by Chude Jideonwo

 

“We live in a very unknown but somehow very scary world right now,” tweeted a friend from home barely 50 minutes after news of President Donald Trump’s latest executive order cut through the world – blocking nearly all people of seven countries from entering the United States and suspending the entire refugee programme.

 

“The fate of an entire generation should never be left in the hands of the uninformed,” said another, reacting to the same news item.

 

The sense of panic is real – as we consider the fate of our nation in a time of Trump.

 

The very next day after Trump won the American elections, I put my passport in for the maximum visa I could apply for – because I knew something seismic was about to happen.

 

Everyone said the Muslim ban couldn’t happen, but I had paid 15-month attention to his rhetoric and his body language and I knew massive changes were inevitable – and immigration had to be first.

 

I was, sad to report, completely right. Hidden under this announcement is a relatively small matter – the United States Visa Interview Waiver Programme has been cancelled across the world.

 

The effect of this is that repeat non-immigrant visa applicants, who have hitherto benefited from an interview waiver (it is called the Dropbox in Nigeria) that lifts the administrative burden on consular officials, saves cost on the part of the applicant and consulate and draws goodwill towards the world’s greatest nation, no longer have that access. Even though they have done absolutely nothing wrong.

 

But that’s a small matter connected to the bigger fear. The countries that have been banned from visiting America for the next 120 months are Iran, Yemen Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Syria. On the face of it, it appears that, as a Nigerian, I am safe from this targeting.

 

Then you remember that Nigeria has shared space on terrorism indexes with many of these over the past few years. There we are at the top of a severe war-driven food insecurity list by the Food and Agriculture Association along with Yemen and Syria. There we are – Number 3 – on the Global Terrorism Index, just before Syria, and even now I am worried about sharing more examples, because who knows who may be reading this and drafting policy around it?

 

Of course, it is complicated. Nigeria’s terrorism war is located in a very tiny portion of the country’s large geography – far, far away from the centre of anything, and the new government has succeeded in pushing the terrorists away from any villages that they had once overcome. The country is largely Southern and largely Christian these days, with a consistent refusal to be dragged into an official religion, or a culture resistant to the pull of extremism.

 

Still, we wonder, how much context will be applied the next time America’s president is watching the news and a pundit mentions my country in a tirade against terrorism, against Islam, against ‘nations of particular concern’?

 

“Only a matter of time,” a friend tweeted a few minutes ago.

 

How long before it is difficult to come in, to do business, to find a school, to find a friendly face, or the warmth of a nation many of us have grown very fond us?

 

To be sure, there are Nigerians who see plenty sense in what an American First president is doing for the millions who voted him in to shake things up.

 

“There is nothing dangerous about banning people from terrorism-prone countries,” one of such just now tweeted, at me. “America is not the world’s refugee camp. Their president should do whatever it takes (including visa bans) to keep them safe.

 

He may have a point.

 

Maybe it is fine that in fighting its own enemies, America now also appears to be antagonising its passionate friends, and its myriad admirers.

 

Maybe that is the world that we are all going to have to live in now – one of fear, one of doubt, one of officially sanctioned prejudice.

 

Maybe this is what it means to drain the swamp.

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*Jideonwo is editor-in-chief of Y!/YNaija.com and managing partner of the parent group, RED