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Ambassador Christian Ugwu is a retired general of the Nigerian army. He retired in 2013 and in 2020, President Mohammadu Buhari appointed him Nigeria’s ambassador to the Republic of Poland. He presented his letter of credence to the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda in September, 2021. His mission to Warsaw did not start as smoothly as one would expect in a foreign mission.
When on 24 February 2022, Russian tanks invaded Ukraine, world peace was ruptured. The civilised world was unsettled. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides and caused Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II, with an estimated 8 million people being displaced within the country by late May as well as 7.7 million Ukrainians fleeing the country as of October, 2022.
Although Nigeria is thousands of kilometers away from the shelling and bombardment zones in Ukraine, the country was not spared the specter of war as thousands of Nigerians living in Ukraine were trapped in the war torn zones. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, at the time, said there were about 8,000 Nigerians in Ukraine.
Major General Christian Ugwu, Nigeria’s ambassador to Poland, was confronted with this reality on his return from Nigeria, where he travelled to, amongst other things, personally take to Poland passports of some Nigerians who had earlier applied for new passports in December of 2021. The Ukraine war was another test for the new ambassador, and as a general who had seen worse situations in the past, he confronted the challenge headlong by swinging into action. He went to the evacuation border points of Poland and Ukraine in person. His immediate task was to create a safe passage for Nigerians in Ukraine to be evacuated to Poland.
The Nigerian Embassy in Warsaw eventually evacuated Nigerian students and other Nigerian citizens from Ukraine to Poland, which was the destination for millions of Ukrainians and other nationalities fleeing the country to safety.
Apart from successfully tackling the challenge posed by the Ukrainian war, Ambassador Ugwu made life easier for Nigerians living in Poland through his open door policy.
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Before the pressure brought to bear on the ambassador by the Ukraine crises, Major-General Christian Ugwu had been inundated with daily requests for Nigerian passports by citizens who needed them. The diplomat swung into action to ensure that expired passports of Nigerian citizens in Poland were renewed and new ones issued. Before the appointment of General Ugwu, passport issuance and renewal exercise for Nigerians residing in Poland had become a daunting problem. To hasten the production and collection of the passport booklets, he travelled to Nigeria in January 2022. Two months after, he was back to Warsaw with the passports.
In October, the second batch of passport renewal and issuance exercise for Nigerian citizens in Poland was carried out at the Embassy, for a record second time in one year. For hundreds of Nigerians in Poland, Ambassador Ugwu is an epitome of a good leader and father who cares after his children.
Ambassador Christian Ugwu’s efforts did not go unnoticed. In April this year, his kinsmen, the Ndi-Igbo community in Poland, led by Ejike Onuoha, President of Igbo Union in Poland, paid him a “thank-you” visit at his residence in Warsaw. According to Reverend Canon Felix Malizu who inspired the initiative of a courtesy visit, “the appointment of Ambassador Ugwu, a brilliant and able leader to Warsaw,” was a prayer answered. He praised the ambassador for his heroics during the ‘Nigerian refugees’ evacuation project, passport renewal and issuance of new ones , for having a listening ear to the plight of Nigerians in Poland and restoring respect and dignity to the average Nigerian residing in Poland.
Above all, the Igbo community in Poland, expressed its appreciation to the ambassador and said, “ we welcome you warmly as part of us and appreciate all you have achieved so far in a very short time in Poland. We are proud of you.”
Ambassador Ugwu’s guests did not leave without making specific demands from their host. Some of the problems, which are not peculiar to the Igbos, but to all Nigerians living in Poland include the long and arduous procedure for obtaining Nigerian passport for their wives and spouses of Polish origin.
Happily, all that is changing for the better. According to Ejike Onuoha, President of Igbo Union in Poland, quite a good number of students who were denied visa to further their studies in Polish universities will start receiving the refund of their earlier paid school fees soon. This was made possible by the unequalled and continued consultation by the Ambassador with the Polish government.
Onuoha also confirmed that “that through the tireless effort of Ambassador Ugwu, all the 19 Nigerians who were among those evacuated from Ukraine , who the Polish authorities remanded in detention camps for lack of visas have been released.”
The visitors as well pledged their unalloyed loyalty and promised to cooperate with other Nigerians living in Poland to make his stay in the east European country a memorable one.
Responding, Ambassador Ugwu thanked his compatriots for making time out to visit him, adding that the visit had given him confidence and motivation to do more. He also promised to look into the challenges Nigerians were facing in Poland, adding that “we have a lot to gain here, just as Poland has a lot to gain from Nigeria. “The best way to go about living and doing business happily here is for you to always be on the side of the law,” he counseled, emphasising, “please, do not commit crime. If you commit crime, I will not come, but for any other thing, I will be there for you.”
He did not fail to let his audience know that his position was a challenging one but thanked God for his strength and wisdom to carry on.
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