I attended my secondary school alumni meeting yesterday and I felt really, really sad about Nigeria. Bear in mind this is Atlantic Hall we're talking about, so pretty much all of us won the birth lottery to begin with.
But EVERYBODY IS LEAVING NIGERIA. This is not a drill.
None of us is struggling. We're all late 20s to early 40s. By Nigerian standards, we are *balling*. Everybody showed up in a nice car, we all have successful businesses and careers. No one would see us and imagine that we are anything but Nigeria's elite. Then we started talking.
First of all, the common theme was "Why did I come back?" None of us could say with a straight face. Every single one of us regretted returning to Nigeria. Without an exception. We all left careers abroad to chase a Nigerian dream that has turned into a Jordan Peele horror flick.
Those of us with kids all said the same thing: "I'm leaving because of their secondary school." None of us can afford to send our kids to the very school we are alumni of. N3.5m per annum? What if you have 2 kids. Totally unrealistic. So, Canada. UK. US. Germany. Australia.
Again I should stress that none of us is looking for bread. We're all successful people in our own right. But Nigeria has taken the difficulty bar from where our parents met it and placed it somewhere far out of reach, even for its best and brightest.
Now my question is this: If people like us whose parents owned property and did well for themselves before they died can no longer afford to remain in Nigeria because we are getting poorer, then what about everyone else? Mr political elite, pls what is the plan? I don't see one.
Ordinarily, we are the lucky ones that should be consolidating on what our parents achieved and building legacies. Instead we are disposing of the property they worked for and moving abroad because Nigeria wants to strangulate us. What is the plan?
Are you trying to run a country without a middle class? Do you want every kind of successful professional to move to Canada before you are satisfied? Who will fly your jets? Who will give you primary healthcare before you fly abroad? Who will manage your money? What is the plan?
Me I'm just saying o, because if people whose parents built houses in VI and Ikoyi are selling them and emigrating, you should know that something unprecedented is coming. These are not Masters degree hustlers. These are Nigeria'a silent elite. Leaving. In a stampede.
Me I don't have any property to sell thank heaven, because my family is unorthodox so nobody should come after me in my miniflat in Gbagada. Hustle ni mo'n se l'owo. But I'm just saying. I feel like Nigeria is a TV series approaching the final episode. I feel real, actual dread.
That's all I will say sha. As you were.
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There's something fundamentally broken about the business of journalism around the world.
The figures on offer are just not commensurate to the utility journalists offer. We have an occupation that is this objectively important offering uniformly poor compensation across board.
We are expected to be 1 part social conscience, 1 part historiographer, 1 part PhD researcher, and 1 part Wall Street analyst on the wages of a Wal-Mart greeter.
More importantly, journalism is one of the few "respected" professions where there is no career pipeline whatsoever.
You can write the most important story ever written and win a Pullitzer and a Nobel Peace Prize for your efforts, but there is no guarantee whatsoever that this will help your journalism career.
The industry is governed not by metrics, but by who knows who and who was born where
In a country that has a Freedom Of Information Act, I cannot go to the NNPC website and find out everything I need to know about Duke Oil - a company it has owned since 1989.
I have to go to UK and UAE public records to find out who is on the board of a Nigerian public company.
This Nigerian public sector entity is not registered under its international name (Duke Oil) with Nigeria's Corporate Affairs Commission.
There is even controversy over where its is actually based. Is it Abuja? London? Dubai? Panama? Nobody really knows.
A public sector entity.
The Panamanian law firm Alemán, Cordero, Galindo & Lee, which is now internationally recognised for being the go-to consultant for money laundering in Panama, is the law firm retained by this shadowy public sector entity.
All this in a country with a Freedom Of Information Act.
Step 1: Come into power and destroy dozens of independent fuel marketing businesses using state power. Make NNPC "sole importer."
Step 2: Fuel scarcity, because NNPC/Duke Oil obviously doesn't have the capacity to supply 180 million consumers. Chaos ensues.
Problem->Reaction...
Step 3: Acknowledge that a solution is needed, but don't say what it is. Quietly invite a small group of your friends, family and cronies to take the space vacated by the independent marketers you put out of business.
Learn new things, you will not learn.
Become better at what you do no way.
Give opportunities to younger people, whossai.
OK at least stay out of their way and leave them to their own devices, you will still try to be a roadblock.
The African elder is a TERRIBLE human being.
Elsewhere, when a young talent with huge potential arises, the establishment sees its future there and invests in this person.
Here, I was left to find my own way. Which I did without anybody's help and I didn't complain.
Now see them gathering like witches on my head!
One of Nigeria's most fearless investigative journalists in decades emerged and the entire Nigerian media coughed and looked the other way, only pausing to steal and plagiarise my work until I threw a massive tantrum about it, then they stopped.
See, let me just tell all of you Methuselah Nigerian journalists who think you are some kind of standard for what journalism is or isn't:
I'm only John The Baptist.
The Jesuses are coming after me. Not 1, not 2, not 5. You are going to fucking HATE it.
I promise you.
We have not started with you yet. You think people like David Hundeyin and Samuel Ogundipe are your problem? Wait first.
When you see 35 David Hundeyins coming, nobody will have to tell you what to so.
Useless, abominable elders who add no value to anything or anyone.
You're already irrelevant - you just don't know it yet. True Crime Daniel on YouTube - a vlogger with no professional journalism experience - is already delivering higher quality and more impactful journalism than any of you with your grey hair and brown envelopes.
Fully expect to wake up one day and hear that marriage is being canceled for being heteronormative, unduly influenced by the Male Gaze, and possibly transphobic too.
Heck, someone will use stats to argue that marriage is racist. It will happen.
This is enlightenment and progress in the age where humanity has solved pretty much all its material problems.
Fucking dystopia.
Here come the stats lol.
"Marriage is racist" is about to become a real thing in 3..2..