Literature in the Diaspora is replete with the theme of nostalgia. But, are there other reasons Nigerians abroad are making their way back home? Assistant Life Editor, TERH AGBEDEH, engages some of such Nigerians
Ogaga Ifowodo
Ogaga Ifowodo is back to the country for good, so is Professor Abiola Irele. They both declared at separate public literary functions that they were back to stay. The former has since declared his interest in political office, while the latter is now at the Kwara State University, Malete.
Apart from these two, there are numerous others who are more than ever before showing interest in contributing to Project Nigeria. The list includes medical doctors, scientists, film-makers, and people from other walks of life who are ready to contribute their knowledge to Nigeria.
Other names that readily come to mind are Professors Niyi Osundare and Kole Omotoso, who are actively involved here and are back to the country, at least once every year, for one programme or another. And only recently, over 400 Nigerians in the Diaspora were reported to have registered their interest to return home. But for each one who has chosen to make his way back, there are countless others who remain abroad, some of them under circumstances beyond their control.
It is the story of this helpless group of people that one finds in a book like Edible Bones by Unoma Azuah, herself an immigrant. For the better part of the book, Kaito, its main character, is stuck in the United States of America, even ending up in jail. His saving grace is his marriage to an American citizen. Kaito’s story is a version many of the immigrants, who set out because they had thought the grass was greener on the other side, tell.
Azuah, who is a teacher at Lane College in the United States of America, said Edible Bones answers the question of why it has become the fad for immigrants to make a comeback to Nigeria. She went on to say that they return because, as immigrants, they feel isolated and alienated, since, no matter how successful one feels as an immigrant, some things are missing.
“It could be that sense of a communal living. It could just be the ability to go to your friends or family house without waiting for an invitation. It could just be the routines that are not necessarily punctuated by regular social events as we have it in Nigeria. It could just be anything.
“Every immigrant cannot survive living abroad; it takes a level of brawn to negotiate the complications that re-location and dislocation offer people. Some people actually lose it; some resort to drugs. It can create a crack in one’s psyche,” she said.
For some who can afford to come back, it could be the need to make their communities in Nigeria better than they had left them that inspires them. But as can be gleaned from Edible Bones, Kaito does his utmost to send money home. It is no surprise that Nigerians in the Diaspora are a big source of the country’s income, which they do through remittances.
A good number of the people who are stuck there are happy to stay because even if they have to pay tax and live under difficult conditions, they are at least assured that they can make remittances to loved ones back home.
Lookman Sanusi, who founded and runs Bubbles FM in the United Kingdom, said each individual is in a better position to tell you what is responsible for returning to Nigeria.
“As for me, I am always back and forth. But like the poem, ‘We Have Come Home’, there is urgent need for our best brains to return; otherwise, there will be no country to talk about, let alone return to,” he said.
For Afam Akeh, a cleric who writes poetry and is based in the Oxford area of the United Kingdom, it is because they considered themselves immigrant workers or expatriates, rather than settlers in the countries they lived and worked in outside their land of origin.
“All the years of their living and working in these other places, there was always that umbilical pull from their home country; so it is not at all strange that some eventually respond to that pull,” he said.
He went on to explain that “no matter how grand the friend’s house or five star hotel you stay in may be, they can never serve your sense of wellbeing as well as your own home. However, for Nigerians born and mostly raised in other lands, their sense of ‘home’ is a little more complicated.”
No matter what the complication might be, it has not stopped Nigerians from making their way back, even those stuck perhaps, because, as Sanusi put it, “they don’t have the right papers”.
“If you’ve got things to offer or contribute back home and you are convinced nothing can hold you back, not even the insecurity in Nigeria right now would. It is like the conviction of a new-found faith, and it is only you who believe this would determine your fate,” Sanusi said.
This resonates somewhat with Azuah’s position when she said that part of not wanting to return, as hard as things can be in the Diaspora, is that some people are shamed about being regarded as a failure when they return.
Hence, the option of suffering until one dies in exile seems more bearable. She explained that some of them know how to straddle and work through both worlds.
They are the ones who can come and go, but will be the first to say that they are not rich or well-to-do when, in reality, they are struggling like the average American who is being drowned by bills and has no savings.
Azuah, however, added that if Nigeria develops its basic amenities and improves security, it is the best place to enjoy life in the world.
In that case, the country is in dire need of people like the poet, writer and humanist, Ifowodo, who, addressing his supporters at Oleh in Delta State over his desire to contest the House of Representatives seat, said he has only one abiding commitment “and that is to serve my country diligently and honestly to the best of my ability”.
