One quarter want to flee

MAHMUD JEGA BY VIEW FROM THE GALLERY

The report put out by the National Bureau of Statistics [NBS] last week that one out of every four Nigerians above the age of 15 wants to leave where he or she presently resides and move to another place, somehow reminded me of what the writer Edgar Snow once wrote about Chairman Mao Zedong at the height of the Chinese leader’s fame [or notoriety, depending on who you are] in the 1960s.

Snow wrote that, “If the whole human race is assembled and Mao’s name is thrown at them, one quarter [i.e. the population of China] will bow with veneration. One quarter [i.e. Western anti- Communists] will grimace with hate. One quarter [i.e. Western liberals and Third World nationalists] will receive the name with respect. And the last quarter, the most backward section of the human race, has never heard of him.”

Let me paraphrase Edgar Snow a bit. The NBS survey seems to be saying that if the entire population of Nigeria is assembled and the chance to emigrate is thrown at them, one quarter will grab it with both hands. One quarter will turn down the offer. One quarter will respect the decision of those who grab the offer. And the last quarter, the most indecisive section of Nigerians disoriented by high cost of living, high transport fares, steep fall in naira value and insecurity, do not know what to think of it.

I am not the one who is making this allegation, mind you; it is the government’s own National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, that found this out in its General Household Survey- Panel (GHS-Panel) Wave 5 2023/2024, which it unveiled in Abuja on Thursday last week. While some of the respondents told NBS’ surveyors that they want to leave their communities temporarily, others said they want to leave permanently.

One quarter want to leave. We must be some of the most dissatisfied people in the world. I have not seen comparative figures for other countries but I doubt if so many people in the Arabian desert, Ethiopian highlands, Kalahari bushmen, people in the Mongolian steppes, in the Australian Outback, in the Argentine pampas, in Patagonia, Inuits in northern Canada who live in Igloos made of ice, or even people in the Galapagos Islands would like to desert their homes and go somewhere else.

Recent developments around the world however ensured that we Nigerians are not the only people on the move. At the weekend I saw this funny skit of New York harbour’s 138-year-old Statue of Liberty. For centuries it welcomed immigrants to the United States with its declaration, “…Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me…” Here now was Lady Liberty dragging its suitcases to leave the USA for fear that incoming President Trump will deport her back to France!

Of the Nigerians who want to scamper out of their communities, NBS found that 31.2 percent of men want to leave while only 19.3 percent of women want to leave. Not very surprising, because in Africa at least, women tend to be more conservative about their choices, less adventurous and more sentimentally attached to home, family and relatives. Many years ago, I met a man in Sokoto called Mamman Bututu. He told me that he left his hometown due to a quarrel 15 years earlier and that he never sat down for one minute and thought about home. He refused to say what the quarrel was all about.

One noticeable drawback in the NBS survey was that it did not ask the persons who indicated a desire to desert their communities why they want to do so. Or maybe they did, but it was not reflected in the News Agency of Nigeria [NAN] report that I read. In secondary school Economic Geography, we were taught that there are “push and pull factors” that drive rural-urban migration. While poor amenities, absolute poverty, high underemployment and general deprivation of African rural environments pushes people to migrate, lure of urban facilities and greater employment opportunities pulls them towards city life. Not to mention, in recent times, that insecurity, insurgency and kidnapping infest rural communities more than urban ones, even making farming impossible in many communities all over the North.

Not surprisingly either, there is an age element in the desire to migrate.  While 34.5 percent of people between ages 20 and 30 expressed a desire to migrate, 26.9% of those between ages 15 and 18 said they want to migrate while 25% of those between ages 31 and 64 said they want to move. Only 6.5% of those above 65 years of age indicated a similar desire. That one third of those in the 20 to 30 age bracket want to leave is not surprising because this is the age of physical vigour, relatively good health, adventurous spirit and little knowledge or experience of the world. Between the ages of 31 and 64, as we can see from the NBS survey, reality has begun to sink in, some progress has been made in life, family or other responsibility has begun to tie down a person, and experience of other communities has filtered in, showing that things are not necessarily better in other places.

Who was the philosopher who said, “In my twenties I wanted to change the world. In my thirties I wanted to change my country. In my forties I wanted to change my community. In my fifties I wanted to change my family. In my sixties I only want to change myself.” At a certain age in life you realise that even changing yourself by dropping a habit such as cigarette smoking is a big challenge. I thought of this matter some time ago when I read a story about Afenifere chieftain Chief Ayo Adebanjo, who is 96, saying Nigeria must be restructured. Though I am several decades short of 90, I have been trying for three years now to restructure the bookshelf in my bedroom, without success.

Okay, all those Nigerians who are itching to leave, where do they want to go? Wonder of wonders, 35.3% of those Nigerians who want to migrate said they would like to move to Abuja! I blame the newspapers, TV stations and social media for this misplaced perception of Abuja. Quite alright, MPs and top civil servants from Abuja come home for the weekend and they spend money as if it is going out of fashion, so people in the rural communities get the impression that money can be picked with ease in Abuja streets. The wide roads, tall buildings and glitzy super stores assist in conveying this wrong impression. Some years ago, I saw a down-and-out Abuja resident being interviewed on NTA, and he said something like, “This is Abuja now! Everybody comes here to get something!” Everybody comes, but relatively few people manage to get something. While a few get too much, too many people get nothing and are forced to return home empty handed or to resort to begging and crime.

At the weekend, I chanced upon Arise TV’s newsroom preparing a report on the large number of beggars, mostly from the far Northern states, that now infest Abuja city corners. These beggars believe that Abuja people have more money to give as alms. Maybe so, but Abuja people are less compassionate and less inclined to give alms than those less well-to-do folks the beggars left behind at home. Charity is often inversely proportional to wealth. Back in the rural areas, some people can give out all the money they have as charity in expectation of God’s reward, whereas in a city such as Abuja, a person who is sitting on 100 million naira will be fretting that it is not enough for a foreign vacation, a foreign shopping trip, a foreign medical trip or to pay a child’s fees in a choice foreign school.

Back in the 1980s, I remember reading a report by a World Bank official who travelled around the world. He found that there is a wide dissonance between wealth and happiness. He said when he visited the slums of Kinshasa in DR Congo, he found that people who were living with pigs and rats in the filthiest environment, just above gutters, will every now and then roar with laughter. On the other hand, he wrote, half of the folks on the streets of Manhattan Island in New York City are millionaires but everybody is grim faced, worried stiff about stock market prices, high taxes, uninsured medical bills, whether his or her favourite  team will win the Super Bowl, and where to go for holiday this year.

Now, 26.6 per cent of those Nigerians who indicated a desire to desert their communities said they would like to relocate to another country. I can guess that the “another country” they are referring to are mostly UK, USA, Canada, Germany and UAE.  Certainly no one wants to go to Ukraine, Russia or Gaza, or for that matter to Israel, lest he be conscripted into the army and  Hetzbollah or Iranian rockets rain down on him or her. So much is the allure of those countries, based on false perceptions, that young Nigerians and many other West Africans cross the Sahara Desert in rickety trucks, risk becoming slaves in Libya, and pay smugglers to carry them across the Mediterranean Sea in dinghy boats in order to reach Europe, only to end up in a Greek or Italian camp or, at best, sleep in a park in the London winter.

Interestingly, the NBS report found that while Nigerians from the North predominantly want to go to Abuja, those from the South predominantly want to go abroad. It means Northerners have a lower aspiration with respect to emigration, are comfortable with Abuja because it has a familiar Northern flavour, and they are also less attracted to Europe and North America for cultural reasons. Ok, flee from your community if you must. Remember however that Donald Trump will soon throw millions of “undocumented immigrants” out of the United States and you will cross roads on your way out and on their way back.