…as 61% citizens affirm having friends/relatives abroad
Home-based Nigerians are investing in mobile phone airtime and data subscriptions to make more calls to their friends and relatives in the diaspora as the calendar marks 21 days to Christmas and 28 days to the New Year, 2024.
The calls this time are not just for “How do you do?” or social banters but for Yuletide time requests for gifts.
This is as the cost of living continues to spiral upwards with Nigeria’s inflation rate increasing to 27.3 per cent in October, up from 26.72 percent in September 2023, amid rising prices of food items, petrol, diesel, transport fares, and cooking gas.
Same is the case for school fees and house rents, medications, cable television subscriptions and other goods and services.
Diaspora Nigerians who spoke with the reporter on phone said they and their friends abroad are observing a significant change in the pattern of requests from friends and family in the home country in the Yuletide season.
They said that in the past, although most of the requests were for money, quite a significant number were for mobile phones, especially iPhones, laptops and tablets.
Other requests used to be for clothes, perfumes, beauty products and medications, especially those for persons with conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes, vitamins for the middle-aged and older persons, as well as books.
Pre-teens remained consistent in asking for clothes, chocolates, biscuits and toys, they said, while teens from the age of 15 years up still asked for iPhones, clothes and money.
Adult friends and relations are said to be limiting their requests almost strictly to money, while one item that has almost completely dropped off the list of requests is perfumes.
In a breakdown, the feedback from diaspora Nigerians speaks of friends and relations from the home country who are 45 years and above, asking almost exclusively for money and explaining they needed the money for business, house rents, or school fees for their children or to stock up on food.
“Ideally, I and my family receive requests from family and friends for gifts at Christmas and the New Year. This year is different in that the requests are more,” said Tunde Afolabi, a recreational services provider who lives in London.
“Also, most people from Nigeria are asking only for money and in many cases for nothing else. And then they explain what they want the money for, so that you understand and give them enough.
“Most requests are for house rents, school fees, food and medicines and a few people ask for money for business. Nobody has told me to contribute to the purchase of a car this year and nobody has asked me to buy them a perfume.
“We Nigerians here have a few cooperatives, like groups of friends from the same school or same church or same profession or same town or state and we exchange notes frequently, and what you find is that people from home are making more requests and asking mostly for money now,” he said.
Afolabi added, “I think we are making some impact, especially because the naira value keeps falling. They say every disappointment is a blessing. Two weeks ago the British pound exchanged for N1,350. Yesterday (Saturday, December 2), it was N1,450.”
Bankole, who lives in New York, the USA, confirmed all the requests he has received from Nigeria in the past few weeks have been for cash and that they were for school fees, house rents and food.
John, who lives in Maryland, also in the USA, has the same story, the difference being that one relative asked for money for medical treatment.
A recent survey reports 61 percent of Nigerians affirming they have a relative/friend living abroad. This is said to be mostly true for Nigerians in the South-West (69 per cent), South-South (68 per cent), and South-East (63 per cent).
The 2022 American Community Survey (ACS) estimates that 712,294 residents of the USA are of Nigerian ancestry. The 2019 ACS further estimated that around 392,811 of these (85 per cent) had been born in Nigeria.
In 2021, 270,768 usual residents in England and Wales recorded their place of birth as Nigeria. These data have been extracted from tables QS203EW for 2011 and TS012 for 2021 via Nomis.
In July, President Bola Tinubu said that in 2022, Nigeria’s Diaspora home remittances through official channels stood at US$21.9 billion, over four times the value of the country’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).
“The Nigerians in the Diaspora are also actively investing in healthcare, agriculture, education, information and communication technology, housing and real estate, sports, transportation, oil and gas and other sectors,” Tinubu said.
“This, I must say, is commendable and in our enlightened self-interest as only Nigerians both at home and abroad can develop Nigeria,” he said.
