MANILA, Philippines - The attention of the Nigerian Embassy has been drawn to a publication in the Monday, 23 August 2010 edition of your newspaper titled “Nigerian syndicate tricks Pinoys to smuggle drugs.” According to the report which was unsubstantiated and credited to Senator Vicente Sotto III, the Senate Majority Leader, “a Nigerian drug syndicate convinces Filipinos to smuggle drugs in exchange for a round-trip ticket, pocket money, and help in renewing visas”.
Initially, the Embassy wanted to ignore the report and dismiss it as one of those baseless newspaper gossips and blackmail aimed at attracting cheap attention and publicity, but coming from the source it was attributed to, a sitting senator in the Congress, we are constrained not to remain silent and allow this half truth and an exercise in exaggeration to go unchallenged. The first falsehood is the insult to the Filipino people whom the Senator’s allegation portrays to be so gullible, cheap and docile for the so-called Nigerian syndicate to be convincing in smuggling drugs in exchange for such favors as “pocket money and help in renewing their visas”. The other half truth implied in the report is that the so-called Nigerian syndicate is so powerful that they have such an overwhelming and over bearing influence on these unwilling and innocent Filipinos that they (Nigerians) think for them and tell them what to do, including Senator Sotto’s colleague in Congress who was recently reported to have been arrested and arraigned in a Hong Kong court for drug trafficking.
Mission will be grateful if the names of the so-called Nigerians involved in using Filipinos as drug couriers could be supplied with full proofs of their involvement. If this is not possible, at least the Filipinos apprehended in various countries, particularly those in nearby China who claimed were given the substances by Nigerians should be asked to supply the names of their drug lords both in the Philippines and their foreign hosts. This can be done through the foreign missions of the Philippines in the countries where the OFWs are said to be serving various prison terms for drug trafficking, including ascertaining how the same syndicate known only to Senator Sotto influenced and forced the congressman currently in detention in Hong Kong to carry his own drug.
The Embassy wishes to state that, compared to the current population of Nigerians in the Philippines which is approximately 6,000, only five are serving various prison terms for drug related offences.
Your newspaper and the said senator know and should therefore have known better that the allegation is false. The story is not only another exercise in exaggeration but also another evidence of passing the buck and trying to hold others responsible for their actions. Otherwise, the Embassy cannot find any other explanation for the rush to judgment by the Senator who ignores the reality in his country and decides to single out a particular and another country for such an unfounded and unsubstantiated report which is aimed solely to malign and depict other people as criminals.
While the Embassy is not condoning any form of criminal activity by its citizens or other nationals for that matter, however, it urges the Senator and others who are quick to make such unguarded comments to, in future, pause for a while and look inwards before holding others responsible for their habits and faults.
We request you to kindly give this comment the same wide publicity you accorded to the same unsubstantiated allegation.