Jumoke Johnson sat beside me on a plane journey back to UK in October. Voluptuous, well-endowed, and pretty. She was well groomed for this maiden trip outside the shore of Nigeria. Her face dripped of makeup, and she smelled like a sweet lavender. I could see anxiety and worry written all over her choreographed face. She wore a big, gold wristwatch and had a small bag with her. She looked like the Lekki set – the jet setting, goal getting, life loving new breed from the Lagos Atlantic axis of wealth, couture, and opulence.
As a nosy Parker, I believe in knowing a person’s history. I debated within me if she would love my tolerable confidence. I threw the first conversational punch before the departure of the plane into the blue sky. She responded warmly. I enticed her and gave her gushing compliment to the point of flattery. She responded all the way with, ‘Ah, ese sir.’ Jumoke gradated with a higher national diploma (HND) in food technology from one of our polytechnics. After years of scavenging for a living and being given many upper cuts by the Nigerian society, she threw in the hat and joined the whammy train called Japa.
She narrated that she spent N6 million naira to complete the process of being processed for the job of a health worker in the UK. What, did you say N6million naira? I asked. She nodded her head. I was battling with anger. I battled with the financial stupidity of her dream. The moral bankruptcy of a nation that could not provide, support, and create jobs for her citizens. Jumoke has a placement in the UK to start work in old peoples’ home where she will commence the job of a carer. A carer cares for the growing geriatric community of the UK population. Jumoke will bath, manicure, clean the faecal droppings of old ladies across her assigned borough on a slave wage and punishing hours that leave no room for recuperation and meditation.
Jumoke confessed that she preferred to slave out her life doing this menial job of looking after old people than being useless in Nigeria. Her reason to Japa from Nigeria to Western Europe is the desire for a better life. She also mentioned bad leadership of greed and corruption. She mentioned squandering of resources by corrupt politicians. She fingered wrong policy and planning that leave the citizens jobless, hopeless and in abject penury.
She also said that her japa was daily nurtured by the relentless portrayal of Europe as a land flowing with milk and honey. It was driven by the myth that projects Europe’s cobbled roads as being overlaid with gold. Why is Mother Africa with all her natural resources sending her able-bodied men and women into the cauldron of temperate Europe, with its markedly different culture? Can it be the conditioning of every African that forever hungers after a life of ease and luxury?
Like Jumoke, Nigerians in their thousands still gamble on looking for a better life in Europe. Husbands leave behind long-suffering wives in search of greener pastures. Wives abandon jobless husbands to escape to London in search of the almighty pound sterling. Sometimes, and this may sound cruel, very young children are carted off to grandparents, while their fathers and mothers make a choice between survival and starvation.
Do we all have right, as parents, to abandon our kids to fate by emigrating abroad in search of tomorrow’s world? This is unfair. And because we live in an unfair, mad and get-rich-quick world, many are taking the risk, the trouble, expense, and the emotional heartbreak of uprooting themselves and starting life anew in an untried and hostile environment where they must strive harder than the host to survive. Japa is here…smell the coffee!!!
Adaptability to the new conditions must quickly be won over. And thank God for the resilience of Nigerians. Many are now conquering frontiers as far flung as Siberia and Iceland in a pioneering spirit. However, there is a thin line between resilience and selfishness. Can we really say that resilience is behind our ability to absorb sudden break with family ties and known familiar way of life? Is resilience behind our ability to cope with emotional, mental, psychological, and social stress afflicting black residents in hostile and racist Britain?
In the roaring 60s and 70s black Africans travel genre had a different narrative. Among Nigerians, travel to Europe was mainly dictated by burning desire to acquire western education, knowledge, and skills. Our society then was less cruel. It was less acquisitive in instinct and temper. We showed exceptional respect and honour to every proud possessor of polytechnic, technical and university certificates that originated from Britain.
After the completion of their education and the acquisition of western skills and knowledge, few Nigerians stay behind in England. Most of the early Nigerian migrants were genuine students. They treated Britain as a place to acquire education and saw no reason to become citizens. They trooped back home to take up government and corporate appointments that were readily available. In this bygone era, Nigeria was a country of promise. The economy was robust. Corruption had not taken on its present pandemic proportion. Affluence was visible and greed had not entwined itself like poison ivy round the neck of this nation. We were known for fair play, decency, and honesty.
Then the decay set in, and with it, a new travel genre of Japa of desperation and survival. Political, economic, and social decay have both paralysed a nation blessed with limitless resources but lacking in visionary rigor. As the economy and political vision nose-dived and looter-rulers made their fatal assault on oil and gas revenues, smart Nigerians from lower to middle class homes started voting with their legs and passports. The whammy wagon called Japa was born. The reality of rat race began in earnest. To reach Europe, some Nigerians, invoking the ancient Israelites woes in the wilderness, had to pass through perilous deserts of Morocco. Women offered their bodies as rape currency to libidinous Arabs along the Mediterranean coastlines. Men offered scarce dollars and lived under severe restrictions and slavery rules. Japa is here…smell the coffee!!!
Continue next week…
Psychiatric award of the week:
The award goes to Alhaji Ebun Oloyede, known as Olaiya Igwe for going naked for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s presidential ambition. Hear him: “Whatever the thought, my decision is my decision. I did it deliberately to support Asiwaju. It is a programme. I needed to be naked. That was the instruction”. This man needs to deprogramme his spiritual antennae to hear the voice of God rather than the soulish voice of tribalism, subserviency, grovelling stupidity and the expectation of dirty crumbs from the dirty corrupt table of a corrupt Jagalule called Yekini Amuda Ogunlere Sangodele aka Bola Ahmed Kunle Tinubu.
