For The Love Of Greener Pastures.

Disclaimer: I have never left the confines of our beautiful motherland. This is a summary of experiences of people who actually had. This is not a fiction; any resemblance to anyone in real life is probably true.

Its more like culture shock garnished with spices of technological shock and finally topped with structural shock. We just cannot phantom the idea that things are done in an orderly manner. That structures/systems are being built and maintained in a society with no one breathing down on another's neck. “It must be a lie, can people behave in a civilized manner, can people actually behave like this”, is what runs through the minds of many of our brothers and sisters who travel overseas. I came across this once on the internet,

 “The difficulties facing the African Continent aren’t as a result of the pigmentation of their skin, but as a result of their mentality. Put the average white man in a black body, and you’ll still get civilization, technology and progress, to say the least. But when the shoe is worn on the other foot, nothing is changed; you would still have underdevelopment and corruption at large”.

It’s no news that most people who travel to ‘the Abroad’ rarely want to come back, except in mandatory situations like deportation, lol. Please tell me, why should they? Constant power supply, good roads, freedom to express their rights, better standard of living, ample opportunities to succeed amidst other things taken for granted in our country, and we wonder why they are not quick to return.

This is an example of when the roles are reversed, but I thought it would still be worth sharing. Not too long ago, I had a relative who returned from one of ‘the Abroad’ with her four year old kid. She left the country when the boy was a little under a year old; so he never really caught anything Nigerian in his system. On this wonderful day, we went to pick them from the airport, during the drive home he became restless and uncomfortable disturbing his mom at every swerve and stop. The heat was becoming unbearable. And to the Nigerians in the car, this was a cool sunny day. Okay, that’s nature, and there’s nothing we can do about her. Anyway, the story continues; we got home and there was no power supply. Nothing new there na ‘no be today’, in an effort to lessen the boy’s restlessness, as soon as the car drove into the compound and stopped I quickly proceeded to put on the generator. As the generator came on, this little nephew of mine let out a shriek that was so loud, my heart skipped a beat for a second.

 I was so scared I rushed back to the garage to see what happened, only for me to get there and see my relative laughing. She said he was scared by the noise the generator made. For the total of three years add some months he had spent there, he had never heard the sound of a generator.

We haven’t even achieved the feat of a full week of uninterrupted power supply, talk more of 3 years. I still hold the belief that when electricity is supplied constantly, there is no limit to which such society can achieve. While we keep chanting brain drain(which is relative, brain drain for you, brain gain for ), society of ‘The Abroad’ keeps telling its members to strive to keep improving the condition and standard of life of its citizens, to attract skilled and intellectual people from the world over. There’s more to do than planning to produce toothpicks by 2018.