- After years of frustration in the country, Nigerian returnees head back abroad in search of better lives
IF there’s one dream passionately nurtured by many young Nigerians, it is to live abroad. Whether it’s Europe, North America, Asia or even parts of the Middle East and Africa, the hunger to relocate outside the shores of Nigeria is much.
A regular visit to Victoria Island in Lagos where many countries have their consular offices would easily confirm that many young Nigerians crave to live outside the country. Travelling abroad, many young Nigerians believe, is an escape route from the multiple challenges in the country.
But many Nigerians that have lived abroad said at a point in their lives, they began to feel the passion to return to their homeland. A few of them, who spoke from their present abode in Europe, told the reporter that they had their reasons for their sudden homesickness. But many of those that returned to their fatherland seemed to have regretted their actions. And they promptly beat a retreat, hastily returning to their adopted land abroad.
Unfulfilled dreams
Dipo Adisa, 38, had lived in the United Kingdom for six years. He said he was caught up in the popular economic phrase that ‘human wants are insatiable.’ Adisa, who immigrated to the United Kingdom in 2008, said he bagged his Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the London Metropolitan University a few years after he arrived the UK. This, he saw as a milestone.
After his degree, he worked as a security guard in a South London Supermarket. The job, he said, never gave him any fulfilment. He said: “When I first got into the UK some eight years ago, I was always full of life. I could do any kind of job that came my way. After working for a while, I decided it was high time I furthered my education. In nine months, I was through. I had just bagged a second degree in Business Administration. But that was the genesis of a wrong move.
“I simply began to feel uncomfortable with my well-paying security job. With my overtime pay, I was making about 1, 550 pounds a month, yet, I was unhappy as a security man despite having two degrees. One day, I decided I would put an end to the menial job. I quit and relocated to Lagos. My thought was that it would not be long before I would get a job in Nigeria, considering my level of education as well as exposure. But I was wrong. I searched every nook and cranny of Lagos for jobs, but I got none. Initially, I was living on some savings I had made before coming home. It was not long before I began to realise I had committed a great error for coming home. I now relied on friends and family members for survival. So, gradually, I began to drop my expectation from hoping to work in a big company like an oil firm, a reputable consulting international organisation or an embassy. I soon realised that I was now practically chasing after any job.
“Early in the morning, the employment websites and bloggers would alert me of job openings in companies across the country. I would sit and apply for many on my laptop. You won’t believe that it was as if the applications weren’t getting to the intended recipients, as nobody would call me back. You know, when you apply in the UK, you would get an acknowledgement for your application, even if you don’t get selected in the end. I realised the game was different in Nigeria. Then, I knew I had missed it.
“After much trial, the best I could get was the post of a manager in one of the popular malls in Lagos, with a N85,000 monthly pay. This amount was less than 200 pounds. I thought to myself, a manager with 200 pounds in my country, or a security official in the UK with 1,550 pounds. After about two years in Nigeria, I had to raise money from friends and other means, and I found my way back to London. I would rather do my security job in London and enjoy constant electricity, good roads, have access to free and good medical system, and pay their (UK’s) huge taxes than to endure poor system and terrible pay that can’t take me anywhere in Nigeria.”
Lifelong grief
Owolabi Tajudeen, another London resident, said he would never forgive himself for the decision he made to relocate to Nigeria. Adisa regretted that he and his wife lost their only child to a reckless driver few months after returning to the country. The incident occurred at Sango, a border town between Ogun and Lagos states.
Adisa, in his mid 40s, said he was a construction safety worker in the UK and he had saved some funds to bring his family back to Nigeria. Having lived in the UK for some years, the Tajudeens decided it was time to test the green grass of home again.
Three months after arriving Nigeria, Mrs. Tajudeen and their only child were involved in an accident at Sango. The car conveying her and her child was hit by a van being driven by an allegedly drunken driver. According to Mr. Tajudeen, the van’s driver was not hurt but the family’s four-year-old daughter died after a few hours at the private clinic she was rushed to, as there was no doctor or life-support machine on ground for immediate aid. Before the toddler could be taken to another hospital, she gave up the ghost. Mrs. Tajudeen sustained a scar on her face.
In an emotion-laden voice, Tajudeen Owolabi told the reporter over the telephone that he had lived with the guilt of coming back to Nigeria where medical facilities were not in place.
His words: “I regret the day I took the decision to relocate to Nigeria. I’ve lost my only child. She died as a result of poor medical attention, following an accident caused by a drunken driver. I had thought it was a nice thing to come back to one’s country but I soon realised I made a mistake. I messed up my peaceful life that I enjoyed in the UK. Now, I had to come back to the UK after burying my daughter in Nigeria. That is life agony, I must say.”
Asked if the couple didn’t press charges against the alleged drunken driver, Mr.
Tajudeen said he was further grieved with arguments over who was at fault or who was not. “Well, I saw a complete mess in the system, from the medic to all manner of unlawful drivers. I just couldn’t cope; I had to move on. The evil deed is done. I caused it all,” Tajudeen added.
The couple has since returned to the UK.
Endless power outages
For Mrs. Abimbola Olaoluwa, who had spent six years in the UK and relocated to Nigeria, epileptic power supply was her major concern. The 34-year-old mother of two complained that her two kids would keep vigil all through the night because of the heat. Owing to the epileptic power supply, the two boys, Abimbola said, would keep crying, disturbing the peace of the house.
“I asked myself the kind of life we were living. There was no light, babies could not sleep, yet, we were getting crazy bills monthly for what we did not consume. It was pure cheating,” Abimbola lamented.
Abimbola’s husband, Olu Olaoluwa, regretted how his wife practically became a timekeeper for electricity supply for the entire residents in the house. “It got so bad that my wife would tell you the exact time they took light, and when it was restored. She had an MSc in Economics from Greenwich University, UK, but could not put it to any reasonable use in Nigeria. She couldn’t get a job,” Olaoluwa regretted.
Dashed hopes
Another young Nigerian in the Diaspora, James Uche, spent four years in the UK before he began to feel the passion to return home. While there, he studied and worked briefly, but he had to relocate to Ibadan, with the thinking that he would fare well, since the incumbent administration was preaching change. He got back to Nigeria in September 2015 only to realise that he had miscalculated.
The best offer he said he got was a marketing job in a bank that was willing to pay him N40,000. “Of course, I didn’t take it,” he retorted.
After staying in Nigeria for some months, with no hope in sight, he jetted out again to Canada where he hoped for a better life.
He told the reporter: “I would rather go back to the cold and make a decent salary. What good do you think N40,000 a month can do in my life? I couldn’t even pay a year’s rent for a self-contained apartment on my own.”
Businesses die
For Jasper Adedayo, 35, who said he lived for 11 years in the United States, as an illegal immigrant, the option of relocating to Nigeria did hurt and haunt him for a long while. He said he thought he had it all planned out. But the lack of basic amenities, among other challenges, soon got him frustrated.
“Getting to Nigeria, I was determined to make profit. First, I had seen it as a complete liberation from a life without identity that I had lived for 11 years in the US. So, I decided to go back home and start a fishpond business. After seven months in Nigeria, the business packed up because of many factors. There was no electricity to pump water into the pond regularly. I bought some chemicals and food treatments, which wiped out a good number of my stock. I later realised the chemicals were counterfeit. Everything crumbled overnight. I was devastated, but my family later came to my rescue. Of course, I could no longer go back to the US because I had overstayed. So, I got the necessary papers, and travelled to Sweden in Europe, to start a new life.”
To many of these Nigerians in the Diaspora, there is no place like home. Many told the reporter that they would want to live in their fatherland if they could get a good job, a good health system and basic needs of life. But since some of them could not get what they called the “basic good life,” they said they would rather opt to be second-class citizens in another man’s land.
“And since most of them have broken the travel barrier the first time, among other things, relocating to Europe or America again might no longer pose a challenge in as much as they were living there legally,” Olawale Adisa, a UK-trained immigration lawyer, submitted.