WHY I NEED TO LEAVE NIGERIA

10/30/2020

            In light of all the recent protests, violence and absolute chaos in Nigeria, I kept silent for the longest time because I didn’t know what to say. The topic of ‘What’s wrong with Nigeria?’ has been discussed again and again and again. There are numerous blogs and vlogs about it, covering the topic from every angle, so what more could I possibly say?

          The whole point of the current protests was due to the fact that people are sick and tired of the injustice, and they are finally demanding change from governmental corruption, police brutality, the economy, and the current state of the country. But that’s only part of why I need to leave.

          This month marks exactly one year since I’ve been in Nigeria. Granted 2020 hasn’t really been much of a year, it’s been terrible for everyone. BUT here’s why I can’t stay in Nigeria much longer:

1. The Lethargy.

Nigeria is exhausting. The amount of brain energy it takes to function on a daily basis leaves you with nothing else. It leaves you completely depleted. And sometimes, I believe the country is designed to be this way so the people will be too weak to fight back or do anything about their shitty situations.

          After all, you’re essentially powerless against most of it;  the traffic, the lack of electricity, the lack of water, the constant noise from generators and the busy streets, car horns constantly blasting, the fumes, the dirt, pollution, over population, the heat, the condition of your living spaces, the bad roads, stagnant water, mosquitoes, malaria, typhoid… You are so tired by the end of the day that all you can manage to do is eat, maybe watch some mindless television program like Big Brother or all the silly, overdramatic soap operas on GOTV, and then go to bed. Just to do it again tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that…

2. The Lack of Stimulation.

This is especially applicable to the youths. If we’re being honest, there really isn’t much to do in this country on most days, especially if you don’t have money, or a steady/conventional job. If you’re not out on the streets hustling for your daily grind, you’re at home. And because 9 times out of 10, there’s no light and frankly there’s little to do, you’re sleeping, or gisting, or on your phone… point is, you’re not doing anything productive and that’s where the problem lies, it works hand in hand with the lethargy. It’s a cycle; the lack of stimulation leads to no productivity, which leads to lethargy. If you let this go on for too long, you grow fat and lazy, lacking motivation for everything non-pleasure and eventually, even your most precious dreams go out the window.

In the past year that I’ve been here, I’ve spent the bulk of my time in lethargy. I’ve slept more than I’ve ever slept in my entire adult life. I have to wind myself up on a daily basis to do even the things I love. I have to search for energy, daily, to get up and try to achieve at least one thing that day. It’s very depressing. The daily grind, the lack of motivation, the lack of sustainable income because the Naira is so weak and borderline useless, everything you buy is in thousands. So no matter how many hundreds of thousands is in your account, it’s not sustainable unless money is pouring into your account on a frequent basis. And let’s face it; most times in Nigeria the people who’ve got that kind of money are those who stole it, in one form or the other, or extorted it.

The lack of opportunities in this country keeps you down. The lack of money and access to it weighs on you like the whole world on your shoulders. It slowly increases your heart palpitations, constricts your airways, narrowing your mind into tunnel vision, as you slowly realize there’s no love out there for the adult who can’t stand on their own two feet. In Nigeria, there is no governmental aid to fall back on; there’s no welfare, or even a national charity program or organization. There’s no help coming from anywhere if you can’t provide for yourself! With time you convince yourself crime/illegal activity is the only way to make it in this country. All that pressure gradually drives you into a frenzied desperation that ultimately leads you to do anything, and everything, for the money.

It’s been extremely difficult for me to be creative since I’ve been here. It’s hard for me to think, to write, to motivate myself, or even to find the words/ideas in my head because my brain is so exhausted all the time, it wants to sleep all the time to escape my current predicament and to keep me from going insane. This is the main reason I need to leave Nigeria. I fear that one day I’ll wake up and realize I’m 40. Ten years would have gone by and I wouldn’t have achieved a single thing to further my career and life!

The daily grind here leaves you scattered and all over the place, not focused on your actual life or career. It just leaves you in a constant state of anxiety over the future, as worries take over, absolutely crippling you, especially for the young adults who really want to make it in this life. Nigeria just leaves you stressed and confused.

I’m primarily a fiction writer, but how can one write fiction when reality is so intrusive and demanding? So I end up writing about how exhausting Nigeria is, as if we all don’t know that already, and I’m tired of doing that, sick to death of it, in fact.

When I first came out here I was filled with positivity. I had all this righteous energy for change. I had hope. I was an advocate of, “We all can’t leave Nigeria, we must stay and fight, and only then will things improve.” I know better now. Idealism doesn’t work in Nigeria; there’s no room for it because reality is so jarring here, it will suffocate all the hope in you.

Nigeria sucks the life out of you and leaves you an empty shell of your former self. Nigeria is quick sand that traps you, and the more determined you are to fight it, the faster it sucks you in, keeping you down permanently until you lose all hopes of escape and just conform. I can’t let that happen to me. I need to leave before it’s too late.

True change can only happen in this country when the people are ready for it; because despite all the protests and violence, and all that has happened in the last few weeks, Nigerians aren’t truly ready for change yet. If they were, things wouldn’t be back to normal. Our normal:

• One by one government officials have come out of hiding and each of them are spinning their own lies on the situation. (No consequences will befall them despite all the evil they’ve done).
• The police are back and empowered, arresting the ‘culprits’ who destroyed property, and set buildings ablaze.
• People are back to suffering.

          Nothing has changed. If anything, things are even worse now. The prices of everything has sky rocketed and people can’t afford shit. All the facilities that at least were helping us are burned to the ground now or destroyed, and God knows if they will ever be rebuilt. And so what was it all for? The country is still broken; evil and corruption still prevails. What did it all achieve, the massacre, the deaths? Nothing, absolutely nothing!

Many of the greats activists of our history have protested, marched, led revolutions; and one by one they all died and Nigeria remains the same. As much as I respect those people and admire the faith they had in their cause, and their resilience, I cannot be a martyr for Nigeria. She is and will always be my country, yes, and I have love for her, sometimes, but unfortunately she has proven to me, over and over, that she’s not worth the stress and headache. She’s not worth dying for, because if you lose your life over Nigeria, not only will she immediately forget you, she’ll spit on your grave by remaining exactly the same. And your sacrifice would have been for nothing.

‘No condition is permanent,’ it’s a saying we have here. And to be honest, that’s the only hope we have that things won’t always be this way. This is just the phase we are in, one day, things will be different. I honestly believe that. But in the meantime I will move on with my life. At least the only good thing Nigeria has given me is love. I found the love of my life here, after searching for decades abroad, for this I’ll always be grateful. And that’s all I can say to the Nigerian readers of this blog, hold on fast to your loved ones. Never let love go, because at the end of the day, it’s the only tangible thing you have in this country.

We need to love and support each other instead of fighting, it’s what the government wants; to keep us fighting against each other and not to have a united front. That’s the only way they can continue to rule us with their corruption; they don’t have the power, we do! If we can put aside our differences, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Muslim, Christian, old, young, men, women… and just come together as one: Nigerians, we can overcome anything in our path, especially the corruption that has plagued us since this country’s conception.