Right in my village in Anambra State, one of the liveliest bars/mom & pop shops, is owned and run by a Ghanaian. The brightest sons and daughters of the community are ‘abroad’ at Onitsha, Port Harcourt, Lagos, Abuja, Accra, US, UK, etc, seeking their own fortunes. And they are not envious of the Ghanaian who dominates their home base.
Kofi is indeed a part of the village, a leader of the immigrant community there. This immigrant community consists mainly of people from Ebonyi, Taraba, Adamawa and Nassarawa states. Kofi, who speaks Igbo, leads them to attend marriages, funerals and the likes in our community.
Shuttling from one chore to another, Kofi would quip, _Wahala no dey finish. You can’t fault that. You can’t fix everything that calls for fixing around you. This applies to writing too.
My mentor in business journalism, the late Ashikiwe Adione-Egom, used to tell us at The Financial Post magazine that there were journalists who write before they think and those who think before they write. Our paper, which was published fortnightly, afforded us time to think before we write, he emphasized. It stuck with me from my youth.
Focusing on the political economy of Nigeria, how can one escape writing about the inflation that bites harder each day? Does anyone still cry about unemployment? It has become a normal state of affairs. What we still manage to talk about is the minimum wage for those who have managed to keep their jobs in the presence of the exodus of multinationals that had thousands of Nigerians employed. We still manage to worry about the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) going on strike, not because there’s any hope of our graduating youth getting any jobs. Rather, it’s about our young people completing a rite of passage and facing a bewildering world, armed with just a piece of paper.
If I were an opposition politician, insulated from the harsh realities by tons of cash purloined in the past when it was ‘my turn’, it would have been an easy chore – just suck it up to the bloody government. But the bewildering economic environment created and nurtured by the APC government gnaws on me as much as it does every average Joe in Nigeria. How much infinitely better it would be for me to afford food in the market, and not find words to describe a disastrous economy!
Or if I had my focus on entertainment, Davido and Chioma would have provided mileage for days. The guest list, the venue, dressing, food, drinks, paparazzi, etc, would have provided tons of verbiage for a star-struck audience.
But there’s nothing like that happening in the political economy. The chill is so direct and personal. Basic food is unaffordable, and nothing that anyone says can soothe the pangs in virtually 200 million stomachs – even if Dangote were to commission petroleum refineries in every state.
Sometimes, the temptations come to just switch off and coast along – just believe Bayo Onanuga that the naira will firm up and exchange for the dollar at N1,000 by end of this year. Yes, just believe. But reality wakes you up before your eyes are properly shut.
Happy by choice
To be happy in today’s Nigeria requires either belonging to the inner core of the ruling party or having to work out the happiness by yourself. Whereas there is nothing cheering inside Nigeria, the young who have their lives ahead are finding ways around the world to make their lives worth living. If Nigeria becomes a mess, they are happy to go elsewhere and live.
Giving it the fancy name, japa, young Nigerians have trooped out like no other time in the past three years to settle elsewhere and make a living. All over the southern part of the country, there’s hardly any family whose immediate or extended members have not joined this japa train. As the economy of the country sinks, these immigrants have borne an ever-increasing level of the economic burden of the country via their families.
Official statistics show that remittances from Nigerians in the diaspora into the country amounted to some $25 billion annually around 2020 to 2022 after which it declined to some $20 billion annually till present. But government officials explain that the figures in recent years constitute just about 10 percent of actual remittances as an increasing quantum now passes through Fintechs straight to families and are unaccounted for by the banking system.
Put in perspective, Nigeria’s crude oil revenue averaged $39 billion per annum between 2017 and 2021, showing that the diaspora remittances are more than half of the nation’s crude oil earnings.
So, while powering individual families on the level of personal finance, the Nigerian immigrant community packs quite a punch as a collective!
This immigrant community of ours is about the only thing that counts positively about Nigeria economically. They have earned their epaulettes, and in the coming weeks, I shall dwell on them and issues concerning them.
Olayemi Cardoso, the central bank governor, had lamented in February that the nation had spent some $40 billion in 10 years on school fees abroad and medical tourism. While school fees gulped some $28 billion, averaging $2.8 billion per annum, medical tourism amounted to just below $12 billion.
Standing alone, these expenditure figures may look like misplaced priorities which might have been better utilized for the industrial sector. But when you place an annual foreign education expenditure of $2.8 billion besides a yield of $20 billion per annum in remittance, which it rakes in, the picture changes. Going forward, we shall deliberately put some focus on the diaspora economy. More than any other part of Nigeria, Edo and Delta states, which form the immediate catchment area of The Nigerian Observer newspaper, relies on the diaspora remittances for much of family sustenance. From a distance, it looks interesting exploring life in the furnace where much of our bread is baked.
*Calling Goddy Nwosu from Orlu, Imo State. He used to supply books at Oshodi market, Lagos, in the mid-1990s. Some good news awaits him. Let him call 08062833586. Whoever can escalate this should kindly do so.
