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KWENU: Our Culture, Our Future |
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Nigerian Diaspora:Time
to Return Home EZEJIOFO SUNNY PATRICK UDEH
June 25, 2011
During the three hour layover in Chicago I was culturally shocked to the tilt
when I noticed Hot Dog proudly displayed on the menu of one of the airport
eating places. I wondered how the
Americans could be eating dog meat to the extent of blatant public display at
the airport. I felt disgusted and
temporarily lost appetite. coming to diaspora More than a quarter century ago, I vividly recall my trip to
a dingy building serving as the passport office in Enugu in effort to obtain the
famous Nigerian passport as an initiation of what has become a journey of no
return. I remember the youthful
excitement and exuberance of a prospective international student having devoured
pages and pages of James Hardley Chase stories and rendition of the avenues and
streets of Manhattan, the great Big Apple of New York City, I was ready to go. Also, it felt like yesterday applying to those obscure
schools in the Midwestern schools of Kansas City after realizing that the New
York schools were not within my family’s financial reach.
I remember the joy of receiving the first of many I-20 forms, the
impromptu lecture from an official at the Students Advisory Council who pitied
my parents for allowing their son of go to waste in USA.
This man recounted tales of his relatives who were deported with nothing
to show but dread locks and earrings.
Finally, I can still picture the bureaucratic maze at the Central Bank
where I frequented for foreign exchange remittance as I canvassed for funds to
be paid from London, all to ensure and guarantee hitch-free visa.
After many months of preparation, the D-day arrived and the
first leg was to London via British Caledonia to visit with my brother, his
family and my Mom who was visiting at the time.
In London, I got a few days of cooking course and a dose of advice on the
evil embedded in marrying a foreigner.
The next leg of the journey was through Chicago O’Hare airport connecting
to Kansas City to the final destination, Penn Valley Community College Kansas
City Missouri in what supposed to be a four-year academic stint.
During the three hour layover in Chicago I was culturally shocked to the
tilt when I noticed Hot Dog proudly displayed on the menu of one of the airport
eating places. I wondered how the
Americans could be eating dog meat to the extent of blatant public display at
the airport. I felt disgusted and
temporarily lost appetite. As I
turned around to leave I noticed a Rest Room sign.
In my hot-dog-induced disappointment I headed for the door hoping for a
comfortable relaxing and resting place.
However, I was graced with men half-dressed in the usual postures doing
their thing. I pulled back in
frustration and found a seat closer to the departure gate. living in diaspora Arriving Kansas City, the routine was set and obvious.
It was school, school, school and work, work, work.
It did not take long to get over the usual culture shock as other
Nigerian students helped to explain that hot dog isn’t really made of dog meat.
Before you know it, time flew by as progress was made in the academic
environment devoid of strikes and labor disputes.
The news from home was not promising.
It has become difficult to remit money to us.
Many were forced to take up jobs to battle schools fees.
The letters and news from home were unanimous; don’t come home because
home was in an economic mess.
Nigerian economy and Dollar – Naira exchange rate took a nose dive for the
worse. Meanwhile, many of us pushed on as we acquired degrees upon
degrees, switching from one not-so-promising to another lucrative program.
As we were chasing the academic dream and establishing professionally,
age was creeping up on us. The
tones of the letters and news from home quietly switched from don’t come home to
come home and get married. We
responded in droves evidenced by the best and the brightest; brains and beauties
that constituted our better-halves. Perhaps, as our stay became permanent, Maslow’s theory meshed
with our culture of ‘onye aghana nwanne
ya’ kicked in, leading us to rally around each other seeking ways to help
our impoverished people back home.
We formed associations and organizations.
Before you know it we made the local organizations part of the national.
There were national and international conventions and conferences.
We started Medical Mission, Economic Mission, Educations Mission and
other kind of missions yet to be conceived.
As those we left behind started dying off, we started the Wake-Keeping
craze for fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters on every friday.
Our stay is becoming permanent and we don’t know why.
The worst part is that some are even
starting to think about nursing home and burial plots.
It is obvious that we are getting stuck. stuck in diaspora As we have acquired the degrees, skills
and professional experience, and engaged in the charitable ventures, questions
have started poking our collective conscience, questions such as, why are we
stuck here?
What is really keeping us here?
Haven’t the 12 years of democracy in Nigeria made
any difference?
Our brains started working overdrive wondering in
nostalgia whether going home will ever happen.
On my part, like John the Baptist preaching in the
wilderness, I began preaching in series of presentations titled ‘Pathway
Home for Diaspora Igbo,’ where I tried to
explore remedies and how we can reverse the trend.
As you can see, I am still at it today. Of course, the deteriorating economy of
Nigeria in the past thirty years left us with no alternative but to stay put.
Others have described our exile in the USA in a more sophisticated economic
concept dubbed brain drain that is, the developed nations poaching and draining
the brains of the developing ones.
The term brain drain designates the international
transfer of resources in the form of human capital, that is, the migration of
relatively educated individuals from developing to developed countries (Adams,
2003). However, brain drain in this submission is not limited to just the
migration of just the highly skilled; however it includes the migration of a
percentage of the college-educated population from developing to developed
countries (Beine, Docquier, and Rapoport, 2003).
This percentage includes all those who came to
study in Diaspora universities hoping to return to Nigeria after their studies,
but never did. Majority of us fall into this category, therefore, we are talking
about our own collective brains being drained with our voluntary permission.
Perhaps, it is now clicking.
We know that the economic gloom in Nigeria made us
the fortunate or unfortunate victims of brain drain who are using charity as
means of alleviating the pressure of poverty in our homeland.
The same charity brought us together here today.
Charity is good and we ought to continue.
Unfortunately, doing charity is not enough in
economic terms.
Charity, all by itself cannot reverse the pervasive
brain drain.
We have to do more.
We
have to do more than giving a man fish which and proceed to the beneficial,
teaching a
man how to fish. We ought to teach man how to
fish because, apart from providing him with a lifetime occupation, teaching a
man to fish elevates his dignity and self-worth, and in the process converts him
to a giver or at best a teacher of fishing. Therefore, a paradigm shift in
direction is necessary and the focus should extend way beyond charity to
collective and massive business and economic investments.
Our people need more than handouts from us.
They need job-creating ventures. While participated in charitable
organizations there are added intangible benefits that accrued to us.
For example, President Obama gathered his
leadership skills partly from active participation in community organizations.
Perhaps, many of us are more so elated because the
young man is a son of an African immigrant like our children.
However, in our excitement, let us quietly reflect
on how President Obama got to where he is.
Let us think about where he cut his leadership
teeth that propelled him to run for offices.
Mr. Obama was and still is a vibrant member of
community organizations.
He was a community organizer in the mold of those
gathered here Boston today at this Enugu USA convention.
Brother Obama organized in a much major scale - the
scale that led him to combine the wizardry of information technology to
organizing and transformed the dynamics of the political landscape.
Here is his take about community organization and
leadership; Obama wrote,
“In theory, community organizing provides a way to merge various strategies for
neighborhood empowerment. Organizing begins with the premise that (1) the
problems facing inner-city communities do not result from a lack of effective
solutions, but from a lack of power to implement these solutions; (2) that the
only way for communities to build long-term power is by organizing people and
money around a common vision; and (3) that a viable organization can only be
achieved if a broadly based indigenous (effective) leadership exist”.
The question whether we have benefited from our exposure to the practices of
effective leadership embedded in our participation in community organizations.
Are we now prepared to transform and equip ourselves to assume leadership
positions where we can really make difference and impact on the people’s lives
just like Brother Obama is doing? time to leave diaspora
Our near-permanent stay in the Diaspora is because of the lingering economic
mess created by successive governments of Nigeria which bunched us into the
economic trap of brain drain.
However, while here, we have acquired unique skills and professional experience,
and our venture into community organizations grounded us with the intangible
benefits of effective leadership skills and organizational abilities accumulated
over the years. I propose that
there is no better time
to start the process of moving back to Nigeria than now.
Note the key word process, not to jump in the next flight.
Perhaps, we can start that process by understanding how we can reverse
this economic concept of brain drain and exploit the beneficial brain
circulation. According to Professor Emeagwali,
reversing the ‘brain drain’ to ‘brain gain’ will increase Africa’s intellectual
capital while also increasing its wealth in many, many different ways
(Emeagwali, 2006).
Brain gain is good however; brain circulation
appears to be the better remedy.
In contrast to brain drain mentioned earlier, brain gain
refers to the gain of human capital from trained individuals returning to their
countries, that is a one-way flow (Ozden and Schiff 2005; Stark et al. 1995).
On the other hand, Brain circulation is an extended
definition of brain gain where the human capital is circulating across
countries, such as a two-way flow of skills, capital and technology benefiting
both the sending and receiving countries, (Saxenian, 2002, 2005).
According to
AnnLee Saxenian, dean and professor of the School of
Information, University of California,
today’s highly
skilled migrants circulate between the US and developing countries, creating
technology businesses and spreading prosperity along the way”.
If this is the case, what are we waiting for before
we jump into the driver’s seat and start making waves as we spread prosperity to
our people through
export/import,
outsourcing,
foreign direct
investments, and above all
active political
participation.
Unfortunately, the impact of brain circulation will be negligible unless it is
preceded by sustained economic growth and reform.
As we know, Nigeria has since embarked on economic reforms geared towards
achieving sustainable economic growth.
The federal government has reached out the Diaspora community to join in
the work of nation building. For
example, news report indicated that the administration of former President
Yaradua set aside 80 billion [Naira] to attract and encourage the Diaspora
Nigerians to be part of the ongoing economic development.
President Jonathan is poised to elevate Diaspora Office from a department
in Foreign affairs office to full-fledged Diaspora Commission.
He has appointed a Senior Special Adviser, our own Mrs. Bianca Ojukwu
(nee Ono).
Also, there is Bill seeking to establish Nigerians in Diaspora (Establishment)
Commission, to provide for the engagement of Nigerians in diaspora in the
policies, projects and participation in the development of Nigeria and for the
purpose of utilizing the human capital and material resources of Nigerians in
diaspora towards the overall socioeconomic, cultural and political development
of Nigeria. Moreover, the economy of Nigeria has been making tepid
recovery and progress since the 1999 democratic dispensation.
Dr. Martin Oluba, an economist at ValueFronteira Ltd stated that;
“Nigeria’s
economy has continued on its robust growth path. This strong performance
continued into 2010, with the first and second quarters registering 7.4 percent
and 7.7 percent annualized growth. Growth in 2011 is expected at 7.8%. Though
the rebound in the global economy helped, domestic developments were major
factors”.
Also, Business Monitor International in discussion of
strengths and opportunities in Nigeria’s agricultural sector stated;
“As the most populous
country in Africa, Nigeria has a potentially massive market for local producers
and agribusiness firms to cater to large areas of arable land with the potential
to cultivate a variety of crops.
Agriculture contributes to almost 42% of Nigeria's GDP; agriculture and
agribusiness activities provide employment for 70% of the population. Sustained
strong oil revenues have led to a current account surplus and large amounts of
money to be used for public investment in infrastructural development and
processing capabilities”.
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“The continuation of
recent government efforts to form public private enterprises in output
inefficient industries should lead to further private investment and increased
productivity in industries such as pork production and cocoa.
Strong GDP growth will increase domestic consumption and give producers
incentives to become more productive.
Significant improvements in the reliability of local energy supply should
facilitate investment growth in both agricultural production and processing
industries”. According
to U.S Department of Commerce document titled ‘Doing Business in Nigeria 2010
Guide’, it stated;
“Nigeria can be a very rewarding market for U.S. companies
that take the time and effort to understand market conditions and opportunities,
find the right partners and clients, and take a long-term approach to market
development. With strong growth prospects in many industry and service sectors,
underserved market segments, a growing and increasingly sophisticated consumer
base, and a strong affinity for U.S. products and American culture,
opportunities are impressive”.
According to Allen Dennis, World Bank senior economist, in comparing
Developing vs. developed nations, he
stated; There is no doubt that Africa, not just
Nigeria needs those in the Diaspora to return and participate in economic
development.
The economic climate of Nigeria has improved to the extent
of being better and more promising growth opportunity than most of the developed
nations including USA.
The growth rate is higher than the growth rate in
the USA.
Unemployment is high t 17 percent which provide abundant
skilled labor for ventures such outsourcing and foreign direct investments.
CONCLUSION Globalization is no longer about
movement of goods and services across borders; it has extended to movement of
people.
The advent of information technology and the improved
transportation systems have made the world a true global village.
We should not remain victims of brain drain rather
we must embrace the attending benefits of brain circulation and take advantage
of the improved economic climate of Nigeria. Instead of going home to compete
for the jobs that are not readily available, we should plan towards creating
employment for self and others. We are dual citizens.
We have the advantage of being able to maintain
strong relationships with the friends we left behind, and we are better
positioned to build new international linkages with professional colleagues in
our adopted countries than anywhere else.
These
bilateral networks and linkages could be commercial, economical, financial or
scientific, and tend to become self-reinforcing (Hart, 2006). In addition, the
commercial aspects of business network do come handy to facilitate
export/import, and offshore-outsourcing.
Therefore, it is important we start now to figure
how to use the window of opportunity to bring the needed economic prosperity
back to our home land in a larger scale. In closing I will leave you with a biblical song of Psalm as
the Jews lamented over their exile in Babylon as they questioned;
"How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Nigeria,
let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my
tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth”
Ladies and gentlemen, we have been singing the Lord’s song in the Diaspora for
the past three decades. With the
concept of brain circulation we can extend such songs to our homeland.
Most of us came as students while others came as professionals.
We have accumulated knowledge and experience in various fields and have
built powerful human capital in the process.
It is high time we channeled those skills, knowledge and experience into
building viable economic entities focusing in
export-import,
outsourcing and off-shoring,
foreign direct investments and
active political participation in
our birth countries. You do not
have to an expert in Business Management however, if you need guidance; contact
me for a start
espudeh@gmail.com.
God bless United States of America for hosting us all these years.
We are grateful we are not leaving permanently.
God bless Nigeria as we prepare to return in the beneficial cloud of an
economic storm. Thank you so very much for listening.
Full text of
a presentation delivered at 13th
Enugu-USA National Convention at Boston, MA
Dr. Udeh is a Senior Faculty Member at Keller Graduate
School of Management, a core professor at TUI University, an adjunct professor
of E-Business, International Business, and Management at South University.
Dr.
Udeh is a Principal Consultant, Espat Solutions Inc., New York City.
He is the C.E.O. of
OfuObi New York LLC.
&
President of
Of Economic Development Foundation Inc.
Dr. Udeh serves as a Board Member, Enugu-USA 2008 –
2010, a delegate of Enugu State Cultural Foundation of NY/NJ/CT. Chairman
Emeritus, Udi-Ezeagu USA. Dr. Udeh was an aspirant of a seat in the Federal
House of Representatives, Udi-Ezeagu Constituency in 2011.
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