The plot summary to one of my books titled: Baba Goo – a book that contends with the pseudo-historical account of black people and the distortion of Black History was stolen. The realization that I wasn’t safe in Quebec prompted me to leave. It wasn’t the strange faces that sought to interview me by stealth at every given opportunity that made me change my location – I mean people who posed as friendly strangers but were really informants. No. My safety, my privacy, my freedom and my inalienable rights had been threatened.
My life in Canada was a living hell. The truth of the statement is like an infant child drowned in a cold, frozen sea. I watched myself like a haunted movie star in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s villainous motion picture. My footprints tainted with blood on the snow fields of Montreal and Ottawa. Privacy was a distant dream, so far-fetched and non-existent like its twin called Freedom. My refugee colored skin broken by the political powers that deemed it fit to muzzle my Biafran speech, to cripple every bone in my body that rebelled against the system. And in five years, the dust of persecution sprinkled over my young flesh until I turned pale, skinny and dreadlocked. My brown eyes turned wild like the jungle and I spoke with the attitude of thunder.
I found love and friendship with Canadian women who were government agents – Samira, Daria, Melissa and Frosine. Their names and faces evergreen in my memory. I tasted the lies and mischief in their tongue when we kissed and made love. I remember the eyes that watched in stealth and eavesdropped on every conversation I had with anyone. I remember the vehicles, bicycles and feet that followed me everywhere I went. I remember the strange calls and text messages on my phone, the hacking of my email account, my bank account, my Amazon KDP account and every password that my phone and laptop ever knew.
I was a prisoner in a world that I had declared asylum. A world I had presumed to be heaven but turned out to be the worst hell on earth. I realized that Canada portrays an extremely opposite image of itself in public. One is almost immediately seduced by the picture of Canada and its sweet promises to the outside world. But when you get caught by its seduction, you’re immediately transformed into a motherless child lost in a cold hell. I had come to Canada through the United States with great hope and optimism. I had switched off the light of opportunity that was granted to me in the US as a visitor. I had thought that between both North American neighbors, Canada was my best match. I thought wrong.
On the 9th of March 2018, I arrived in the United States on a transit flight from Lagos to Dubai. California was my port of entry. From Los Angeles, I transited to Texas in Dallas. I embraced America for almost 60 days and got ready to take miles to reach the border between New York and Montreal. For hours, I flew from Dallas to Boston and then New York. On that fateful evening, New York paved way for my transition into Canada through the help of a policeman who found me standing on a cold lonely road. The color of the blue sky had been replaced with grey clouds signaling the birth of nightfall. The white policeman drove towards me and sought to know my identity. In the course of our conversation, he realized I was headed to Canada to declare an asylum. He learned my mission without finding fault in my choice of Canada as a better place compared to the US. I had reasoned that luck would disable me if I declared asylum in President Donald Trump’s America.
The policeman held no grudge against my choice. He had even offered to call a taxi on my behalf. He felt as though it was his duty to lead me safely into Canada. I made my way through the cold, shadowed road between New York and Montreal. Plattsburgh ended my adventure in the US and unveiled the exotic lights of French Canada. I walked into Quebec in the early night. The Canadian immigration launched series of investigation to measure the merit of my asylum case. I had chosen to leave Nigeria because my involvement, as a writer, in the struggle for Biafra resuscitation had made me and my place of origin – Orsu, a target of the Nigerian military attacks.
The Nigerian government had designated Orsu as the headquarters of the contemporary rebellion movement for Nigeria’s disintegration. Orsu was deemed a major threat than Afaraukwu – the hometown of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). Orsu was meant to serve as the breaking point – the head that must be severed if Nigeria must survive. Men in khaki uniforms, wielding guns marched authoritatively in their vast numbers along the benighted streets of Orsu. Their concrete faces exaggerated by their hateful eyes that promised sudden death to any youth that pledged allegiance to Biafra.
Canada was supposed to be the only home that I knew. I lived in the country with the excitement of experiencing the “peace” that eluded us as Biafran activists based in Nigeria. But I see Canada now as a very dark and manipulative place that gifts opioids to its youths, favored homosexuals and gay marriages and had zero regard for privacy and freedom of speech. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau must go down in history as the worst leader Canada ever had. He is the epitome of evil. And the fact that he was in charge of the Canada that I knew, meant that he had a hand in the relentless persecution that I endured in Canada. I may not be able to recount the many punishments I suffered for every article I wrote and published on “Opinion Nigeria’’. But one thing was certain, the choices I made as a writer stood in opposition to everything that personifies the Canadian culture and its distant relatives in the United Kingdom and France.
The pleasure I had in Canada fled upon arrival in the country. I was like an explorer embarking on a dangerous expedition in a concrete jungle. And in that jungle included the hostility of the government against the civilians who dared to challenge the status-quo. It is almost forbidden to be a critical thinker in Canada or criticize the government. This is a confederation that claims to be democratic and liberal but yet demonstrates the traits of a communist country. A country that would prefer to have a population of drug addicts, homosexuals and those willing to conform and be controlled by the system than individuals who would speak out against the martial laws which makes them puppets of the government.
Canada has its many commandments. And some of it includes:
‘’Thou shall not challenge or oppose the decisions of the government.’’
‘’Thou shall tolerate and live amongst homosexuals.’’
‘’Thou shall not have freedom of speech and privacy.’’
Many people in Canada are homeless and thus, they live in shelters – I was one of them. At the height of my misery in Canada, I had crawled into shelters such as: Salvation Army, Shepherds of Good Hope and Ottawa Mission. This occurred when the government of Canada through its immigration refused and delayed the renewal of my work permit. I was punished for writing a sci-fi political fantasy titled: Baba Goo. I was punished for refusing to accept or tolerate homosexuals. I was punished for writing political articles against the United Kingdom’s stranglehold on Nigeria and its refusal to allow the freedom of Biafra through referendum as it were in the case of its BREXIT campaign against the European Union. I was punished for making political comments on Twitter against the evil of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. I was punished for publishing pro-Biafra contents on “Opinion Nigeria.” I was punished for my activism in creating public awareness of the ordeals of Biafrans and Christians in Nigeria…
When it dawned on me that I was a haunted person in Canada, I decided to live a solitary life. I broke ties with all the women I dated. I broke ties with colleagues of mine who were Canadians, Nigerians, Cameroonians, Indians, Americans, British etc. During those years in Canada I was called by my last name – Ezike. I did several jobs out of survival. I worked in a farm in Temiscaming, the outskirt of Quebec, but left because I couldn’t stand the sight of pigs. I returned to the city of Montreal and worked as a customer care representative for agencies such as: TTEC, Teleperformance and Alorica. This afforded me the chance to render services to Walmart, Fido and Querig Coffee Machine. I had lived as a tenant in Salvation Army in Montreal. But when I began to sense and notice the persecution, the loss of privacy and the pretense from the Quebec government in its attempt to gather information about me by stealth, I decided to seek solace in another province.
A Nigerian female pastor, whom I suspected to be an agent, had advised me to move to Ottawa in Ontario even though I had wanted to move to Saskatchewan. I had met her during the early stage of my arrival in Canada. She had presented herself as a refugee. Ottawa proved to be the worse place on earth. My life-long paranoia was born in that city. Quebec was a lesser hell even though it revolved round my world like an evil planet. It was never tired of haunting me. I remember those days when I’d go to work and return to my room in Salvation Army to discover that my bags had missing items. I had lost plot summaries to some books I had planned to write and books I was already writing. The plot summary to one of my books titled: Baba Goo – a book that contends with the pseudo-historical account of black people and the distortion of Black History was stolen. The realization that I wasn’t safe in Quebec prompted me to leave. It wasn’t the strange faces that sought to interview me by stealth at every given opportunity that made me change my location – I mean people who posed as friendly strangers but were really informants. No. My safety, my privacy, my freedom and my inalienable rights had been threatened.
Excerpts from the memoir “The Evil Commandments of Canada” by J. Ezike available on Kobo and Selar