This will be a long one, so forgive me. But please give me a few minutes of your time.
First of all, I must say that I am a Nigerian Diaspora and this letter is in many ways to myself as well.
I am a Nigerian, Born to Parents from Ekiti State, Nigeria and lived the first 26 years of my life in Gbagada, Lagos, Nigeria. My siblings and parents live in Nigeria as well as several extended family members and friends who I care about deeply.
I have always loved my home country, What Nigeria is and being Nigerian is both my blessing and my curse; for example, being resilient,driven; and being subject of searching at every international airport because of my green passport at the same time.
I am one of those who believed for a long time that I will live and die in Nigeria and conquer the world from Nigeria, much of that has changed now because I now live “down under” in Australia. It took a long time to make the decision to move because in many ways I believed and still do that I am one of those called to change Nigeria and solve its problems, I believe I belong to “a new generation of leaders” made to serve that great country called Nigeria and people called Nigerians.
I have said the above to give some context to the following words that I have written.
It’s election season and in some ways, many of us feel that we are spectators to the event which is choosing Nigeria’s leaders for the next 4 years. In 3 weeks, our Tribe (being Nigerian is a Tribe) at home will go the polls. In the following words I will speak of some of the ways in which we have a role to play in making Nigeria better, but that does not take away that Nigeria’s number one problem remains leadership. If we get leadership right, it will definitely give us an edge. I have often surmised that Nigeria’s problem can be summed up in the words in Ecclesiastes 10:7 “Servants riding on horses and Princes walking on the ground like servants”. Somewhere along the line, I don’t know where, we handed over the leadership of our great country to those who shouldn’t be near government in any way, charlatans, whose God is their bellies, those whose end is doomed.
However, solving Nigeria’s problem requires both a bottom-up approach and a top-down approach. Which brings me to what we should and need to be doing as diasporans.
Being Diaspora, gives us some form of advantage and at the same time a disadvantage. An advantage we have is that we have seen and can understand better, how a system can be made to work for its people, a disadvantage is that sometimes we can be out of touch with the core issues that Nigeria and Nigerians face. Another advantage is that we don’t have to deal with some of the third world problems we face such as lack of electricity, water and other social amenities (something the west fails to appreciate; as they say, you don’t know what you have till it’s gone); while another disadvantage is that we might loose the sense of urgency required to solve the issues that plague our nation.
When I spent a few months in Nigeria’s civil service before moving to Australia, it gave me perspective to the fact that solving Nigeria’s problems requires some external influence, in many ways, we cannot ask the system to reform itself; it is not designed to do that. A simple analogy is the civil service and its inefficiency, it is known that the best reformers in the civil service have always come from outside of it; it needs some external force to set it on the trajectory needed to reform it and make it work for the people it was created for. The current civil service is not designed to serve Nigerians but those in government and itself. I did not see that the diaspora was a part of the external influence it needed when I was in the civil service, but I understood clearly that Nigeria cannot by itself with the current kind of leadership cleanse itself.
This is where You and I come in. This letter goes to all diasporas, including students studying abroad, first, second or third generation diaspora and as many that know that they are connected to Nigeria in some way and are passionate about seeing it achieve its potential.
Nigeria needs all the help it can get in solving the myriads of problems.
Many diaspora do an “unthankable” job with remittances with family members and friends in Nigeria, imagine a Nigeria without those remittances. Keep remitting, the effect of the remittances is that it reduces the suffering of not just family members and friends that we send them to, but also helps the economy of the country through the many businesses that benefit from the money spent by family and friends; we must go a step further.
The student in diaspora and the academic in diaspora needs to turn their attention to solving the problems that Nigeria has through research. Some of the challenges we face are peculiar to us and solving them requires that we must ourselves pay attention to them and pour ourselves into solving them. We must take advantage of the systems that work around us to develop solutions to the challenges that our people face. There are examples of people who do this already but we need to scale up and be much more intentional. For example, when you do your research in academia, think about that applies o Nigeria, let your problem statements be also focused on Nigeria. We must do this while solving first world problems in our respective domains.
Every diaspora has a sphere of influence, in our sphere of influence we thrive and prosper, that spare of influence is connected to Nigeria in some way. As professionals, as blue collar or white-collar workers, as doctors, engineers, nurses, social workers etc. We must leverage the experience and knowledge we have, to tackle Nigeria’s problems. The fact that we thrive in every nation abroad is a pointer to the enormous potentials and possibilities within our reach.
We can only do this collectively and not in silos. We must engage each other; one shall chase 1000 but 2 shall chase 10,000. The scale required for us affect Nigeria is such that we must bind together. We are over 200,000,000 (although not all of them need our help, but you get the gist), to understand the scale of impact required that is more 3,300 Abuja National Stadiums; to impact that many people we must form the partnerships required. Our partnerships must include those who are like-minded at home who see the enormous potentials and are willing to put in the work/sacrifice not for selfish gain but for the common good of our people.
We must move past the survival mentality that our circumstances and situations have bequeathed on us to an abundance mentality. We must build ecosystems that ensures that every Nigerian wins and thrives. We must move past the divisiveness of nepotism and understand our Unity; despite being a construct of colonialism, we must understand that we are better together than we will ever be as individual nations.
I said I was once one of those who thought my whole life will be in Nigeria, but with my exposure that has changed. My stance on “Japa” has changed from “ki le n wa n ta” to “welcum to the habrod”, it is an advantage, take it as a privilege that you must make use of, to improve the quality of life of not just yourself but those of those around you.
In a sense, I feel that we have a privilege to live in nations not faced with the third world problems we have. This privilege given to us frees us to be able to tackle certain issues and problems with resources not available to some of our colleagues at home.
While we are at different stages in our journey, some of us are still finding our feet abroad, some of us are just adapting/adjusting to the new challenges that living abroad gives you, some of us are still working through our finances, some of us are still settling down, some of us are still trying to lay the foundation that we need to be able to thrive, we must do this this things with a wise saying in mind.
"Home is always Home. There is no place as Home”.
“Ile l’abo wa”
Now I understand that Nigeria might have taken from some of us, our loved ones and many other things like our dignity, justice etc., but we must forgive it. First, because God forgave us first; second for the sake of the people whom we love so much, and for our own peace as well. We cannot throw the baby away with the bath water.
The Bible talks about how God gave earth to man by blessing Him and saying to Him, Be fruitful and multiply, have dominion over the fish of the sea and every living thing.
In a similar way, we have a charge which goes to us all wherever we find ourselves, we must not only thrive and prosper in the diaspora but in some way be a part of the change that Nigeria will experience by God’s grace. We must strive to make Nigeria the great nation it should be.
God Bless You and God Bless The Federal Republic of Nigeria.
