fraudulent use of the voters' roll,
which still includes Zimbabweans who
have left the country.
There is a weird paradox here: those
who fled the country have left their
names on the voters’ register, names
that are being illicitly used to bolster
the vote for the ruling party, whose
record of economic mismanagement
and political repression has been driv-
ing the migration.
But if the numbers of migrants are
elusive, you can follow the money to
seethepowerofZimbabwe’sdiaspo-
ra. At a ‘re-engagement’ conference
to woo investors in London last July,
John Mangudya, the governor of the
reserve bank, painted a gloomy picture
of capital inflows into Zimbabwe. Two
decades of inward-looking policies and
general misrule have dramatically cut
inflows and investment.CREATIVE MIGRATION
Diaspora remittances are now the
country’s second-largest foreign-
exchange earner after exports. Official
figures from the reserve bank report
flows of hundreds of millions of US
dollars per year coming in through
remittances. The real figure is much
higher, as most of the inflows do not
go through the formal banking system.
Zimbabwe, like Somalia, is being kept
afloat by its diaspora in South Africa,
Botswana, the United Kingdom, the
United States, Canada and Australia.
As international migration rules tight-
ened, Zimbabweans learned to be as
creative as other nationals, such as
the Congolese, in order to enter the
countries of their choice.
An unintended consequence of
British policy under former prime min-
ister Tony Blair’s government was that
it that helped create a record number
of Zimbabwean asylum seekers in the
early 2000s. At the time when American
and British troops were storming into
the Middle East to overthrow Saddam
Hussein’s regime in Iraq, more asylum
seekers from Zimbabwe than from Iraq
were landing in Britain.
Such was Britain’s official rhetoric
against Robert Mugabe that the gov-
ernment’s immigration service had
to accept the logic of labelling him a
tyrannical pariah. Zimbabweans be-
came expert at recounting the details
of the political oppression to which
they were subjected. Thousands of
people won political asylum whenF
or Greek-Nigerian Nikos Deji
Odubitan, life in the diaspora
has not been a walk in
the park. His battle to be formally
recognised as a Greek citizen is
one that reflects the harsh realities
many undocumented Africans face
in a foreign land. But Odubitan’s
case was slightly different.
Born in Athens to Nigerian parents,
Odubitan had a rude awakening
at 17 when he realised he was
a foreigner in the country he had
always called home.
“It’s the age at which young
Greeks receive their letter for
compulsory military service. Like
everyone else I was waiting for mine
but it never came,” he told our sister
publicationJeune Afriquelast year.
His situation was made worse
by the fact that he didn’t have
Nigerian citizenship either:
“To obtain Nigerian citizenship,
I had to go to the closest embassy,
which was in Italy. But in order
to leave Greek territory, you need
an ID card and a residence permit.
It’s the same problem when
you’re re-entering,” he explained.
Due to the strict ‘citizenship by
blood-right’ rule in Greece, children
of migrant parents born in the
south-eastern European country
cannot obtain automatic citizenship.
Odubitan’s only option then was to
apply for a residence permit, which
also proved challenging because
he had no entry stamp in his new
passport, and eventually
to seek Greek nationality.
At a crossroads,
he decided to take
the initiative and
do something about
it. In 2006 he launched
Generation 2.0 for
Rights, Equality and
Diversity, a nonprofit
organisation that
advocates Greek
citizenship rights for
second-generationimmigrants and spreads awareness
about the plight of migrant youths
in Greece. The advocacy group,
which works closely with
the Directorate of Immigration
in Athens, joined forces with the
Institute for Rights, Equality &
Diversity (i-RED) in December 2013
to change the laws, and their work
is starting to pay off. In July 2015,
the Greek parliament passed a
new law amending the Citizenship
code and allowing minors born
to foreign nationals to secure
the right to Greek citizenship under
certain conditions. But the law
has not been implemented since,
and Odubitan says he won’t stop
until every person born in Greece
with migrant origins has direct
access to equal rights.
Having obtained Nigerian
citizenship some years ago,
Odubitan has now acquired Greek
citizenship. “I was born and grew
up with two cultures and I’m proud
of that,” says Odubitan, who stays
connected to his Nigerian roots and
is fluent in the Yoruba language.
Oheneba Ama Nti OseiNIKOSDEJIODUBITAN
Nigeria/Greece, human rights advocateFighting for rights
to citizenship
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED28 FRONTLINE| DIASPORA DYNAMO
N° 92•JULY-AUGUST 2017