Violence and Travel Ban
In January 2007, Philippine president Gloria Arroyo imposed a ban on further travel to Nigeria in response to the kidnapping of twenty-four Filipino sailors from a boat in the Niger Delta state of Warri, coming on the heels of nearly a hundred incidents of foreigners being taken hostage in the previous few months. However, workers already in Nigeria were permitted to stay there, and the government indicated that they did not plan to evacuate them. There had been only seven Filipino victims of abductions in Nigeria in all of 2006, compared to the twenty-four in January 2007. The ban was relaxed just two months later, allowing workers with pre-existing contracts to return to Nigeria; by May, the Filipino government estimated the number of workers had grown to 4,500. That month saw the repatriation of 45 Filipinos working for Daewoo Engineering and Construction, after they had been released by gunmen who kidnapped them from their camp in Port Harcourt.
Despite the relaxation of the ban, it remained in place through the end of the year; Filipino workers largely ignored a government appeal to return home (which included the promise of an amnesty for those who had gone to Nigeria undocumented or in violation of the ban), after the announcement that anyone who returned to the Philippines for the Christmas holiday would not be allowed to depart for Nigeria again. The Christmas season in Nigeria was marred by further violence, with one group of nineteen migrant workers attacked twice in two weeks, first on board their ship and then at their hotel, resulting in one death; the survivors were also repatriated to Manila.
Ironically, despite the ban, one Filipina engineer in Nigeria, Esperanza Derpo, was chosen as one of the recipients of the Banaag Award for the Year 2008 Presidential Awards for Filipino Individuals and Organizations Overseas by the Presidential Commission on Filipinos Overseas.
Read more about this topic: Filipinos In Nigeria
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“By many a legendary tale of violence and wrong, as well as by events which have passed before their eyes, these people have been taught to look upon white men with abhorrence.... I can sympathize with the spirit which prompts the Typee warrior to guard all the passes to his valley with the point of his levelled spear, and, standing upon the beach, with his back turned upon his green home, to hold at bay the intruding European.”
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