Thoughts of an Entitled Nigerian
As a Nigerian who has lived abroad for over ten years now, I must say that this is the most insecure and uncertain I have felt about my future. Which is partly due to the current state of U.S policies around immigration and mostly due to the incompetence of the Nigerian government. One of the primary reasons why Nigerians leave Nigeria is to seek higher education or better opportunities in more developed countries. This is due to the lack of affordable post-secondary institutions where students can graduate in the allotted time having learned something valuable, free of emotional or mental abuse from administrators and professors.
In addition, Nigeria continues to show how rotten the system is with the level of incompetence and complacency that permeates our governing bodies. Often, we read stories about how Nigeria fails its citizens in healthcare, transportation, housing, security, food, and international affairs. The Nigerian House of Representative members recently voted against evacuating stranded Nigerians in areas of China with high risk of contracting the coronavirus disease — stating boldly that China is more equipped with the resources and facilities to handle the virus than Nigeria. While this can be argued as a valid reason, it is incredibly shameful that our leaders are complacent about how ill-equipped our health sector is to treat its citizens.
There are few opportunities to get quality higher education or good paying jobs needed to survive in the increasingly expensive cities in Nigeria, and the lack of security constantly rears its head in different ways from trailers parked permanently on a bridge to people in Ikorodu having to sleep with one eye open due to rampant increase in robberies.
The more doctors we graduate, the worse the health care; the bigger the police force, the worse the security; the more seemingly educated/exposed our politicians, the worse our policies.
Given that the country does not equip us to be successful within the country, it also fails to prepare us for living abroad. For example, I loathe that I knew nothing about African-American history until I moved to the U.S., so it suffices to say that I dealt — not only with the culture shock of being Nigerian abroad — but also with the new reality of being black in America without any prior knowledge of what it means to be black. Someone recently asked me to share one class I wished was offered in high school I replied — A class on how to be an adult — but in retrospect I really wished there was a class in secondary school that taught me what it meant to be black both in Nigeria and abroad. Perhaps, this would have better prepared me for the overt and covert racism I was going to witness and be the subject of while living in the west.
In college, people used to ask me what it would be like to visit Nigeria and I always told them jokingly about how much better they would be treated in Nigeria in comparison to me. As they say, there is some truth to every joke because as time goes by, Nigeria confirms that this is a very true statement. How else can you explain a foreigner mobilizing Nigerian soldiers to flog a neighbor with koboko because they had a disagreement and the soldiers don’t hesitate about it. This is not to say that if the tables were turned, it would be okay to do so.
As fellow Nigerians would say, “The matter plenty, where person fit start”.
Over the course of my life, one constant voice in my head screamed “Nigeria does not care about you”, as evident in so many situations we witnessed and heard of growing up. A Danfo driver can run over a fellow Nigerian; bribe a police officer to get away with it. A construction company can defraud a Nigerian while building a house and bribe its way out of prosecution. A public school in Lagos can get gutted by fire, claiming lives, yet the Lagos state government can easily move on from it without investigating to find out what happened, who to hold responsible, and how to prevent it from happening again. A tanker that has been parked for months on a bridge along Apapa can fall on a car driving past, claiming lives; yet the government does nothing to hold the company/individuals who own the company accountable for the accident. A company in Nigeria can discriminate against Nigerians by solely seeking out expatriates for open positions and yet again there is no one to report such discrimination to that will take the matter seriously and at the very minimum file a lawsuit. An executive or manager at a company can physically or sexually abuse an employee and walk away without repercussion; in fact, the victim might lose their job and get chastised for causing wahala for everyone else at work.
Nigeria continues to fail us in its inability to provide basic amenities or protect our civil rights. The latter is even more painful because it emboldens other people to continue mistreating us. Hence why a Chinese owned restaurant operating in Ikeja, Lagos can state boldly that they only serve non-Nigerian customers. This is also why a lot of international and even local companies prefer to hire expatriate for managers and leadership positions but seek a Nigerian to work non-skilled to semi-skilled jobs. For goodness sake, we are mistreated by expatriates in Nigeria and then mistreated by our own country, yet no one in our government loses sleep over this.
We are treated equally as terrible when we go to embassies of other countries in Nigeria as we are when we visit Nigerian embassies abroad. I personally have been to two different Nigerian consulates in the U.S. to renew my passport and long story short — officials showed up late for appointments, shouted at applicants, showed no form of remorse for applicants who had flown in from other states just for the appointment etc. This type of neglect and lack of care for the “other” has transcended how we treat one another as everyday Nigerians — which explains why we are so unfriendly and unwilling to help each other but quick to offer help and a friendly face to the next non-Nigerian we encounter. This is internalized hate for our country and a projection of how the country treats us that has pierced through our attitude towards each other. I don’t know what to attribute this to other than speculate that it is a form of self-hate.
We need to put more value to human lives in Nigeria, we need to be concerned if there is an accident in Ibadan even if we lived in Benue, our politicians ought to preach more unity and genuine love and concern for the next Nigerian. Nigeria has so much potential which it fails to tap into, but a more dire issue is that our country needs to start caring about Nigerians first before they can ask others to care about us.
It brings me so much sadness when I watch videos from my last visit to Nigeria missing the smell of the air, the peace of mind that comes with being home, the familiarity of my environment and many other things. It is a conflicting feeling because although there are many uncertainties with living in Nigeria, there is an unexplainable feeling of belonging and self-security that comes with being home. It is something you can’t really feel anywhere else.
The plight of knowing that your dream of moving back home becomes distant as the years go by because your government continues to fail you is by far the most painful realization I have come to as a Nigerian adult living abroad.
I look forward to a time when Nigerians can live knowing that the Nigerian government understands the value of a Nigerian life, when Nigerians can feel encouraged to live and invest in Nigeria without fear of losing it all in a second, when Nigerians can get the education we deserve without leaving the shores of Nigeria, when Nigerians can live in Nigeria without desperately needing to migrate in order to escape the daunting uncertainties, when a graduate can secure a job in an area of interest, when vocational skills can be encouraged and fairly compensated, when minimum wage in Nigeria can actually help afford living expenses in Nigeria, when corrupt politicians can be punished for their actions, and when Nigeria will finally get a COMPETENT PRESIDENT.
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