching a course on the impact of propaganda and distortion in the media.  So I had pictures of two locations, Nairobi city in Kenya, and Harlem in New York. As an introduction to the topic, I displayed the picture of Harlem and asked the students to identify the city. Unanimously, all the students said it must be somewhere in Africa, simply because it looks like a deprived area populated by black people.
I then displayed the picture which provides an aerial view of Nairobi and asked them to identify the city. “This must be somewhere in Singapore” one of the students said. “It looks like somewhere in California,” said another. I asked the students why they think Nairobi looks like California, and Harlem is somewhere in Africa. The answer was obvious, that’s how the media represents Africa.
So if I were to advise the black students in Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge, I would have told them to take their peaceful campaign to the doors of the news media, for among other factors, their colleagues think they don’t belong to Harvard, Oxford or Cambridge because of what they see on their television screens.

The Saturday’s Nigeria Immigration Service charade, called recruitment aptitude test for Nigeria youths looking for jobs, promoted and implemented by Mr. Abba Moro, a Nigeria’s minister of Interior was an ill wind in many respects that had come to blow away no fewer than 20 promising and productive Nigerian youths into their early graves.
The Immigration Service recruitment aptitude test, organized haphazardly and fatally executed, was actually done, from what one gathered from the grapevine, just so as to satisfy the official requirements, whereas the vacancies for which hundreds and thousands of applicants were made to converge at designated centres, have long been filled with privileged and well-connected Nigerians.
The Minister admitted that 520,000 applicants participated in the recruitment exercise across the country but that only 4,556 would be recruited at the end of the exercise, based on the available space.
Of course, despite what clearly looked a bleak prospect for getting the job, the Nigerian youths, determined to serve their fatherland and become useful and financially okay, allowed themselves to be blinded to the trap which the Abba Moro’s arrangement for the outing on Saturday had set up. The trap came in the form of cramming thousands of the applicants into designated centres and making the scrambling for space to breathe fresh air a gargantuan task.
As a matter of fact, about two days to the unfortunate Saturday, the minister had announced that applicants should go to the centres they chose in the online forms they filled for the aptitude test, contrary to the rumour that made the round before then that applicants had been asked to go for the test in their states of origin.
But, surprisingly, when applicants reported at the centres they filled in their online forms, they were asked to go to a centralized venue, and in the case of Abuja, to National Stadium.
One can imagine the financial, physical and psychological stresses that applicants who reported at, say, Gwagwalada where they filled in their forms, would encounter when they were suddenly redirected to travel again to the National Stadium for the test. As a matter of fact, quite a number of applicants who were not financially buoyant to travel to National Stadium from the original venues they chose, went back home while those who could afford it, “put heads” on the road, as an average African would say.
And after putting up such determination and bravery, most of such applicants fell into the Abba Moro trap and ended up not even getting the none existent immigration job and above all, they got deaths, injuries, bruised egos and unapologetic insults from Abba Moro.
Records show that in Abuja alone, eight Nigerians’ lives were wasted because over 65,000 applicants jampacked the Stadium which has total capacity of just 60,000 people. Not only that, information had it that it was only the pedestrian (tiny) gate in the stadium that was opened through where the multitudinous applicants were being ushered into the open stadium and that because of the slowness in the stream of applicants passing through the niddle’s eye (tiny gate), many others were jumping through the fence and other available openings.
Similar scenario played out in Edo state where two people died even with an unconfirmed report that as much as 20 applicants died in the Lagos centre. There were four deaths in Port Harcourt and three each in Minna, Niger state and Kano state, including a pregnant woman.
The first thing that came out of Abba Moro’s mouth when the report of deaths of the applicants filtered in was that they, the applicants, lost their lives due to impatience. “They did not follow the laid down procedures spelt out to them before the exercise. Many of them jumped through the fences of affected centres and did not conduct themselves in an orderly manner to make the exercise a smooth one. This caused stampede and made the environment unsecured.”
These statements coming from a man of minister’s calibre, smack of arrogance, foolishness, cruel, crude, irresponsibility, insensitivity, adult deliquence, mental derangement physical brigandage and criminal. How can Abba Moro be talking about “patience and orderliness” for Nigerians that have been jobless for years and when opportunity seemed to come, they were at best, being shoved aside and at worse, being technically locked out!!! Patience? Orderliness? How much do they cost in Abba Moro’s market of death?
As the events would continue to unfold, the minister was believed to have contracted the recruitment exercise to the wife of Senate President, with him supervising while the officers of the Nigeria Immigration Service just looked on.
This confirmed the notion in many quarters that the Interior Minister is completely out of tune with the modern system of conducting such a simple exercise. That because he is in a hurry to satisfy the financial gains of a single powerful soul, he sold out the lives of thousands of Nigerians, using his privileged position.
Hasn’t West African Examination Council (WAEC) been conducting almost similar exmination across even Africa for many years without a hitch? Hasn’t the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) been also conducting the same form of nationwide examination into the universities without a scene created? Why would Abba Moro and his blood thirsty group centralize a simple aptitude test for over 500,000 applicants in one day?
In deed, Abba Moro has shown, once more, how the government and its agents have been toying with the lives of unfortunate Nigerians, especially the youths, in the pursuit of some ends that are politically motivated, with evil designs.