A NIGERIAN man recounts his unpleasant, degrading experience of his short stint in Malaysia, being subject to racism and discrimination due to his ethnicity.
Author Suleiman Ocheni shared a TikTok video saying he came to Malaysia in 2016 when he was a student to visit his two close friends who were studying here at the time as he had not seen them for over five years.
He added that his time in Kuala Lumpur with his friends went well with “no problems” and then they decided to go island hopping in Sabah.
“Mind you, my two friends are Ugandan and Indian, so one of them is black. By the way, people were staring at us in the plane like they had never seen black people in their lives. That should have been our first clue,” he remarked in his video.
Things for Suleiman and his Ugandan friend went south after landing in Sabah when they were led into an office by the immigration officers in the airport.
“My Ugandan friend and I handed over our passports to the immigration officers then they took the both of us into a separate room. So we were there alone, and after a while, they returned and handed my friend’s passport back to her.
“But for me, I was not allowed to enter Sabah. He (the immigration officer) said and I quote, we do not allow your kind here. I was like, I don’t want any problems, I will go back to Kuala Lumpur. No big deal,” he added.
The author then alleged that he was initially made to pay for his own “deportation” which at the time cost USD $1,000.
“I did not have money to pay for another ticket to go back. He said ‘You know what, we will pay for you to go back’ as if he was doing me a favour.
“Then when the time came for me to leave, I was given a police escort back onto the plane and sent back to Kuala Lumpur. I was alone in Kuala Lumpur for three days, so to make the most of my time there, I decided to go out and see the city.
“Big mistake! When I was trying to go out, the taxi would refuse to stop for me because I was a black person. I went to restaurants and waitstaff would not take my order because they did not want to talk to a black person,” Suleiman explained.
Even when departing the country, Suleiman’s appalling experience was further exacerbated when five security agents in red had surrounded him while he was queuing to get on to the plane.
The agents started interrogating him and took his passport away, flashing it with different lights to check if the passport was “fake”.
Netizens have expressed their sympathies and apologised for Ocheni’s experience.
