Nigeria Abroad
After living in the United States for over 30 years, a Nigerian couple in New York, United States had already perfected plans to retire in their home country when, suddenly, the nation-space became riddled with persistent insecurity, even as its economy continues to decline.
“Those guys are not Americans,” one of their sons said of his parents. “They never saw America as home. Just a place to work, make money and leave. They visit Nigeria yearly. When they didn’t travel last December, I knew something was off.”
Kidnaping and murder of returnee diasporans were heavily reported, so his parents stayed back. Ever since then, instability has only worsened in Nigeria: daily killings by “unknown gunmen,” arson, robberies, and other criminalities.
The young New Yorker who wants his parents to retire in America says the old couple are sad and don’t know what to do because they have invested heavily for retirement in Nigeria. They are not alone.
During a recent chat with Nigeria Abroad, a compatriot in the UK said he has paused investments in Nigeria till situations improve.
“I was planning to set up a farm in the Southwest but when the herdsmen issue worsened, my wife and I decided to instead invest further in real estate. Even that now is uncertain because no one knows what will happen next over there.”
A recent report says diaspora remittances to Nigeria fell by 71.2%, though some have blamed the global pandemic for that. Insecurity may also become an important variable in future analyses. Besides fallen diaspora returns are other grave consequences of state failure in Nigeria.
Before 2019, Charles O*, then a Nigerian-based IT guru moved his family to the United States. Though successful by Nigerian standards, the middle-aged man with a home in Lekki told this writer then that Nigeria would collapse. Beyond that, he said its values were at variance with the future he had envisaged for his children.
“I saw the level of *** of the humans inhabiting that space,” said the blunt economist who often stirred anger on Facebook for his attacks on the Black man regarding what he called Evolutionary Anthropology. “I didn’t want my kids to be part of the madness. I gave them foreign passports. Let the environmental angle tapper down the obvious genetic flaws.”
In 2019, he joined his family in the US and has abandoned his Facebook account, alongside every association with Nigeria. Again, he’s not alone.
Nigerians are leaving in droves. The middle-class among them, many already westernized from home, arrive Europe and North America with little to no emotions for their country.
“I only miss the food, which is nothing,” one told this reporter from his base in Canada. The food is not a challenge since Nigerian entrepreneurs now sell virtually all local food ingredients, even if the items lack complete integrity. In fact, the fellow reluctantly visited Nigeria for a friend’s wedding in early 2020. No Nigerian friend or family was aware of his return, as he stayed in a hotel close to the event venue in Lagos and flew back to North America soon after.
Emotionally disconnecting from Nigeria is just one step towards complete nationality erasure—down to generations. Clearly, parents like that would have little motivation raising “Nigerian” kids. In other words, Nigeria’s state failure has economic, psychological, and cultural implications.
At least three diaspora couples planning weddings in Nigeria for December 2021 have no idea whether to proceed with arrangements, or instead hold the events in their locations in the West. Two of the couples are children of Nigerian-immigrant parents. They wish to feel at home while formalizing their marital journeys. Nigerian-themed weddings are a big cultural fascination for the diaspora who, in the age of global racial awakening, are making efforts to live and put their cultures on the map.
Failing to start their new lives literally on natal grounds may further alienate them from home.
In fairness, emotional flight from Nigeria is not new. Only last week, a multi-racial Nigerian writer mentioned how her Nigerian-American father disconnected from home for life following family hostility. She has never met any of her “over 50 cousins.” Another, also in America, only remembered Nigeria after eating moi-moi in the US—a meal she recollected eating as a child in Northern Nigeria. She no longer has family in her native country. Citizens have been erasing Nigeria for long, only this time their country is leaving them no choice.
For the old New York couple, retiring in their Nigerian village does not offer superior comfort, but it’s a chance to relive home as they knew it as children. The scent of red earth, the people, the culture—the whole choice of experiencing natural living over America’s tasteless modernity. The Nigerian emotion is home for them, except that home is now a theatre of blood.
This story first appeared in Nigeria Abroad
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