SocialMediaTrends: Nigerians react to Tariq’s rants against Africans taking Black Americans’ jobs

Claims that African immigrants are allegedly leeching on the U.S. economy, thus rending aboriginal Black Americans jobless have generated heated arguments on Twitter.

American film maker and social commentator, Tariqu Nasheed who sold the claim during a Twitter live conversation titled: “How Does Immigration Benefit Black Americans? #SecureTheTribe” said Black Americans fought and are still fighting to reclaim their economic benefits from the American system.

The 47-year-old suggested that Africans should do the same too in their native lands and not come to the U.S. to steal their jobs.

Arguing on the contrary, most callers said the interference of Europeans who later founded America, and the looting of Africa’s resources were responsible for the collapse of the economic and political structure of the continent, hence, the reason Africans have been heading to the destination of the loot.

Another caller reminded Tariqu that most Nigerians abroad were career professionals in their various fields like Doctors, Nurses, College Professors, Tech experts etc, and wondered if he (Tariqu), who admitted to being a High School dropout, could fill any of those positions.

The live conversation which lasted over seven hours saw at least 27,000 people connected, with the majority callers being Nigerians or Nigerians in diaspora.

The volume of engagements around the conversation kept the #SecureTheTribe hashtag and “Tariq” on Twitter’s trends table for hours.

At the time of filing this reports, both trends had garnered 331k and 206k tweets respectively.

Read Also: SocialMediaTrends: AFCON exit – why Nigerians are dragging ‘fine boy’ Okoye and Buhari

Here are what Nigerians have been saying so far:

Here is @gimbakakanda copiously giving Tariq a free education in the approximately 8 minutes conversation. #SecureTheTribe pic.twitter.com/89YpxnNvEa

— Yax (@yaxmokwa) January 27, 2022

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now