Relief and resilience: What I discovered when I traveled back home to Nigeria to report on the #AfricansinUkraine movement
by Iliya Kure
Pictured: Nigerian returnee, Catherine Kirpu, being interviewed by me (Iliya Kure).
She just wanted to make it home.
Catherine Kirpu, 22, a third-year Nigerian medical student at Kharkiv National University in Ukraine, and her course mates spent the whole day of Feb. 28, 2022 at the train station in a bid to escape the war in which started four days earlier. When the first train came around 9 am, Ukrainian soldiers entered the train and forced out the Black passengers, claiming only women and children could board. It later turned out that even Black women with children were not allowed to board.
When the second train came after 8 pm, Kate recalled that a white person blocked the entrance to one of the coaches where she stood. His purpose was to prevent Black people from boarding and allow only the whites to enter. Frustrated on that cold winter day, and having lost sleep for four days, Kate burst into tears. Salvation only came when a “huge Black guy”, as she described him, appeared and pushed the man from the door to create room for the Black passengers.
“I was pushed. I even fell down, and so, he noticed me and he dragged me,” Kate provided a vivid recounting of the incidents of that evening to me when we spoke at the Novare Gateway Mall, Airport Road, Abuja, in Nigeria. “It was really heart-wrenching and disheartening. Although it wasn't so surprising, because... Most of us already knew there were cases of racism in Ukraine,” Kate said.
I traveled home to Nigeria in December 2022, to interview students who faced racism while fleeing the war in Ukraine. The interview was one of the steps I needed to help me gather information for my thesis as a graduate student at USC Annenberg and a research fellow of the USC Charlotta Bass Journalism & Justice Lab.
“I was pushed. I even fell down, and so, he noticed me and he dragged me.”
Aside from Kate’s experience, other students faced various forms of racism. Some paid exorbitant charges, or double the fare for trips (Kate also experienced this) heading to the borders. Others were rejected by taxi drivers simply because of their skin color. Another student had his money refunded when the transport company saw him (a Black person) coming to board their bus for a booking already paid for. There were numerous cases of racism at the borders where Black travelers were forced aside, allowing only the whites to leave the country. There were also reports of other Black people being denied entry into Poland.
Many people around the world were not aware of the experiences of these students as the events unfolded until videos and pictures of appeared on social media. The mainstream media was initially silent about it until the stories went viral on social media.
The students’ experiences of Feb. 2022 in Ukraine led to the creation of #AfricansinUkraine, a hashtag that drew global attention to their plight. Many students started using the hashtag to share their experiences, bearing witness. This also attracted support from other volunteers who joined the hashtag activism, calling for action.
While in Kaduna, Nigeria, I visited the home of Mr. Simon Bognet, father of one of the Black African students in Ukraine, whose son also faced racism at the train station. He is the passenger whose money was returned by the transport company for having Black skin.
Mr. Bognet recalled that it was, “Traumatizing for parents,” during the period. “Living in Ukraine in a war situation is different because anything can happen. Nobody can tell you exactly the situation at any particular time you may be walking, you may be going, you may be staying in your apartment and any bomb can just drop and destroy the house,” he said.
Mr. Bognet recalled having to call his son several times a day to monitor his situation.
The welcome gate is the official entrance to Nigeria’s capital city, Abuja. Many returnees expressed relief upon seeing it after a harrowing trip home.
In Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, I met Ambassador Bolaji Akinremi of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Director who led the evacuation of Nigerian students traveling back home from neighboring countries of Ukraine.
According to Ambassador Akinremi, Nigeria did not take the matter lightly, especially when it learned that Poland was denying Nigerian students entry into their country. This was clearly against the United Nations Convention of non-discrimination to people escaping a dangerous situation. The Ambassador said Nigerian officials reached out to Polish counterparts to register its displeasure, and the response was that they [Poland], “Had a process of documentation which was taking time,” he quoted them as saying. “But we got assurances from the Polish authority…. and they did,” he said.
The Ambassador empathized that, "The plight of the African is still the same. You cannot take that out of it that people at one point or the other were ill-treated. And that is uncharitable. That's unethical.”
The war in Ukraine opened eyes to the fact that racism has no boundaries and can thrive under any condition, including war. The situation does not matter to perpetrators – they will still do it even to students attempting to escape to safety.
My M.A Specialized Journalism thesis, #AfricansinUkraine: An Analysis of Black Witnessing and Hashtag Activism at the Borders of War highlights the racism faced by Black African students while fleeing the war in Ukraine and the Twitter campaign to tell the world about their situation and need for help.
Iliya Kure is the inaugural Charlotta Bass Research Fellow. The Bass Lab funded his master’s thesis fieldwork, which led him to report in Nigeria on the #AfricansinUkraine movement.
