Last week, about 115 young Nigerians besieged the Ukraine Embassy in Abuja and offered to join Ukraine in its fight against Russia. The young people put down their names in a register provided by the embassy.
The volunteers were responding to a recent call by Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, urging people around the world to join the fight. Zelensky had on Sunday accused the Russian army of killing civilians and praised Ukrainians for having the courage to defend themselves.
On February 24, Russian troops invaded Ukraine after Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, ordered a special military operation in Donbas, a separatist-held region in Ukraine. Since the invasion, there have been reported casualties on both sides, and many residents of Ukraine, including Nigerians, are fleeing to neighbouring countries.
By this week, the number of volunteers had soared from 115 to over 400, according to major newspaper reports.
At a time Nigerians in Ukraine are struggling to return home, and many Ukrainian nationals are moving out of the troubled country, the decision of the Nigerian volunteers has stirred conversations across fora, especially online.
Interestingly, as though it could notice that the motive of some of the volunteers was not primarily altruistic, the Ukraine embassy in Nigeria on Thursday told the volunteers who are willing to travel to Ukraine to fight Russian forces to provide $1000 for flight ticket and visa. Many of them have chickened out, lamenting the ‘high cost’ of the flight requirement.
Yet the big question lingers still: why would young Nigerians choose to leave the relatively safe comfort of their homes and travel to a troubled country in the middle of war, destruction, despair and potential catastrophes?
The devil, as the popular saying doesn’t quite go, is in the numbers.