This Is Nigeria’s Plan B
The Council of Young African Leaders (CYAL) founded by Divine Muragijimana and Okenfe Lebarty invited me to speak at their annual City University of New York Young African Leadership Symposium in 2012. At that meeting, a speaker told the audience that they had to leave the U.S. and return to Africa. It was a call to patriotism, or so he thought. I thought the speaker meant well, but I felt they were wrong.
I told the audience that patriotism could not be limited by national borders. I said, “borders are artificial because when the world was created, there were no borders”. I went on to tell them that they must stay committed to home; starting businesses with people they could trust, making donations to projects and programmes and even starting their own projects.
Okenfe recently opened the Lebarty American Leadership Academy in Benin, Nigeria. I remember also saying that if perhaps after several years things were not working for anyone in the audience, it was not a bad idea to return home, to see if they could be luckier. My point was that going home just for the sake of going home was not a good idea. Send money home, I said. People back home will appreciate the person abroad who sends them money than the ones they see every day that can’t change their economic conditions.
That was over a decade ago when, even though like the many years before it, migration was a normal thing. It is far off from these days of japa and the perception that it is a new reality. The ubiquity of social media often biases us into thinking some things are new or more prevalent than they used to be. Then and now, I still believe that those who prefer to explore opportunities abroad are doing the right thing for themselves and their family. Patriotism is sweeter when you are successful.
It takes a lot of faith and sacrifice to leave one’s home land. I experienced something in London days ago that further emphasised to me why I’d never live abroad, outside of short visits, and other long visit commitments. This Caucasian lady and a girl who appeared to be her daughter were in the lift. She was going to press their floor but decided not to when I entered. I could see her hand dilly-dally over the keys. I understood the situation. I simply pressed my floor anyway.
It turned out we were going to the same floor because she didn’t press any key again. When we arrived, I normally would let others step out first, but this time I knew I had to go out before them, otherwise things could get even creepier. Now, it could just be that they’d have expressed the same fear if I was a white male. I don’t know that. It’s also possible that the fear they expressed had nothing to do with me. But I am never going to be in such situations and not think it’s because I am a Black man.
In July, I had another weird experience in D.C. of all places. I do not have enough space to narrate that. I am always thinking, maybe it’s just me overthinking things. I put that down to all the shootings and killings in America. But I am also always aware these things happen when I am outside Africa. I am fine with these experiences when I am traveling. I certainly don’t want to live a life where I am constantly negotiating my right to be in ordinary spaces. I don’t take any of it personal.
People aren’t inherently wicked or trying to other you. We’ve been fed so much unwholesome stuff; we see things that aren’t sometimes there. That includes me. I just can’t imagine that my everyday life would be to stay conscious of being othered by others. That’s why I find comfort in living in Africa. Because that part of my consciousness never gets triggered. As much as these things don’t matter, they matter.
This is one of the reasons why I respect those who must navigate and endure these experiences. I saw a video of a woman saying if someone handed her 20,000 pounds, she’d make her way back to Nigeria. It is a pointer to the fact that the economic opportunities may not even measure up to the inconvenience for some people.
This really is why whilst leaving the country may be an individual’s Plan B, Nigeria’s Plan A is to make Nigeria work. Nigeria’s plan B is to ensure Plan A is a reality. We cannot as a country build a world where our people feel like they have no other choice but to live abroad. The ultra-patriotic say things like, “if abroad no work make dem come back home,” but the truth is, we haven’t made home a viable option.
In a world where many cannot hold more than one truth in their heads, this could be seen as one thing rather than a simple explanation of some nuances surrounding the japa phenomenon. Life is hard at home, it is not easy abroad but amidst all the racism and its other elements, there are indeed more opportunities in the countries preferred by most Nigerian migrants. We need not live in denial of that.
Once we see things for what they are, we can start addressing them. A good place to start is a sense of intentionality. If we are committed to the traveling experience of most visitors to Nigeria — a lot of them, Nigerian first-time visitors to their homeland and returning citizens — we will address the anomalies at our airports. Addressing insecurity may be complex, but what quadratic equation is required to align our entry and exit protocols with what obtains elsewhere? These little things are what makes one wonder; if we can’t address the things that don’t require budgetary allocation, why should one believe if we had money, we would fix the ones that need these allocations? Money ain’t (always) a thing.
This piece appears in the THISDAY Newspaper 20 September, 2024
