Nigeria: Magnet for brave Diasporean

Someday soon, you will want to return to Nigeria after many snowy years abroad. In this narrative, I will try to capture the frustration, disappointment, fear, illogic and pain of leaving a relatively well-ordered, affluent and functioning society for the aberration of disorderliness, chaos, corruption, underperformance and infrastructure sabotage. I will say that it takes grit, determination and burning will to supplant peace for chaos, abundance for lack, progress for stagnation and certainty for uncertainty. Those who live in the Diaspora of the Western hemisphere are in a race against a soullish timeline that demands of them a timetable of final homecoming. No doubt, Nigerians are patriotic and they love their country with positive passion. But logic, common sense and survival have all combined to arrest any illusive dream of hurried race back to the Motherland.

The news coming from Nigeria as a realm of social and infrastructure paralysis, armed robbers, corruption, 419ers, governance inertia, poor health facilities, collapsed schools, death trap roads, political violence, kidnapping, area boys’ siege and general lawlessness have all combined to put damper on a return back to Nigeria. It is easy to view Nigeria from a relatively safe haven of London and New York with a heavily blinkered vision of hell on earth. My answer to that is this: all countries of the world have their own unseen pockets of hell on earth. The solution is to remove the opaque blinders of our lenses and affix a new pair of lenses for clearer picture. The devil is always a liar and a master distortionist and also very clever in the game of implanting fear in the minds of the naturally fearful.

Mercifully, where there is faith, there is no fear. First, to make it back home finally, a would-be returnee must develop a healthy and objective picture of Nigeria. He has to circumcise the foreskin of his mind of all fear, tribulations and dark narrative commonly associated with Nigeria. Stay away from reading, seeing, hearing or listening to any demonology about Nigeria. Second, anybody thinking of coming back to Nigeria to settle must be tough, prepared, resolute, unyielding and be ready to suffer some life deprivations. Thirdly, there must be a readiness to embrace our culture anew, reignite old contacts with friends, classmates and neighbours. Fourth, you have to shorn yourself of all pretences and the wounding affectations of someone who has just returned from abroad. Also, your state of mind must be like someone who has been deported never to make it back again. This state of mind is the battlefield where you will lose or win the battle to survive Nigeria.

You have to remind yourself that there is no going back and with that you should begin to husband your meager resources reasonably and frugally to sustain you for the long haul. Except you are a superman, after 4 weeks, a searing pain of frustration will try to overcome your resolve so much that you might want to chase yourself out of town.

Resist the temptation to flee. Damn the damnables and fight on. Many returnees who had planned to stay on have shipwrecked their homecoming after the 4 weeks blues.

Many complained of mosquitoes, generator pollution, noise, the sun, gnats, unpleasant African smell and every other prompting of the devil to abandon the dream of final settlement.

They returned back to white racism, loneliness, cultural emptiness and deeper alienation. Finally, once you were able to stay continuously in Nigeria for 6 months, then you have broken the silly myth and ugly jinx of a vibrant and accommodating nation of love, bigger opportunities and possibilities that are sadly lacking for immigrants abroad.

The farmer after a long toil, l guess in the snow, has to return home to rest. Home, my people, is sweet home.

My sojourn in Nigeria is rooted mainly in intellection. My mandate is to engage Nigeria intellectually through different writing genres-articles, essays, features, exile narratives, pilgrim’s confession, travel writing, polemicism and reviews. Further mandate is to stubbornly acclimatise and get rooted for 2 years on bare necessity of life that borders on living a Spartan, monk’s lifestyle. To earn your keep as a writer in Nigeria, you have to be resourceful, news-driven, talented, imaginative, dependable, unique in style, prolific and determined. Helpers along the line will include a large Collins English Dictionary and Thesaurus, books on virtually all subjects from Astronomy to our digital divide, an Internet-ready computer is a plus but I use the roadside cafe to escape to township every week. My large notebooks are the source of my divine muse and some sort of idea generator where most of what you read here came from. As a weekly columnist, newspaper cuttings remain a veritable source of inexhaustible material that could zap you from the event long forgotten to the current interest in Trumpology.

The question is, after conquering Nigeria, what next? Should I remain rooted or break the monotony of endless sunshine for the damp snow of London. Well, I long to see UK again. I long to re-ambush London-that city of endless glistening pavements, rain coated city gents, Pakistani meat sellers, Indian shopkeepers, Jamaican confident swagger and Soho’s sexual permissiveness. Nigeria will remain a magnet for the brave, the determined, the adventurers, the courageous and for those souls who could not divorce from mother Africa.

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