Tears from the Diaspora

Also published in DAILY TRUST

 

As Northern Nigeria increasingly turns into a sprawling battlefield at an alarming rate, the agony of its inhabitants in particular and indeed fellow Nigerians in general can’t obviously be overestimated, as no explanation, be it written, verbal or even pictorial for that matter can accurately describe it.

This explains why no matter how someone who happens to be away follows the unfolding crises through the media he can’t exactly picture the magnitude and severity of the misery engulfing his compatriots back home. Nevertheless, this does not justify how majority of the home-based compatriots seems to underestimate his concern simply because he is not physically present hence according to them he does not feel the pain.

Though some others actually realize how he is equally extremely concerned, and they even sound surprised for what they regard as his excessive concern over the happenings in the country and indeed how he is often up-to-date about things back home.

Admittedly anyway, no matter how a person living far away from home is constantly up-to-date over the happenings in Nigeria, he can’t match up to those who actually live the experience in reality e.g. who hear gunshots, see wounded victims, sustain injuries, lose loved ones, incur losses and/or live in constant fear.

Nevertheless, though he physically lives thousands of kilometres away, yet he is always psychologically home suffering from the same mental trauma of equal and sometimes even worse magnitude. He is equally in constant fear of possible further escalation of the crises, and is often concerned over the safety of relatives, other loved ones and indeed the general public.

His agony is particularly made worse as he sees and indeed experiences in his host country (without envy) how good and visionary leadership actually turns dreams into reality, creates, sustains and indeed constantly improves enabling environments for human comprehensive and sustainable development. As he also beholds how all these are achieved with resources perhaps much less than what Nigeria is bestowed with.

With such sense of disappointment over the plight of his country, he constantly suffers terrible frustration, for he can’t help comparing the situation in his host country with what is obtained back home. This explains his sometimes harsh language on Nigeria’s ruling elite while commenting on happenings in the country, for he is particularly confused and indeed wonders how and why on earth things can’t go right in his country while it goes almost perfectly elsewhere?

This is because he can’t buy any silly claim that Nigeria was destined to be so, or that its population, diverse ethno-religious groups or its massive size has anything to do with its persistent underdevelopment and failure, as alluded or even sometimes expressed by an increasing number of its largely clueless, incompetent and corrupt officials.

As he keenly follows developments back home, he regrets how some irrelevant factors e.g. ethnic prejudice largely defines the analyses and opinions of many socio-political analysts and activists, who instead of raising public awareness and mobilizing people’s opinions towards efforts to change the status quo, they unfortunately end up promoting further division amongst people, thereby ensuring that the average Nigerians share nothing in common except abject poverty and hopelessness.

He lives with the unfortunate realization that, most of the sundry challenges he inevitably encounters abroad would have been worse and indeed hardly if at all surmountable for that matter had it been in his home country. This is of course due to his country’s largely dysfunctional infrastructure, obsolete bureaucracy, pervasive culture of mediocrity in service delivery and indeed corruption.

Also he beholds how his country’s ruling elite, their political and business collaborators show off on their frequent visits to his country of residence, where they go on extravagant spending, enjoy peace, efficiently functional and modern infrastructure and other facilities provided by other leaders, yet without any sense of remorse over their failure to provide the same in their own country.

Moreover, he is always embarrassed whenever an enquiry is directed to him by some non Nigerian colleagues or friends as regards the unfortunate irony of Nigeria; being very rich yet extremely poor. This is because he is sure that most of such enquiries are not actually genuine, instead they are merely inquisitive meant to embarrass him indirectly, because it is obvious that, nowadays information including what is happening in Nigeria is not only quite easily accessible through the media, but it literally chases people wherever they go.

Furthermore, he endures the embarrassment caused by some of his compatriots either in his host country or elsewhere; where they are associated with many negative activities that not only tarnish the country’s already bad image but actually corroborate the general stereotype that every Nigerian stands guilty until proven innocent, which is obviously contrary to the standard rule that everybody is innocent until proven guilty.

Incidentally, knowing how this stereotype influences many people’s first impressions on Nigerians, he (on any first encounter with strangers from other countries) reluctantly assumes more courteous attitude quite cautiously, makes some unnecessary compromises and even sacrifices in order to prove contrary to their presumed suspicion, win their basic confidence and nurture it over time until he is considered (though still with some reservation) fit to deal with.

Nonetheless, in as much as he laments the country’s chronic predicament, he is quite optimistic that the status quo is not sustainable, as it is bound to succumb to the natural trends of change at the hands of some patriotic elements sooner or later. All he is concerned about are; when on earth and which generation will accomplish this task, how history will remember us (the current generation) and indeed how it will portray us to the posterity?

In any case, all these frustrating challenges can’t affect his passionate love for his country, which explains his chronic nostalgia; a nostalgia that overshadows all negatives attributes of the country and indeed defies the stigma associated with it, which unfortunately portrays the country as an undesirable destination, and its people as virtually undesirable elements.

By the way, as it could have already been deduced, this humble writer represents a live example of such hypothetical case, and indeed he draws all such observations primarily from his personal experience.