I am pro-leave Nigeria and there are reasons why. 

A friend asked me if I think leaving Nigeria is necessary, and my response to her;

 “See, I don’t even know how to tell you, I don’t know how to describe it, but when I tell you that if you can, please leave”. 

I knew I wanted to leave from the moment I finished nursing school. It was scheduled to happen after I finished but I lost my mom and the whole plan went upside down, everything went down the drain.

As big a deal as migration is, people don’t talk about it enough and I don’t know why. People just say “we are traveling out of the country, we are leaving the country”. I mean you are starting your life all over again in a different environment, and you’ve got a different system where things don’t work the same way it does from where you are coming from. You are at the mercy of figuring out a lot of things happening at the same time.

I moved from Nigeria to the United Kingdom, after having been there for almost three decades. The first thing that hit me was the weather. People normally say it’s cold but words do not describe to what magnitude. They don’t tell you that at some point you may need to combine 4 to 5 outfits just for warmth. You know the weather in Nigeria is relatively stable, nothing changes in a matter of minutes or hours. I remember this day, when I just got here and had to go for training, I had no idea I was supposed to check the weather forecast for the day. Everything looked so bright and sunny so I just wore something simple, very light clothing. In less than 2 hours of leaving my house, the weather changed and it became extremely cold, to the point that my hands went numb. The blood ceased flowing to my hands, and I could barely lift them. I was shivering and felt sick instantly. My whole body and system changed drastically in less than 2 hours.

I had nobody to call in that environment to maybe get a jacket or a warmer but I was lucky enough to have my card on me, so I quickly ran into a store to buy a jacket, to save my life. This was my new reality, the reality of migration hit me.

When I was a teenager, I learned to be independent even though I grew up in a home where I had the things I needed at the time I needed them. I went to a nursing school to obtain a diploma certificate and then proceeded to the university for a bachelor's degree. When I was in school I had to do a lot of things to make extra money for myself aside from the money my parents gave me.

As a full-time student at the university, I was lucky to get a job with my diploma certificate that was flexible enough to accommodate my academic activities. Life was good for me at this time. After school, the plan was to go to the United States and I was already preparing for my SATs and IELTS. Then I lost my mom, and things changed, plans changed and life happened. I knew I wasn’t ready to forsake the dream but I lost a lot of motivation after my mom’s demise. So, my being a nurse was largely due to my mom’s influence, she wanted to be a nurse herself but that didn’t happen for her.

She always believed that the two professions that can make you have time for family and still give you a flexible lifestyle are nursing and teaching. Being a teacher was out of it for me, although I find it interesting to teach people and I have successfully taught and trained several people for IELTS with no case of failure, all of them passed. I wanted to be a nurse and came to find it interesting. The only part I don’t appreciate is the appraisal, with all the stress nurses go through, I feel they should be paid more than they are being paid currently.‍

Nursing is demanding and risky as it puts you at the forefront of a lot of litigations. I feel if nurses are appreciated more than they are, it will make the profession more beautiful. A lot of people think of nursing as just meeting patients, and giving injections and medications but do not realize the deep psychological investment that goes into nursing. The fact that you are constantly calculating in your head “what are the best things I need to do to help this person feel better than they were yesterday”. This alone is a lot of psychological pressure because for me, I don’t want to have contact with a patient and at the end of my shift feel like I haven’t achieved anything. When a patient says to me at the point of discharge “thank you for taking care of me” or “I love the fact that you were one of those who took care of me”, it gives me satisfaction that the work I am doing is important and that my effort is noticed and appreciated.

Immediately after I finished university, I got a job with an oil company, a very beautiful job in an administrative role, and I fared well. I was satisfied with the salary and benefits, I was married and my husband also had a good salary as well. Life was good. Leaving Nigeria became a priority when I got to a point of responsibility in my life, I had a child and with the way the country’s situation was going, if for no reason but for the sake of my children, I needed to leave.

I needed to give them a better environment to grow up in, their safety and security were important to me.

I was in Port-Harcourt with my family at the time and the rate of kidnapping was on the rise. A lot of my husband’s colleagues were being kidnapped whenever they visited sites for projects, coupled with the nature of politics in Nigeria which wasn’t giving us any hope. We love Nigeria but couldn’t fix it and we needed to leave.

My husband and I had family in Canada, so Canada seemed like a good option to pursue but there were a lot of delays that were attributed to COVID. The most important thing for us was leaving, so we decided to try the UK and if we got to the Uk, and didn’t like it there, we could move to Canada. In 7 months from when the process started, we got to the UK. The process required me to take a lot of exams and do some interviews. I was sending in 10 job applications every day for a period that came up to about 200 applications.

Out of these 200, I got only 5 interview offers, 2 further rejections, and 3 eventual offers that I had to choose from. The journey wasn’t smooth all through, I had downtimes and felt like it was too much stress because I mean I had a good life in Nigeria, and I was comfortable.

I however knew why I was doing this, it was not for now but for the future.

In less than a year of getting into the UK, I already gained admission for a master’s degree. In Nigeria, I wouldn’t have gotten admission that easy, I am very sure of that. The opportunities are available in the right environment and it just makes sense. 

Life here comes with a lot of comforts, I have been on road trips at 2:00 am with my husband, me, and our son. A 3-hour journey by road and not a single police harassment on our way. On a trip like that in Ibadan where I grew up, you won’t have less than 5 police encounters and they are always looking for things that aren’t lost even after presenting complete documents. The ironic thing is you might just encounter criminals next after all the police encounters.

The pleasure of enjoying basic things here where no one is harassing you or making you feel less of yourself is all worth it. You live comfortably, not feeling somebody is better than you because nobody cares what you wear or drive. Everyone has access to the same facilities and the same things up to a reasonable extent. When I interact and talk to people, especially in Nigeria, I realize that a lot of people are victims of ignorance, they just don’t know. They have no idea of the opportunities that exist and you can’t blame them.

So, I asked myself what is the best way to be of help to people?

One thing for me is I am not a lazy person and I hate to give excuses for laziness. I am deliberate in searching for information and I am always reaching out to random people that possess the information I need, to ask for it. I soon realized that one way to help bridge the gap was to provide the information people need to access opportunities and on migration. I have seen a lot of people fall victim to what they are not supposed to fall victim to, wasting resources, time, and money just because they don’t have the right information.

There are a lot of people privileged to know about all of this, but they don’t provide the information. I decided this would be one of the ways for me to contribute. I create content around these on YouTube and a lot of people have found it helpful. I take time out to teach people IELTS at no cost because I believe everything is not about money, sometimes the impact is what matters.

The fulfillment that comes from “I was able to help this person achieve their dream” is sufficient for me over money. I have had a few people come back to me and say “thank you so much for all your help, I got my visa, and I will be landing in the UK tomorrow!”. Things like that are enough for me. The opportunities are beyond what you can imagine but it also comes with issues you have to deal with daily, the consolation is that these are not as significant as the positives.

Leaving Nigeria was nostalgic for me because even though I was distanced physically from my dad who stayed in Ibadan while I was in Port-Harcourt, I had to go pay a proper visit with my family and bid him farewell.

I still miss Nigeria and sometimes I feel like visiting but I am unable to just yet due to a lot of factors to consider. I miss the food, I miss the àmàlà and the àbulà but this is my reality now.