Owo, Nigeria – October 5, 2022. 

This is the night before my departure. A Thursday. I’m in the sparsely furnished sitting room of my parents’ bungalow in Idaniken, a dusty street overlaid with “face-me-I-face-you” houses and high-fenced apartments. I’m sitting slouched on the brown sofa, flicking between 

Instagram and Twitter, when mum announces, peering out the dining room’s arched entrance, “Ounje ti ready!” She wipes her fingers with a woolen napkin; the signature of her hard work—scarlet oil stains—sticking to it like a tick on a dog’s fur. 

My dad, Big Daddy (dad’s oldest brother), and I hop over the stairs leading to the dining room, the aroma of chicken spice tickling our nostrils. Mum sets the table. The ceramic plates come first, followed by the soup bowls, glass cups, bottled water, wine, and two large bowls. Big Daddy leans over the meal to pray and mum dishes the food, starting with his, my dad’s, mine, and hers. The meal, my farewell meal, is amala and egusi soup embellished with dried fish, snails, and ponmo. 

By Saturday, I’ll be in the UK, my body snow-kissed as my best friend teased, away from the familiar: the Fajr prayers forcing you out of bed without permission. The street foods: kuli-kuli, puff-puff, suya, corn, and bole. The bus conductors calling in passengers and yelling at them to hold their change. The warm weather. The haggling of prices with market traders. The street fights. The colourful parties, weddings, birthdays, and funerals—that last till dawn. The camaraderie of neighbours who later become family. Everything. Everything, really. 

* 

God told Abram: ‘Leave your country, your family, and your father’s home for a land that I will show you […]’ So Abram left, as the LORD had told him […] he took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the people they had acquired in 

Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. (Genesis 12:1,4-5) 

My departure for the UK makes me think of Abram, who left the familiar for the strange and who left Haran for Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey. Even so, I’m not being called by God to leave Nigeria per se; I’m doing so willingly. First, to hone my writing skills through a creative writing master’s programme. Second, to search for greener pastures. 

However, like Abram, I’ve been unsure of what to anticipate. 

“You’ll get used to the place,” my mum’s PA said on the phone two months ago. He had just completed his master’s programme and gotten a job as a data analyst in the UK. I believed him and still believe him because of this African proverb: ‘A lion cannot give birth to a goat,’ meaning that just as many Nigerians like him across the world have survived and still do, I’m certain I will survive. In some way. In whatever way. What Nigerians call survival is more than working to make ends meet; it encapsulates mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical grit. We intuitively and collectively believe that if we can endure sixty-two years of bad governance since independence from Britain, we can endure any other suffering, physical or psychological, meted out to us anywhere. As disturbing as this mindset is—an outlook we share daily over a meal or drink to “comfort” ourselves—I’m convinced I’ll survive. Like most Nigerians anywhere in the world. In the end, no suffering, including freezing snowfalls can be compared to the glories—the British passport and indefinite leave to remain—that lie ahead of me. 

*

Big Daddy bites on a piece of ponmo, oil dripping  down his fingers. Chewing, he nods intensively like an agama lizard, a sign of satisfaction,  before bemoaning the naira’s exchange rate with the US currency, drawing parallels with his time at Cambridge University. In the 1960s, he was one of the few privileged ones who gained access to quality education and life. During his undergraduate studies at one of Nigeria’s premier universities, Obafemi Awolowo, he was paid stipends. A teaching job waited for him after school. He bought his first car, a Peugeot 404, for three thousand naira. After a few years, he travelled to the UK on a grant for his master’s programme before returning to Nigeria. 

I can’t help but lament the appalling condition of the present Nigerian educational system, especially the public institutions. This is due to protracted university strikes that keep students at home for months because the government, which owes university staff accrued salaries, is not willing to pay. Again, there is the issue of out-of-date clinical and technical infrastructure, as well as outmoded curriculum and teaching methods that tend to prioritise theoryl rather than practical knowledge. As a result, people opt for private universities or travel abroad to study. But the truth is, how many can afford it? 

I’ve always been a patriotic citizen, I think. I remember when I discovered that many things I used as a child weren’t Nigerian-made. I felt awful. Prior to my finding, nobody informed me that the things I ate, drank, wore, or played with had been Nigerian made. The “proudly made in Nigeria” labels I saw on them informed my thinking and my joy, not knowing some of them had only been redistributed or assembled here. The emotion I felt at that time and the emotion I feel now is the same: betrayal. Who taught an eight-year-old girl to be proud of Nigerian-made products, let alone feel betrayed when she discovered otherwise? I honestly can’t recall. Even after my discovery, I couldn’t and still can’t tell who exactly I thought betrayed me: the government for failing in its duties or my parents, who didn’t notify me. Maybe they did, but I couldn’t and cannot remember any of those moments. If they had, I wonder what my reaction would have been. Would I have been indifferent, or would I have been sad? I have no idea because humans are unpredictable. Now, I’m fully persuaded that my hurt is caused solely by the government. How do you garner so much effort importing foreign goods that you neglect the production of local ones such as food, textiles, cosmetics, and technology, despite knowing the catastrophic effects on the Nigerian economy? How? 

Yet, upon my discovery at that time, my patriotism, which I displayed in my conversations and school essays about Nigeria, wouldn’t dwindle. At some point, I was hesitant to travel abroad for my studies, even though Nigerians hold people who do such in high regard. I believed Nigeria could be great again. As if I had made an oath, a blood covenant, with my country, I would stay back to demonstrate my solidarity and my allegiance. Then, a defining moment arrived. Just like Abram’s departure for Canaan was signalled by God’s decree, mine was the June 8 Owo massacre. 

One sunny afternoon when everyone at church gave thanks for the new month, masked men fired at parishioners during Sunday mass at St. Francis Catholic Cathedral, killing and maiming them in large numbers. Owo is where I live, where my family lives, and where many of my childhood and teenage memories live. It is a peaceful and historical Yoruba town bordered halfway between two great cities, Ife and Benin. The massacre was a rude shock, unexpected, and devastating. I was in Owerri, 154 miles away, for my National Youth Service when my younger sister called me. I was in my room, sprawled across the bed, when her voice pierced my ears. After she ended the call, reassuring me that our parents were safe, I clutched my phone, my eyes filled with tears. 

“I’ll do anything to take my family out of this damned country,” I said. 

It could have been my family. For the first time, I wasn’t going to have anything to do with my homeland anymore. Then the opportunity came: My admission letter. I would study hard, graduate, and get a good job. Then I would pull my family out. I would go ahead of them to make the path straight and provide them better opportunities—good security, good healthcare, good jobs, good pay.

I suppose Big Daddy didn’t have the same commitments as me when he studied at 

Cambridge University because Nigeria at the time was different. 

Lagos, Nigeria – October 6, 2022. 

This is the morning of my departure. 11: a.m. There’s traffic on our way to the Murtala Mohammed airport. Vehicles crawl and stop at intervals, edging close to one another so that the space between them is barely enough for two people to walk through at once. Mum is worried and won’t stop asking me about my take-off time, even after I tell her over and over that it is at seven in the evening. Although she ensured we departed Owo before dawn, right before the Fajr prayers, so we could arrive at Lagos early, beat traffic, and not miss my flight; it’s the weekend when people travel to other cities. Also, construction works have slowed down the traffic. We may remain stuck for three more hours, making it seven hours since we’ve been held up in traffic. Crawling, stopping, crawling. 

My dad seems unaffected. Perhaps a little bothered, I don’t know. He only stares out of the window beside the driver, swaying his head, while Mum glances between me and her phone, staring at the time. She’s irritated that I’m too calm. I’m not huffing and puffing like her. I’m just assured that I won’t miss my flight. 

To avoid her unsettling gaze, which hangs heavily on me like ominous dark clouds, I look out the window. Outside, some cars are covered with red earth, their tyres and bonnets smeared, just like ours. I imagine that the passengers, like me, have travelled miles into Lagos because there are no international airports in the states where they live. That they are rushing to catch a Qatar flight to the UK. That their luggage, maybe 23-kg boxes, are filled with many Nigerian foods stashed and spread thin in zip locks secured with yellow tape at the tip as suggested by Nigerian YouTubers in the UK to prevent spoilage. 

“African shops are expensive,” my mum’s P.A. said to me over the phone last month. I would need to get Nigerian food items: dried fish, amala, semovita, garri, poundo, ugu, ogbono, and egusi so I could save money, and my mum bought them all. He also said I should ensure I do everything possible to get out of Nigeria before 2023. To somewhere where there’s a good structure, where the government is sane, where there’s financial stability, where  human rights are protected. To the UK. His voice was firm in a don’t-dare-make-a-mistake kind of way. 

*

Since October 2020, after the Lekki Toll Gate massacre, Nigerians have been planning their exit strategies more assiduously than ever, as if auctioning for oxygen tanks. For some, it’s Australia’s study visa. For some others, it’s the U.S. immigration visa or the Canadian’s permanent residency. In August, during my visa biometrics in Abuja, the UK had the most applicants, which I suspect is due to the availability of graduate visas for international students, the skilled worker visas, and the ease of the visa application process, just as it was with me. 

Before the Lekki massacre which doused the optimism of many Nigerians, the protests had sparked a flame of hope about a new Nigeria: a safe Nigeria where youths could move freely without being profiled, extorted, arrested, and shot because they wore dreadlocks and Rolex wristwatches; owned an iPhone and a laptop; or drove an expensive car. It united Nigerian youths, including those who had been politically apathetic to rise against injustice and abuse of power. The clouds were heavy. It was a cry for a complete overhaul of the Nigerian police force, a cry for a total restructuring of the Nigerian public service. 

Unfortunately, there was a disruption. After the massacre of peaceful protesters by soldiers. After the president gave a speech days later, and only under extreme pressure from Nigerians, without the slightest mention of the attack,. After the Chief of the Defence Staff, in a live interview, audaciously claimed that the incident, which had been live-streamed on social media, was photoshopped. That it never happened. And we recoiled. 

If, according to Jim Barth, “human capital is the most important asset to any country,” and not buildings, roads, or lands, what then happens when a government devalues its people, butchering them like cows in the hands of butchers at Isuada Market? The answer is that the government loses its greatest assets—its citizens, who are at the core of the nation’s development. This statement proves true when my mom, a nurse at a federal government hospital, complains daily of a shortage of staff. She leaves her hospital ward every day, unsure if she will see her coworkers—doctors and nurses—the subsequent morning. This is because many of them are relocating to the UK, where they are valued and cared for, and where they don’t have to worry about being shot by unknown gunmen or by criminals masked in police uniforms. The effect, nevertheless, is a strain on the human labour left to attend to seas of sickly patients. 

This spans across all sectors—banking, education, information technology (IT), business, and media—with IT recording the most cases due to the UK’s Global Talent Visa introduced in 2020. This year, based on the UK Home Office survey, Nigeria bagged 258 grants accounted for under the Global Talent Visa, emerging as the second-most applicant. As regards the skilled worker visa application, as of September, Nigeria ranked third with a 93%+ change from 2019 and second for the health skilled worker visa grant with 14%. 

Jesus rightly declares, because the people from His hometown, Nazareth, disregarded His teachings: “A prophet has little honour in his hometown, among his relatives, on the streets he played in as a child.” In the same vein, a Nigerian citizen, residing in Nigeria and abroad, is inconsequential to the Nigerian government. If our pleas for good security, jobs, education, and all things good—basically, our rudimentary human rights—will fall on deaf ears, why shouldn’t Nigerians consider a more favourable situation? Why shouldn’t we japa to nations that might be receptive to us? 

After all, to serve Nigeria is not by force. 

Manchester Airport, Manchester, UK – October 7, 2022. 

The taxi driver climbs into the driver’s seat, his lustrous hair draping over his face. After a short while, the car sputters into action. It meanders out of the crowded airport, a place I imagine as the spot where ambitions and hopes converge. 

“The journey from Manchester to Lancaster will take us seventy-five minutes,” my cousin announces, staring at her phone screen, while I chow down on a chicken sandwich. 

When I trudged out of the Arrivals carrying my two leather boxes, she was standing outside with a throng of people, many of whom were black, perhaps Nigerians, waiting to receive their families and friends. A middle-aged woman with dreadlocks had run to hug a young girl who appeared to be eight, screaming, “Finally, I see my daughter after five years!” before crouching and breaking into tears. I knew they were Nigerians; the woman’s Yoruba had slipped through her words.

I reflect on Ope Adedeji’s “Books As Ammunitions,” a personal essay about her immigration to the UK. Adah, the main character in Buchi Emecheta’s autobiographical novel, Second Class Citizen, inspired her to start her writing career. She arrived in the UK in November 2020 with a similar vision— leaving Nigeria in search of her literary goal. While hers was a curated plan, Adah’s wasn’t, given that writing for Adah emerged later, after she became a librarian. Adedeji speculated whether Adah’s writing career would have happened if she had not left Nigeria at the time she did, or left at all. Or if she would have started her literary career had Buchi Emecheta not inspired her to follow the steps of Nigerian writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chigozie Obioma, and Sefi Atta, among others, to pursue her master’s degree, heralding her winning the 2020 Brittle Paper Prize for Fiction. 

Like Adedeji, I’m in the UK to pursue a master’s degree in creative writing. After researching Adichie in high school, I chose this route. Her novel, Purple Hibiscus, had been both my motivation and a later reminder that my dreams were valid. While studying English Literature during my undergraduate programme, I longed for the day when I would finally develop the skill of stringing words together like the beads of a rosary, be a herald of good tidings, a teacher of moral instructions, a steward of guidance, and a custodian of history. Just because I thought and still think of literature, like Adichie, as a tool for constituting social change. 

As a child, I read my father’s newspapers, including The Guardian, The Nation, The Nigerian Tribune, and The Punch which was my favourite because of the cartoons. I devoured Nigeria’s landscape and political situation. I soon acquired a sense of obligation and an uncontrollable impulse to discuss the socioeconomic and cultural blights eating deep through Nigeria’s trunk. What better way to achieve this, I thought, than to pursue a career as a writer? It didn’t matter if eight out of every ten children in my vicinity wanted to become doctors or nurses. I would become a writer, creating tales centred on topics I found interesting and pertinent issues that bordered Nigeria and Africa. 

Olu Olagoke’s The Incorruptible Judge, Eddie Iroh’s Without a Silver Spoon, Chinua 

Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, James Ene Henshaw’s This is Our Chance, and Lantern Books 

Classics: Babatunde Solarin’s Kunle the Village Boy and Olajire Olanlokun’s Sade at the Beach, among many others that my dad gifted me, serenaded my childhood and fueled my writing ambition. However, writing fiction wouldn’t make me enough money to cover my bills, they said. I needed to do something on the side to augment my income. As a result, I settled for a career in academia as a lecturer while also writing on the side, following in the footsteps of many Nigerian authors in Nigeria and the diaspora.

Lancaster University, UK – November 8, 2022 

My phone beeps. It’s a WhatsApp notification. A message from my mum: send me your address,. be fast now. My pa wants to visit you., 

Graduate College 

LA2 0PF

I hit send. 

Outside, although the wind is whistling cold, my room’s heating is doing an incredible job of insulating me from reality. Since arriving yesterday evening, I’ve been receiving calls, responding  to WhatsApp messages, sending pictures and Snapchat videos of my white-painted room, my all-furnished kitchen, my box-shaped toilet and bathroom. I’m tempted to place my phone in “do not disturb” mode, but my mother will be worried. 

When Big Daddy called yesterday, he told me to freely approach people whenever I needed directions. I told him I didn’t need to. I had Google Maps. 

He laughed. “You these technology children, sha.” 

“You can use it too, Big Daddy,” I responded, even though I knew that no matter how much my cousins taught him, he would still find it difficult to navigate. “Just tell Uncle 

Richard or Aunty Bunmi to help you.” 

“Shebi, you know,” he said, “my eyes are not as sharp as your own. I’m an old man, an old man.” 

“That doesn’t matter,” I said. 

“Okay. Will it tell me if there’s a kidnapper on the road or if one crazy policeman will shoot me at Isuada Junction, ehn?” 

I laughed till he ended the call. 

About the Author:

Grace Ayodeji is a writer and poet. Her work explores sociopolitical, cultural, and historical issues in Nigeria. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and is published in Cake Magazine.

*Feature image by Daniel Tseng on Unsplash