Olukorede Yishau
NOVELIST and short story writer Sefi Atta, in A Bit of Difference, painted a nasty picture of life here: “There is so much frustration here. Too much. People will harass you, insult and waste your time. They can’t stand to see you happy or successful. They must bring you down somehow, and they’re not the ones trying to rob you of your money, or your life. Every day, you’re fighting to hold on to what you have and stay alive. What you will go through here will make you want to run back to London.”
Booker prize finalist Obioma Chigozie, in his latest novel, An Orchestra of Minorities, has what many will consider a portrait of Nigeria: “The land of lack, of man-pass-man, the land in which a man’s greatest enemies are members of his household; a land of kidnappers, of ritual killers; of policemen who bully those they encounter on the road and shoot those who don’t bribe them; of leaders who treat those they lead with contempt and rob them of their commonwealth; of frequent riots and crisis; of long strikes; of petrol shortages; of joblessness; of clogged gutters; of potholed roads…and of constant power outages.”
Things did not use to be this bad. Time was when electricity supply was not epileptic. There was a time when graduates were offered jobs with housing and car allowances. University students ate free meals. Most people who went abroad for schooling returned home to start new lives. Even when they were given tempting offers, they insisted on returning home. Not anymore!
The University Teaching Hospital (UCH) in Ibadan used to be one of the best in the world. The Lagos University Teaching (LUTH) and the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital were also good on the global chart. Where are they now? With these giants no longer centres of excellence, there is nothing to write about our so-called general hospitals or federal medical centres. America, Britain, Australia, South Africa and Canada are now homes to some of our best medical brains. The few that are here do not have the tools to be the best they can be. Not a few of them run private practice by the side when government does not see the need to give them what they deserve as resident doctors and consultants.
Despite the situation at home, there are several advantages of living in your home country. In a place like Nigeria, we take a lot of things for granted though a few of us have gone abroad and carried on as though they were still home. But they have fallen victims of the law. The truth is: the laws are stricter abroad. United States and the United Kingdom have used their laws to rein the bad Nigerians in. Many of them are in prisons across these nations.
Last year, the United States released a list of 77 Nigerians who are involved in scam. Before then, it arrested a popular Nigerian youth, Invictus Obi, over a number of scams; he is being detained while investigations are on.
Many of the indicted 77 have been nabbed in the U.S. and some have been picked up in Nigeria with the assistance of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). They might be extradited to the U.S. to face the music.
Back home, people support one another. Old people have their children and members of their extended families taking care of them. When you are abroad, old people largely end up in old people’s people.
Not well-to-do relatives rely on the well-to-do ones to pay rent and sort out other bills. It does not work that way abroad. It is to your tent o Israel! Bills are crazy. What is paid as rent abroad in a year can serve as 10-year rent in Nigeria. So, it is understandable when even parents ask their working-class kids to pay some of the bills at home or they encourage them to go and have their own homes.
Here, we have the options of family members begging one another for money. Friends do the same. Colleagues beg colleagues for assistance, financial and otherwise. Church members beg pastors and vice versa for cash.
You will not experience racism at home. The worst you get are mediocrity and tribalism. A report says racism is on the rise in the UK. A United Nations expert has found that racism and religious intolerance have become worse after the Brexit referendum. A columnist in the United Kingdom even compared refugees to cockroaches like it happened between the Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda.
Minority groups are a target in the criminal justice process. The prisons have interesting scenarios: blacks are over-represented. There is the criminalisation of young people from ethnic minorities, especially young black men. In police stop and searches, they are the target. They are more likely to face prosecution. Someone told me “there is no racial equality in the UK, but racial pretence. Racial profiling is terrible”.
I see a lot of sense in the words of my first Editor and award-winning novelist Dr. Maik Nwosu, who said: “At a certain point, you will realise that no matter how long you live in America, you will always be a Nigerian. And when you come back to Nigeria, people will say that you have been away for too long. So you are no longer fully Nigerian. Before you know it, you will begin to have an in-between existence that is neither entirely Nigerian nor entirely American.
“The classical trajectory of migration is a departure, passage, settlement and return. But the return almost never happens. A lot of migrants wish and plan to go back to their homelands. Somehow, they never manage to go back. However, failure on their part to return physically does not mean that they are psychologically disconnected from their homelands.”
My final take: Home is where your heart is. It is not physical. If you are unmoved by racial profiling and other challenges of living abroad, then you can make abroad home. In making it home, do so legally and make no mistakes: the streets of London or New York are not paved with free cash. Many sweat it out to make ends meet. You have to earn every single kobo and if you engage in illegal activities or break the law, even if innocently, you will face the music. There are promises and some level of fulfilment abroad, but it is no paradise.
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