Opinion: Dear diaspora Nigerian, wish your country what you live abroad

by Bámidélé Adémólá-Olátéjú

Nigerians in diaspora

You must help promote enduring development through innovation using your broad based networks, and tried and true outreach to your people in Nigeria. Take your love for Nigeria and apply it with ingenuity for good.

You are diverse, multifaceted with spread across socioeconomic strata. Your demography spans every continent, you are highly educated more than any other group immigrant group abroad. Many of you left because of the lack of economic opportunity, to seek academic and professional fulfilment, and for fear of increasing insecurity at home. Regardless of why you left, you remain connected with Nigeria. The children of those of you who brain drained, who sought greener pastures or those who sought exile, are now of age, making your population multigenerational. A sizable number of your youth are forging deeper relationships with Nigeria through regular visits, language, culture, mannerisms and business ties. Your added value must move far beyond economic remittances amounting to billions of dollars every year to support livelihoods and development, it must also include other significant deliverables and news models for change like social technology, long term development, experiential pressure, political engagement and advocacy.

Nigeria needs your help in experiential pressure. Using the words of Pius Adesanmi, “wish me what you live abroad.” Almost two generations have grown up in a Nigeria where mediocrity, recklessness, rudeness, crudeness, naked power, crass showmanship and arrogance of power subsists. You must know that Nigerians who witnessed anything remotely good about Nigeria are forty three years and older. Even then, if that Nigerian, man or woman, forty three years and younger, who “has never left the shores of Nigeria, no matter how educated, cosmopolitan, urbane, polished, and refined he is, you must remember that he has never ever experienced responsible and accountable governance for one second of his life. He has never experienced the humility and ordinariness of power.” It is within this narrative that you must forge an understanding of the mediocrity of leadership and the resultant rationalisation and internalisation of mediocrity by the followership. “He is not in possession of any alternative realities and experiences that would make him know that it is wrong for soldiers and mobile police men to dehumanise and whip him off roads built with his tax money just because Goodluck or Patience Jonathan is coming to town. When he sees pictures of David Cameron riding the London tube or of the Canadian Prime Minister quietly waiting in a queue behind ordinary civilians for his own coffee, he thinks there is something stage-managed about all that for he has never seen even a mere local government chairman wait for his turn behind ordinary Nigerians. When he hears that some world leaders have no official planes, travel light, and stay in average hotels to cut costs and save money for their countries, he marvels for the only world he knows is one in which irresponsible government officials commute in private jets or helicopters, ride only bulletproof jeeps and limos, stay in the world’s most expensive hotels, ordering caviar and choice champagne like there is no tomorrow. He does not know that this is crass, galling impunity; that these bacchanalian boys and girls in government in Abuja have no right to do any of these things on the public dime. How could he possibly know?” It is when you develop sufficient appreciation for the symbiotic nature of this relationship without condescension, that you can appreciate your role in helping to enthrone in Nigeria what you live abroad.

You must help promote enduring development through innovation using your broad based networks, and tried and true outreach to your people in Nigeria. Take your love for Nigeria and apply it with ingenuity for good. Those of you who are scientists, academics, doctors, social scientists and entrepreneurs can help in widening the spaces for diaspora-led development and growth by launching initiatives without looking for government patronage. Such initiatives launched in local communities will engender learning, growth and development with continuing focus on change.

Nigeria’s greatest resource is its people. When disaster strikes, you can use your vast host/adopted country networks to provide crucial lifelines to those in need, by delivering help. The current displacement of people by terrorists in the killing fields of the North-East, forcing them into camps where they have little help is an example. You can help raise millions of dollars for relief and help people most in need by forming partnerships and support groups.

Nigeria needs you to build bridges across continents. Help us add new layers to the Nigerian narrative. Let us not be about email scam, terrorism and corruption alone. Yes, stories of our development and its needs must be told by those in Nigeria but you can help facilitate those by adding a deeper layer. Nigeria needs you to use your businesses, faith based groups, community organisations, professional bodies and youth groups to tell a new story. We are a nation with rich cultural heritage, diversity and histories. Help us dispel myths and break stereotypes by sharing photos, stories and positive messages with the natives of your countries, especially those unable to visit Nigeria themselves.

Most importantly, we need you to stay politically engaged. We know a lot of you would never have left if Nigeria held its promise of the 1960s and the early 1970s when Nigeria worked. We know most of you held vigil in bated breath for the results of the just concluded elections to be announced because it will define the shape of what is to come. We know you genuinely care for the emergence of a new Nigeria so you will not die abroad and your wish for your children to identify and associate with their roots. You must move beyond rhetorics and find a way to be engaged. Many of your sociocultural organisations are plagued with the same ills as those you left behind in Nigeria. Many of you in positions of authority in these organisations mimic the same level of corruption, lack of accountability, high-handedness and mind numbing disorder, so much that decent people have shunned your ranks. You must do things differently to be taken seriously. We need you to help in shaping foreign policy agenda by offering new models of civic participation through advocacy groups and civic associations, in the areas of conflict resolution, technology, networking and trade with the continent. With coordinated advocacy you can help shape foreign policy priorities and change Nigeria’s story.

In recognition of your power, many politicians visited your host countries to canvas your support. Many of you pressured your relatives back home to vote for a new Nigeria through the message of change. Change has come to Nigeria. Nigerians are in full knowledge of their power through their votes. It will no longer be business as usual. If anyone politician is failing us nationally or locally, we will not wait for his four years to lapse. We will launch a recall and force him to resign. Beyond your wallets, we recognise you as legitimate stakeholders in Nigeria’s future. We need your help! Once again, wish Nigeria what you live abroad. Long live Nigeria! May we have the rebirth we voted for!

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

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