Thread by @dolawanle

THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE LEAVING YOUR COUNTRY OF BIRTH.

Sometimes, I think leaving one’s country of birth for a foreign country could be a big mistake especially for those who have great potentials. You could play yourself out of greatness. I blame the government of their home

country and I blame those checking out. Our taste for foreign things is insatiable. Meeting your economic needs is not the same as leaving a great legacy.

When I left Nigeria in 1990, it was because of education. I wanted to study law but there was no helper.

After many years in the wilderness of immigration, I eventually fulfilled my ambition and became a lawyer. I also became a pastor and did many other things successfully. Many people see me as a success but deep within me,

I see a void, I see a sort of emptiness and I see myself as a failure. Why? I feel I could have done more if I had remained in Nigeria. How? It is very deep and complicated. I have dreams and they are very good dreams.

Nevertheless, I am grateful to God for the little I have been able to achieve so far in life.

Living abroad could truncate lives. It could detach one from greatness. It could stop one from dreaming. It could cause one to exchange greatness for a pot of porridge. It

could cause one to embrace and celebrate mediocrity. It could cause one’s children to be severed from their heritage for ever and it is a big miss. I will explain.

Immigrants give birth to their children and spend years raising them doing odd jobs. By the time the children

start doing well (if they do well), the parents are worn out or divorced. Many hardly travel back to their home country. If they travel, they hardly travel with the children. The children therefore are detached from their roots. They grow up and they are totally lost.

If you lived abroad, you have seen many of them and it is not their fault. It was their parent’s fault.

In the foreign land where they are based, they are made to feel like second class citizens. They are made to feel like low level children. They are discriminated against.

They are stylishly deprived of self confidence. They are limited because of their color. That is why we are taking the knee. When I see what some immigrant parents call success either for them or their children, I weep. They don’t know the meaning of true success.

Further, many immigrants are looked down upon. They can’t leave their children to go back to their country of birth. Many have become sick and ordinary sun can heal them if they travel abroad. Many have died prematurely. When they grow old, they are kept in homes like being in

boarding house when we were in school.

As a lawyer, I see a lot of clients across many areas of law, I hear their stories and they left me sad most times. They could have done more but they had no mentors. They spent all their lives paying the mortgage of a single house.

That was all they laboured for. They could have built a ‘country’ because they had the capacity.

There is also a prophetic angle to this article, if you are doing well in your home country and you want to move abroad, think very well.

Make sure your children are not totally detached from their roots because they studied abroad or because you want to live abroad. They could become anything bad. You may regret being infected with the international mentality. Take them home regularly.

Remind them of their roots whilst appreciating the goodness in their country of sojourn. Don’t let them lose the grounds you gained.

I look at many pastors like me. They are educated and anointed. They are gifted but they are limited by the environment.

How can one pastor a church for 30 years and have only have 30 members to show for it?. No orphanage, no school built, no church building, no money and no branches. Some pastors resort to relying on benefits. Some have no proper pension.

Because others are like that, we think it is normal but it is a waste of grace. If you are pastor willing to come abroad and do ministry, it is not what you think. How many of us pastors living abroad can build a primary school not to talk of a university?

The thought of that will kill many prematurely. There is a mental block. We call failure success. We celebrate backwardness. Many of us are queuing up to shake hands with politicians to show we are connected despite not being able to pay our bills.

Many of us spend all our fruitful lives doing meaningless activities to get meaningless awards. What a generation!

I appeal to the younger generation to think twice before relocating abroad. If you decide to leave, think of what you want to do and stick to it.

Think of when you will go back and what you will do for your country. Many immigrants have no future ambition and it is a shame. They just want to work, eat, dress well, have some money in the bank and get a second hand car.

Some live in council houses all their lifetime whilst their friends back home are building estates. Some live on public funds for their lifetime and refuse to work or study to improve themselves. The rest is spent arguing on social media and before you know it,

old age has crept upon one like a thief in the night. An article like this breeds a lot of enemies because we fight agents of progress which I am. Do not fight me, fight idiocy, fight mediocrity, fight the irresponsible government in your country of birth and fight the

friends that cannot inspire you. We are so defensive and it is unbelievable. I also think people have allowed religion to kill their initiatives by abdicating responsibilities to God who had given them dominion. They want God to do what they should do.

They pray and fold their hands. It does not work like that.

My mind is full, my eyes are teary and I feel sorry for people driven away from their land through incompetent governments and mismanagement of the national resources.

I meet great people with great destinies daily but they are in the wrong country, in the wrong place. They have left their place of greatness. Mentorship by the right people will redirect their paths.

Having said all I said above, some have broken barriers but they are very few but the majority are like sheeps without shepherds. They have electricity, gas, good roads, food and Medicare. These are not equal to greatness. It is just food for the belly.

May this article inspire many to do great things in their lifetime. I also celebrate all my countrymen and countrywomen in Nigeria who have made unbelievable and valuable contributions to that polity. Long may you live. I salute you all. You are my heroes.