Happy Easter to everyone. I just popped in on this platform after over two months of hiatus. Sadly nothing seems to have changed. Tinubu bashing still lives on supremely. My advice, don’t make your judgement about Nigeria based on the hyperbolic shenanigans you read on social media. Before I am misunderstood and misrepresented, let me state clearly that Nigeria remains a poor under-developed country it has been for a very long time. So if you are comparing Nigeria with the U.S, UK or Canada or whichever country to reside in, you are still living in lalaland. Yes, Nigeria is no Nirvana but neither is the country you reside in. Every nation has its own fair share of shit. We are now seeing that sons of the countries we used to lionize have more shit than we ever imagined.
Having made that clear, many of us in the diaspora who haven’t gone home in a long while might not recognize their streets when they return home. While many of us are here moaning and gripping about how bad life is in Nigeria, your community is being transformed with redevelopment. The mud house facing the street where mama Mukaila used to sell moinmoin has been bought probably by an Igbo brother. Mama Mukaila’s husband whose body was buried in front of the house has been exhumed and reburied. In its place a glittering glasshouse grocery store is now booming with customers. This is happening particularly in the southwest which has become the safe haven for our Igbo brethren and other Nigerian ethnicities running away from the insecurity in their villages. Dangote has staked almost his entire investment nest egg in the southwest not because he hates his Fulani homeland but because he sees value in it. While we are running away from our homeland and complaining how terrible the Nigerian system and institutions are, foreigners are coming in and finding opportunity in the high risk low reward Nigerian business ecosystem and thriving.
“My advice, especially with the level of xenophobia in the U.S. and across the globe, and the fast nature of life abroad and our children doing their own thing, getting old in this place with no backup plan back home is a fool’s choice. Your retirement nest eggs will go further outside of this place. By the way, even your American born colleagues are spending their retirement years japaing to low cost South America and Europe. Why shouldn’t you make your own back-up plan.“
Challenge and opportunity are two sides of the same coin, if you focus too much on the one side and do not flip it over, you will be seeing only half of the movie. Yes, Fulani herdsmen and kidnappers are still at their nefarious business, yet the Lagos-Ibadan express is no longer just littered with mega churches but with mega industrial parks. Warehouses and manufacturing outfits. Someone is building them and they don’t have two heads.
The force of market competition is now gradually controlling fuel prices and many independent oil marketers who used to manipulate supply to gouge people during oil scarcity will soon have to merge with big marketers or be squeezed out of business. Long lines at NNPC stations which used to wrap around sometimes for miles because NNPC used to have the cheapest price are long gone. I remember people parking their car overnight at NNPC stations but no longer. You will not read that story on your WhatsApp fora.
The arrival hall into Nigeria used to be our national embarrassment with disorderliness reigning supreme, well that has changed. While not yet perfect, the arrival hall is slowly becoming a national pride. The escalator still runs a little faster than necessary but you might be shocked how smooth the immigration check-in has become if you hadn’t been home a while. While Nigerian airline agents have not totally stopped their shenanigans about weighing passengers luggage, even the check-in process has improved.
Yes, youth unemployment, insecurity, grinding poverty, our dilapidated public schools and large mass of unschooled children remain huge challenges and the ever widening gap between the rich and poor is now wider than the Gulf of Mexico. Yes you read me right, it is still called the Gulf of Mexico by the sane rational world. But there are signs of progress if you take your blinders off and shut down your WhatsApp forum for a while to regain your sanity.
President Tinubu is no Midas who can turn rubble to gold. His government is not without the the usual Nigerian political shenanigans, but slowly, methodically and without making noise Tinubu is restructuring Nigeria institutionally. He is doing so with local government autonomy, the proposed tax bill, and recently the setting up of regional development authorities for each of the six geopolitical zones. If we now fail as Nigeria to take hold of the new opportunities presented by local government autonomy to hold those who collect the monthly allocation for our villages accountable, the shame is on us. Ditto for the regional development institutions. Rather than sit ten thousands miles in another man’s land throwing stones at your homeland, go home once in a while and visit your village. The country you live in is no paradise on earth. If in doubt listen to your local evening news on your local TV stations. How many people got shot today in Chicago, Miami or Philadelphia? If you a visitor would you not be too scared to venture outside yet we all go about our daily lives. Nigerians are doing the same back home, making lemonade out of lemon.
Many of us armchair critics who see nothing but hell in Nigeria will be shocked if in a few years, we find Nigeria unavoidable. Our saving grace is still the favorable exchange rate. With the way our man in DC is running this place and the decimation of our 401k, that advantage might not last forever.
My advice especially with the level of xenophobia in the U.S. and across the globe and the fast nature of life abroad and our children doing their own thing, getting old in this place with no backup plan back home is a fool’s choice. Your retirement nest eggs will go further outside of this place. By the way, even your American born colleagues are spending their retirement years japaing to low cost South America and Europe. Why shouldn’t you make your own back-up plan.
Our folks back home are not sitting idly, complaining. The uncle who keeps telling there is nothing to return home to in Nigeria is living in his own house, no matter how modest it is. Many Nigerians in the diaspora can’t compete with many of our classmates back home and not all of them are corrupt politicians.
Those who enjoy bashing Tinubu can do so. Remember eni ba fi Oju Ana woku Nigeria, Ebora a bo laso. Some of us need to go home and smell the roses and stay off the negativity of WhatsApp fora.
Ire o.
