Not Every Nigerian Is Hustling For Visa Ezeh Charity Ogechi   © Copyright 2025 by Ezeh Charity Ogechi

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commonsy.

“Are you still in that country?” The text came with a laughing emoji, but it didn't feel funny. It landed like a slap–casual, condescending, final. I didn’t reply. What was I supposed to say? “Yes, I’m still here. Still trying. Still believing.” Would that even make sense?

In today’s Nigeria, staying feels like a confession. Like something you whisper after you’ve explained that no, you’re not applying for grad school in the UK, and no, you don’t have a Canadian Express Entry profile sitting in your drafts. People look at you like you’re choosing suffering. Like you’re the foolish one who missed the last bus before it vanished into smoke.

But I didn’t miss the bus. I watched it leave, deliberately, consciously. And no, not because I’m too broke to chase it, or too scared. I stayed because I wanted to. Because I needed to know if it was possible to build a life in the ruins, to find meaning without crossing an ocean or border.

Nobody celebrates the ones who stay. We don’t get farewell parties. We don’t trend on social media for getting visas or scholarships. We’re not seen as brave. At best, we’re ignored. At worst, we’re pitied. But we’re here, choosing to plant our feet in cracked earth and call it home. And that choice, too, is a kind of migration – a journey inward.

This is a story for those of us who stayed. Not because we had no choice, but because we made one.

****

My mother doesn’t understand.

She won’t say it outright, but her sighs are sermons. Whenever NEPA takes light or the price of garri jumps again, she looks at me like “You see? You see what you're choosing?” She doesn’t argue anymore. She prays. That somehow, the stubborn spirit keeping me here will break and I’ll go somewhere with electricity and dignity. Somewhere I can be her “testimony.”

My auntie once offered me an agent’s number after a burial. She slipped it into my hand the way other aunties hand out sweets. She called it “a way out.” As if my life is a locked room and I’m too blind to see the open window.

Even my friends, those I grew up with, who once chased keke with me and ate roasted corn by the gutter–they’re gone. Canada. UK. Australia. Each goodbye feels like another piece of my memory migrating. They send me pictures: smiling in snow, barbecuing on balconies. I send back love emoji and carefully worded responses. “Happy for you, bro.” “You deserve it.”

But sometimes, I lie awake wondering if I am the fool. The one standing still in a burning house, watering plants.
Or maybe I’m the one who sees the beauty others miss – the way dusk softens the chaos of traffic, the laughter that blooms even in scarcity, the joy of building a life that is entirely, defiantly mine.

Still, the pressure to leave is everywhere. In conversations, in billboards, in the dreams others have for you. It takes a special kind of courage to say, “I will not run. I will try to live, here.” Not because this place is perfect, far from it – but because staying, too, can be an act of hope.

****

I’ve never been to London, but I know the names of its streets like Sunday memory verses: Peckham, Woolwich, Stratford. I’ve never stepped into JFK, but I’ve seen enough “day in the life” TikToks to know it has more food courts than Murtala Muhammed has functioning toilets.

We Nigerians are taught early to worship foreignness – it’s in the rice we call “imported, or foreign rice” the wigs we call “bone straight,” the skin creams that promise “yellow tone like oyibo.” Abroad is not just a place. It’s a religion. And like all religions, it has myths.

The myth that abroad is always better. That money grows on snowflakes. That racism is better than bad governance. That abroad is not lonely. That mental health is only a Nigerian problem. That passports are tickets to paradise.

But I don’t romanticize what I have not lived. I know that every country has its own cost of belonging. That dignity does not fall from the sky just because you land at Heathrow. That not everyone finds home just because they leave Nigeria. Some carry the hunger with them.

I think of the boy who DMed me last year from Hungary. “You’re lucky,” he wrote. “You don't know what cold does to people here.” He missed the chaos of Lagos traffic. The insult of okada men. His mother’s pepper soup. And he cried in a country where nobody heard his kind of cry.

And so, while others dream of elsewhere, I have learned to make peace with the complications of here. I am not naïve. I do not pretend Nigeria is kind. But I will not pretend that other countries are soft gardens either.

Sometimes, defiance is refusing to chase what everyone calls gold. Sometimes, it is learning to polish the rusted copper in you.

****

There is a grief that has no funeral: the grief of being left behind.

It starts slowly. Friends call to say they've "gotten it" – the visa, the scholarship, the job. You celebrate with them, your voice louder than your joy. Then another. Then another. Until your WhatsApp turns into a farewell archive.

You begin to scroll your contact list like a war survivor checking for who’s left. “She’s in Finland now.” “He just got to Calgary.” “They’re processing UK health worker route.” They speak of these transitions like healed wounds, but you wonder what was amputated in the leaving.

And when you say you’re staying, they look at you like you’re the one who’s failed.

“Are you still in Naija?”

“You never try to japa?”

“Na wa o, you're strong.”

They mean it as pity. Or sometimes as admiration, which is just envy in makeup. You smile. You say something neutral. You do not explain that staying is not always a lack of options. Sometimes it is a choice. Other times it is the most painful kind of love, the love that returns to a country that keeps breaking your heart.

There are days you question yourself. Days NEPA takes light for five days straight. Days the ATM gives you no cash. Days a road you passed yesterday swallows a car. On those days, you wonder if rootedness is just another word for stubbornness. If maybe you’re foolish for believing you can build in a place that keeps asking you to run.

But then you remember: no one questions the tree that stays rooted through harmattan. It’s not weakness. It’s survival. It’s a different kind of courage.

And so you stay. Not because it is easy. But because leaving is not always the answer.

****

One day I sat in traffic for five hours. The sun was boiling my scalp through the cracked window of the keke, and a street preacher on a loudspeaker was shouting about fire and brimstone. At that moment, Lagos felt like punishment. Like the kind of city designed to break your back and then fine you for not standing straight.

But then the woman selling bananas beside the traffic leaned into the keke and handed me one, smiling. "You look like, you’re hungry" she said. We laughed. I took it. I ate. It was sweet.

That’s the thing about Nigeria. It wounds you, yes. But sometimes, it bandages you too. With laughter. With kindness. With resilience that feels ancestral, like muscle memory from people who have survived worse.

I’ve found meaning in the rituals of staying, not just physically, but emotionally. Every time I pay my NEPA bill early, I feel like a citizen. Every time I teach a child in my compound how to read, I feel useful. Every time I vote, even though the system feels rigged, I feel like I’m placing a brick in the kind of country I want to live in – or leave behind.

This is not to romanticize struggle. God knows I crave ease. I want air that’s clean, systems that work, roads without craters, and a government that doesn't see its citizens as collateral. But staying, for me, is also a kind of authorship. A chance to write my own life – not in the margins of another country’s story, but in the heart of this imperfect place I still dare to call home.

And yes, it is tiring. But it is also sacred.

Because there is something deeply radical about building joy in the ruins. About planting softness in a place that has only taught you to be hard. About choosing hope in a country that makes mockery of it.

Here, I have not only learned endurance. I have learned meaning.

****

When people say “are you still in Naija?” it often sounds like a diagnosis, not a question.

In WhatsApp groups, old schoolmates drop flags of Canada, the UK, US or Australia beside their names like medals of honor. They send photos of snowy porches, supermarket aisles full of milk, and houses with heating. It’s meant to be celebratory, but underneath it there’s a subtle mourning: a feeling that if you haven’t left, you’ve somehow failed to find the door out of the burning house.

Sometimes I feel the pressure too – not to leave, but to explain why I haven’t.

I have no perfect answer. Some days I stay because of money, because visa applications are expensive and humiliating. Some days I stay because of my parents, who are aging and rooted like old trees. Other days, I stay because I am stubborn, or afraid, or simply too tired to imagine beginning again in a country where I will always be a foreigner – tolerated, maybe, but never truly from there.

But mostly, I stay because I want to.

And that, I’ve realized, is a sentence soaked in defiance.

It is defiance to choose Nigeria – not out of desperation, but out of agency. To say, “This place is broken, yes, but it is mine.” To fight for air inside a system designed to suffocate you. To find joy where others only find exit plans.

Every generator I fuel, every pothole I dodge, every bureaucracy I navigate is not just survival – it is declaration.

I am still here.

I am still here.

And my staying is not a tragedy. It is a stance.

****

I sometimes think of myself as a tree – stubborn, sometimes battered by storms, but deeply rooted. While many seek greener pastures, I have chosen to grow here, in soil that is uneven and often unforgiving. To stay is to endure, but more importantly, it is to believe in the possibility of bloom.

There is a quiet power in choosing to stay.

Choosing to stay in Nigeria is not naïve optimism or blind loyalty. It is an act of courage in a world that equates success with escape. It means waking up each day aware of the challenges – the power outages, the traffic jams, the noise, but still committing to build a life, a community, a future.

I have witnessed so many brilliant minds leave, chased by dreams of opportunity and safety. Some left to find stability, others to escape fear. I honor their journeys. But I also honor my own, which is rooted in a desire to fight for what many have given up on.

Staying here means embracing complexity. It means loving a country that frustrates, exhausts, and sometimes breaks you. It means finding joy in the streets where vendors shout, in the smell of akara frying in the early morning, in the laughter of children playing despite the chaos. It means creating pockets of peace in the everyday struggles.

I am not just surviving; I am building.

I have seen how staying can mean innovation – entrepreneurs crafting solutions to local problems, artists telling stories that resonate beyond borders, communities coming together to lift each other. The hustle is not just about leaving; it’s about transforming.

This decision to remain is a refusal to let the narrative of migration define our worth. It challenges the idea that success is measured by passports and foreign addresses. Instead, it celebrates the messy, beautiful work of making a home, no matter how difficult the soil.

Sometimes, I am asked if I regret not leaving. The truth is, I do not. There are hard days, yes – days when the longing for easier paths surfaces. But those moments are outweighed by the deep satisfaction that comes with building, with planting roots that hold through storms.

The story of Nigerians is not only one of migration and escape. It is also a story of resilience, of attachment, of hope held in the face of adversity.

I am here, and I am proud.

Because not every Nigerian is hustling for visa. Some of us are hustling for home.

 ~ Glossary ~

• Garri – A popular West African food made from fermented, grated cassava. It’s often eaten with soup or soaked in water as a quick meal.
  

• NEPA – Acronym for the defunct National Electric Power Authority, still used colloquially in Nigeria to refer to the power company or electricity in general. Often invoked humorously or ironically due to frequent power outages.
  

• Japa – A Nigerian slang term derived from Yoruba, meaning “to flee” or “run away,” often used to describe emigration from Nigeria in search of better opportunities abroad.
  

• Keke – Short for Keke Napep, a motorized tricycle used widely in Nigeria for commercial transportation. It’s an affordable and common mode of travel within cities and towns.
  

• Oyibo – A Nigerian Pidgin word used to refer to white people or foreigners, and sometimes Nigerians who are perceived as Westernized or privileged.
  

• Okada – A commercial motorcycle taxi, commonly used for quick and cheap transportation in Nigerian cities, especially where roads are narrow or traffic is heavy.
  

• Naija – A slang term and affectionate nickname for Nigeria, often used to express cultural identity, pride, or solidarity.
  
  Akara – Deep-fried bean cakes made from ground black-eyed peas, onions, and spices. A popular breakfast or street snack in Nigeria.
  

• Harmattan – A dry and dusty trade wind that blows from the Sahara over West Africa between November and March. It causes dry skin, poor visibility, and respiratory discomfort, and is a major seasonal marker in Nigeria.
  
  

  *****