Thought Picnic: Escaping bubbles to create experiences

The beauty of having bubbles

I remember a conversation with a friend, a father of mixed-race children being raised in a progressive northern European country. He said he would bring them up in the bubble they have for as long as possible, so when they meet the world outside, they would do so with the assurance and confidence of knowing where they come from, without any fear of what they might face.

There is a rawness in humanity that growing up in a bubble shields us from. It provides protections that allow us to grow and develop the mental strength to handle both ourselves and situations, before we are exposed to what might shock, traumatise, disgust, or simply irritate us. This is a sometimes poorly understood aspect of a good upbringing.

I was raised in a bubble of sorts, in middle-class privilege with some trappings of wealth but never excess. Having what we needed, we exuded confidence without the need to keep up with the Joneses. Though my parents had risen from diminished circumstances and established their position in society through education and achievement, we were and are different from our parents.

A different kind of bubble

I was born in England, cocooned from the forms of racism and challenges faced by many foreigners in the 1960s, which greatly coloured their view of living in England. The primary schools I attended in Nigeria had most foreign pupils. It is amusing to think that most of our white schoolmates were Nigerian-born, with typical mixed Nigerian accents, while most of us black children were born abroad, speaking with foreign and usually English accents.

We lived in bubbles of privilege and access, but as we grew older, we were exposed to a different world, sometimes to the more privileged and sometimes to those less fortunate. Not to look down on others or feel superior, but to appreciate our good fortune along with respecting others, and where opportunity does allow, we lift them up.

Bubbles as anchors aweigh

For a bubble to exist, it needs an atmosphere. It moves within that atmosphere for a while, then bursts to merge with the surroundings. Yet every sight of a bubble in the air excites, especially children. There’s colour, there’s floating, and a longing for it to last before it bursts. Then, new bubbles are formed.

I recognise the bubble of society I come from; it has given me a sense of adventure and curiosity that has served me well in many places. I am comfortable in my own skin, speak and express myself with confidence, and I rarely feel out of place wherever I find myself. In terms of dress, I might not be as inconspicuous as I would like, but I have no issue with that.

My bubble to the world

How it has helped me navigate systems and structures is interesting. How to communicate and set the terms by which I expect to be treated with respect, courtesy, and dignity, without being aloof. I aim to be approachable, just as I am not wary of approach. I respect people without any sense of obsequiousness towards wealth or status; you need two heads to really scare me.

It’s those qualities my childhood bubble gave me: a combination of fieriness and finesse that taught me to seek rather than sequester, to experience rather than shield, to wonder and understand difference instead of settling into indolence and ignorance of others. I venture where others draw back; there is much to learn from escaping the bubble rather than seeking to be hermetically sealed in an echo chamber.

My fear is not of others, but of not being better. Life’s experiences leave me grateful and thankful for everything. There is much to do and many things to see beyond ourselves; only a few seize those opportunities for growth and renewal. You can have your bubble, but you must also exist in the world around it.

Childhood: And we were sent away

Parental Angst Versus Child Welfare

I observed two news stories from afar until I found myself commenting on a Facebook post, to which the author suggested my comment should be an essay.

Previously, I had written about my parents’ decision to send me to secondary boarding school after the cloistered bubble of an international primary school education. I will not dwell on that matter, but there are many facets to not being born and raised within the traditions, culture, and lands of one’s parents’ birth.

Blog - Childhood: When Parents Think They Know Best

For that, there was a term coined: Third-Culture Kids. This comes with many connotations, including the conflicts of environments, the anxiety and angst of our parents, the issues of not finding belonging in any place, and all the attendant psychological challenges that are somewhat ignored because our parents assume time will eventually resolve things and make everything work.

Send Them Home to Learn 

What bothers ethnic minority parents today is what might happen to their kids in the UK, where I am somewhat more familiar with the situation, and in the Americas. The tendency among parents who have the means is to extricate their kids from abroad and place them in the sometimes-harsh environments of their home countries, usually in West Africa, where they hope to address the lapses in discipline, educational attainment, purpose, and character that they have observed in or around their children.

Recently, a child took his parents to court to compel them to return him to the UK after he was apparently deceived into going to Ghana to see a sick relative. We all have variations of the same plot. He lost his case, the judge empathising but ultimately siding with the parents. [BBC News: Son Loses Case Against Parents Over Move to Africa]

Continuing with the narrative, some men have come forward to share their own stories about being sent home and how, in hindsight, it saved them. It probably did save all of us, one way or the other. However, it is never comfortable during that absence from what the kids call home. [BBC News: I Was Duped Into Leaving London for School in Ghana - But It Saved Me]

Before I share my comment, many kids have been brought up in the UK and the US and have thrived; this is great credit to their parents and communities that nurtured them. All these stories need to be told.

My Facebook Comment 

I suppose this is another aspect of split upbringing that is rarely discussed.

We returned to Nigeria when I was hardly six years old; however, because I was with my parents, I had the pleasure of attending primary schools filled with foreign-looking but Nigerian-born schoolmates, while many of us black kids were foreign-born.

It was the secondary boarding experience that was brutal, but I survived, despite the lasting scars of that environment.

You eventually become streetwise without losing the kind of daring that some people regularly said we Ajebotas [Kids who eat bread and butter rather than local fare; a pejorative term for lacking experience in local customs.] have.

The longstanding benefit of my early education and experiences in Nigeria meant building resilience, grit, and, mostly, self-esteem, while retaining the precocity I always had.

Upon my return to the UK, my blackness was always a part of me; no one could racially abuse me and get the upper hand, as I had a better retort, coupled with wit.

Escaping the race and deprivation politics of the inner cities and suburbs, which would have found me in Walsall and Birmingham in the 1970s and well into the 1980s, meant I never had the sometimes-invisible baggage or chip-on-the-shoulder that affected ethnic minority kids who never left.

I left Nigeria with just an OND and built an IT career that was earning top rates by the mid-1990s, before the extraordinary fortune of being invited to pursue a master’s degree after providing a character reference for a friend.

Moreover, unlike the scolding in Nigeria that implied one wouldn’t amount to anything and spurred you on, in England at that time, it was a limit on your horizons, pushing you towards low achievement and menial roles.

My parents left after qualifying in their respective professions; even though my dad placed third overall in his accountancy finals, his colleagues suggested that they never thought he was that bright, instead of congratulating him on his success.

I assume they both decided that the England of Enoch Powell, whom my father once challenged in a pub, was not a suitable place for them or for their boy—and the children that came after me.

Now, each experience is different; I cannot suggest that any of these actions are in the best interests of any child, but having the agency to intervene when you see things going awry is a privilege of opportunity that many do not have.

I even had my own personal intervention; after a relationship breakup in 1999 left me lost and listless, I packed my bags and started anew in the Netherlands, where I remained for almost 13 years.

Our parents mean well; whether they were right is another conversation altogether.

I cannot argue against being immersed in a totally different culture; it presents opportunities that we often fail to fully appreciate until later in life, as the men have suggested in the article.

Nickel Blogs - 21 years of articulating the identity spectrum

Finding a place to be known

Negotiating the identity spectrum has been a feature of my blog, though when I consider the situation, it has always been a feature of my life. However, having a blog has helped articulate the issues around how identity is more defined by influences than by progeny.

I can think of the many experiences and realisations, the earliest being when I first arrived in Nigeria, barely a 5-year-old and I noticed there were more people like me than where we had left. How was a little black English boy to know that Nigeria would be different?

English, people have issues with that, I am supposed to be Black British, yet on those atrocious forms, I would write in Black English. That aspect of being English became ascendant when I had to tackle the question of where I was from when I lived in the Netherlands.

The many questions of where

“Where are you from?”, they would ask. I answer, “I am from England”. The next question usually was, “Where are you originally from?”, The answer, “England”. Confusion or frustration clouds their faces with a further inquiry, “Where are your parents from?”, The answer, “Nigeria”. Enlightenment, “So, you’re Nigerian”, “No, I am not, I was born in England.”

The best question in that vein was, “What is your birth country?”, I answered, “England”, and my interlocutor asked no further questions. This brings me to the other matter of my accent, it started as a typical Brummie accent influenced by associations in Nigeria especially in schools that had a large international pupillage.

Strange juxtapositions of identification

It's funny that most of the Caucasian kids were Nigerian-born, and many of the black kids were foreign-born, with foreign accents, too. However, reading an article by a friend of mixed-race parentage revealed another interesting thing about identity. Those of mixed-race parentage were othered from afar. We looked like everyone else until we began to speak, and then we were put aside, too.

It was like we never really belonged where we thought we belonged; we had to work out how we wanted to be identified. For instance, how do you tackle a statement like, “You’ve always thought like a Westerner?” I was 42 years old, which was what my father said in a conversation.

The privilege and the opportunity

In my case, I have found both privilege and opportunity by the accident of birth that is not of my making, how it has helped me navigate situations in life and at work cannot be covered in a blog. Too many examples come to mind.

Maybe, I am more fortunate that working with my sense of identity and the quality of my education has taken me to interesting places.

I have little time for identity politics, but woe betide anyone who attempts to pigeonhole me in dockets where I neither identify nor wish to place in. Such is the life of a Third Culture Kid.

Some additional context

A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who spends a significant part of their childhood living in a country or countries that are different from at least one of their parents' passport countries:

The child's parents' culture is the first culture.

The host country's culture is the second culture.

The child's own cultural identity is the third culture, which is a fusion of the first two.

The child adopts some traits from each culture. [If I may add, some kids even live in bubbles different from the nominal culture too.]

Essential Snobbery 101: An Eton mess of people without virtue

A failed assessment

Privilege, entitlement, and omniscience are the qualities or virtues that former Eton master, John Claughton, regretted he had failed to manage or curtail in his wards who have now become leaders in many spheres of life, especially politics. [The Independent: Boris Johnson and ‘entitled’ Tory Etonians have damaged Britain, admits former Eton master: ‘I failed’]

In my view, I think the master is still reading the script wrong, as privilege might come by circumstance beyond our control, and what really matters is to recognise one’s privilege and then use it to the benefit of others.

Entitlement is an interesting issue that could be borne of an environment of privilege. To have entitlement is not entirely wrong, but where it is exercised should be in the support of fairness, justice, and what is right. Though entitlement is usually a vent of the supercilious, it could normally be seen in a negative rather than a positive light.

Omniscience, however, is definitely to be tamed and trammelled by every means possible; the thought that you are unassailable and infallible, incapable of error, all-knowing, and the master of the universe with a God-like complex is dangerous, whatever the degree. It should never have been fostered or helped to develop to the extent that such people should have power or influence over others.

Of a man of no character

In that crop of the poshly-educated at Eton College, come many former Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, and the one that excites the greatest notoriety today is Boris Johnson, who exited the House of Commons last Friday, pre-empting the sanction of the Privileges Committee that would have recommended a 90-day suspension for misleading Parliament.

Boris Johnson would suggest he is a man hard done by, but like many would say, despite his popularity, Boris does things only for the sake of Boris and nothing more. Boris Johnson’s storied career shows that he has no acquaintance with the truth or any semblance of it. He is both a compulsive and a pathological liar who believes so assuredly that he is a man of trust and candour.

Granted chance after chance

Delusional is what would be attempted because, for all the jobs that he has risen to through various applications of meritocracy and charm, he has several times been relieved of his positions because of a lack of character, candour, values, and virtue.

That sense of omniscience seems to have equipped him with daring impunity for which his privilege appears to confer immunity from sanction or accountability. It is one exclusionary act of nature that, rather than be schooled by the infractions and punishments of the lower cadres, it is at the pinnacle of powers, prestige, and popularity that a man has been held to full account for his dishonesty and missteps.

Duty and service tames us

Before we get to the lesson to be learnt of men who throw caution to the wind, daring the whirlwind to a whistling contest, anyone can attend Eton with privilege, entitlement, and omniscience. What Eton College has patently failed to do for more than a generation is imbue its wards with a sense of responsibility, duty, and service to their fellow man. A willingness to face up to their failings and be held accountable where necessary, without questioning the fairness and justice of due process.

The lesson, it is always necessary for such flawed men to be met with a catastrophe of their own making; each downfall Boris Johnson has had has been by the hapless engineering of his own hand. His pomposity denies him the introspection necessary for self-awareness and self-correction. What leaves one more baffled is the fact that to some, he can do no wrong, no matter how wrong he is.

The UK: What can he do? How justice was served the Ekweremadus in this organ harvesting case

They are not entirely helpless

It was hardly 6 years ago that I wrote of a case of human trafficking involving Nigerian professionals fundamentally unable to check their privilege in the use and abuse of others for their benefit. The refrain of “What can she do?” was a word-for-word translation from Yoruba, “Kí ló lè ṣe?”

I dare say that there are many with much power, influence, and money in the upper stratum of society from Nigeria who exercise and demonstrate this mindset in exploitation with regard to others without means, opportunity, status, or autonomy.

Blog - The UK: What can she do? How justice was served in this Human Trafficking case

Nigeria presents a theatre for criminality wherein it might be impossible to find redress or justice. However, that sense of untrammelled impunity sometimes bedevils Nigerians who orchestrate that behaviour abroad, as different systems exist for the unlettered and underprivileged to the law not only taking their side but acting with the utmost fiery vehemence to ensure justice is done.

All emotions awry

This morning, I read of the court finding of guilt against Dr Ike Ekweremadu, a 3-time deputy senate president in Nigeria, his wife Dr Beatrice Ekweremadu, an accountant, and a Dr Obinna Obeta who had successfully procured an illegal kidney transplant under false pretences for himself, a few years ago. [BBC News: Ike Ekweremadu: Organ-trafficking plot politician and wife guilty] [The Guardian: Nigerian politician, wife, and a doctor guilty of organ trafficking to UK]

I am both conflicted and incensed by this whole charade; conflicted by the situation of having lost two close relations to chronic kidney disease where a kidney transplant might well have given them hope and life along with the enjoyment of their participation in our lives for amazing stories.

The Ekweremadus were in a desperate situation for their 25-year-old daughter who had fallen ill in 2019 and needed the kindness of a donor to rescue her from the constant trauma of dialysis and incapability due to chronic and debilitating disease.

On that score, any parent would go to the ends of the earth with all the resources they can muster to find everything possible to help their child to health. It is the means by which this is procured that begs the question and has led to the indictment and conviction of the aforementioned parties.

They marshalled people and money

Within the confines of Nigeria, a donor might well have been acquired for exploitation, their organs harvested and the person discarded as a spare part to fend for themselves, after what was a cold heartless transaction. More is demanded of donors in the UK, it has to be altruistic, with coercion or inducement and never a transaction in monetary or other terms.

Through their privileged network of family and friends of considerable clout and influence, they procured a hapless street trader whom they promised a life of opportunity without acquaintance with why they brought him to the UK to have his kidney harvested for their daughter.

It was upon enquiry about his relationship to them and the consequences of his being a donor that the medical establishment decided against proceeding with a transplant.

How they failed themselves

Rather than mollify and commit to some humane endearment of their prospect, he was left in the care of procurer-middleman Dr Obinna Obeta, who for the grace of the kidney of a donor seemed not to have the capacity of self-reflection and gratitude for the gift of life, once possessed, for which he must have felt entitled than to be grateful to anyone from donor or surgeon.

The prospective donor was mistreated that he ran away and lived rough on the streets of London before handing himself in, to the police where his plight unravelled to the detriment of the so-called privileged, powerful, and moneyed Nigerians.

Meanwhile, the Ekweremadus were already shopping for another person to exploit, from whom to harvest a kidney for their daughter in Turkey, at the time the police pounced on them.

Careless with the caring part

It is my view and hence where my anger stems from, that had the apparent donor been treated with a modicum of respect, dignity, honour, and sense of gratitude, he might well have bought into this kidney transplant transaction, himself convinced the medical personnel, gone through with the exchange, had opportunities along with long-term care and consideration from the Ekweremadus apart from the personal sense of gratitude from their daughter that would have engendered a friendship borne of the gift of life shared.

It speaks to the earlier blog that I wrote in 2017 where a doctor and a nurse could have brought someone over from Nigeria to care for their own children and still maltreat that child carer with no sense of reflection or possible consequence on their children. Sometimes, I am just left baffled at the thinking that a carer for your children would be so hopelessly indebted to you that it becomes a licence to abuse them.

Having disregard is costly

What the Ekweremadus facilitated even under desperation and duress for their daughter was both criminal and illegal, they will be consequences and hopefully, lessons for others seeking the help of strangers to learn. From the onset of their arrest through how the case was building up, I personally could not see how they could walk away unscathed as it all seemed underhand, malicious, and seedy.

The words of the Chief Crown Prosecutor present the full indictment of how class, privilege, power, influence, means, and opportunity deludes people into thinking they can get away with it and that there can be no consequences for whatever they do because the people they have brought into their enterprise have nothing but just breath in their nostrils, good enough health, and they are spare parts put on earth for the harvesting to the health and pleasure of their lives and those of their children.

She said, “The convicted defendants showed utter disregard for the victim's welfare, health and well-being and used their considerable influence to a high degree of control throughout, with the victim having limited understanding of what was really going on here.”

The disregard for another human being, no matter their status in life can bring you to utter ruin. The Ekweremadus and Dr Obeta would have that to think about as they languish in the restricted confines of His Majesty’s secure accommodations. The irony is that Dr Ike Ekweremadu helped draw up Nigeria’s laws against human trafficking – the mind boggles.

My boarding school story still affects me

Parents in the know

I have been watching with rapt and engaged attention the developments on the Nigerian Twittersphere about boarding school life and bullying, that began following the unfortunate death of Sylvester Oromoni, a 12-year-old pupil of Dowen College in Lagos as a result of an apparently coerced initiation into a cult. [BBC News: Sylvester Oromoni: Nigerians demand justice over Dowen College death]

My boarding school experience which started over 45 years ago was a decision by my parent to give me a grounding in our culture and traditions, as we lived in the north of Nigeria and they were from the southwest, I was born abroad with a good few things well-formed, language and speech, mannerisms and attitude, I was somewhat a stranger not integrating enough into what should be a Nigerian.

Back home to black out

On the other hand, they also wanted to toughen me up as I began to relive the separation anxiety that I experienced in England. For I was preterm by 10 weeks and that was spent mostly in an incubator in Birmingham whilst my parents worked and studied in Walsall. I also had a bit of fostering and being moved around foster carers as they progressively could not find suitable ones, one even starved me that I took to stealing food out of the refrigerator when I was back with my parents. Odd behaviour, my mother thought until she found out what was happening.

Just after my 10^th birthday, the common entrance examination season for secondary school admission started, my parents were not looking for any schools near home, I was in taking exams in the old Western State and Lagos to the extent that I was away from home for over 4 months living with relations mostly met for the first time when they came to pick me up from the airport. For a while, I was with my cousins when the February 1976 coup happened.

Blog - Childhood: Shocked into adolescence

On my return home in late May, I already had another baby sister, amongst other things too distressing to talk about here and then as a listener with wild tales about paranormal activity between my aunt and our new house servant, I began seeing things, apparitions of otherworldly figures that my father dismissed as fantasy. My parents weren’t listening to me.

Blog - Thought Picnic: The reality beyond the augmented

A misfit adrift

I prepared for boarding school with much of what I needed to fit in wrong, my shorts should have been light green, they were grey, I could not tell if that was a typographic error on the part of the school or something my mother misread. I had a hefty machete to cut the grass when what I needed was the equivalent of a scimitar. This introduction to boarding school life was brutal and harsh, so I left essential personal health things undone and resumed bedwetting that rarely ever happened in the past year or so.

Soon, I was seeing things in the night, ghosts, I thought, and recited Psalm 23 all through the night until I was completely tired out. Amongst my classmates, I was in the younger cohort by an average of 2 years and were it not for my early development, I would have been picked on more, just as I was the butt of jokes and extreme ridicule.

That first term was torture and when news of my situation reached my parents, I know that my mother’s best friend tried to prevail on them to bring me back to the north, which they refused to do, confident in their reasoning that the boarding school experience was essential to my education and tough education it was I found ways to adapt and survive whilst keeping counsel of my own situation. My parents weren’t listening.

New terms of engagement

The Christmas holiday was spent in the village with my grandparents and my father came to visit for a week. In that time, we visited grottos and medicine men, had incisions in all sorts of places, drank concoctions, some too vile to describe. All to the goal of curing me of my apparent ailment or psychological illness, but never once did I see a professional, a specialist or a paediatrician in psychology or psychiatry, which with hindsight might have done me a world of good.

The first half of the second term, I spent as a day student living with my aunt because the boarding house could not endure another half-term of nightly disruptions from an apparently unstable child.

I returned to the boarding house in the second half of the second term and appeared to settle down to school. To my parents, their planning was working, I was becoming more independent and may be responsible. Responsible for some things they probably would not have liked me to be responsible for.

You get by even with the injustice

There was bullying and abuse, much that I try to forget, and I made friends with similar backgrounds, though I was more privileged in that when they were returning home for holidays, they got on trains to the north. I was picked up and taken to the airport to fly home, there are things where my parents really did lay out the red carpet for their son. Even when we moved from Kaduna to Lagos, at half-term and the end of term, the driver arrived in time to take me back home. No fuss.

In the last year at school, we returned for summer school which was going well for a few weeks when some amongst us looking for fun in their riotous youthful exuberance raided the girl’s hostel causing damage to property and harming some of the girls. Many of us were oblivious of what had happened, but rather than investigate, the Parents Teachers Association imposed collective punishment on all the boys, and we were expelled from the boarding school for the fifth year.

The vice-principal came to the hostels to see us pack up to leave, and she said to my hearing as she looked at a few of us that she knew we were not involved in that melee. I spent my fifth year as a day student, and it is a huge upheaval to my early education. For that unjust act, I have not forgiven Remo Secondary School (RSS) for that injustice from 40 years ago. I believe I would have had a better leaving school result had I stayed in boarding school.

My education was searing

The result of my boarding school experience is more far-reaching than I sometimes realise. For whilst, I am in contact with some of my school and classmates through social media, I have no enduring friendships. That time represents when I seemed to fall into clinical depression from which I did not recover or find any bearings for 5 years. It also took completely leaving my parents’ and home too. The boarding school experience had schooled me into preferring to be away.

I have not participated in any RSS old student association activities or offered any support for first the reason I gave earlier and out of the fact that part of the leadership has some of the people who bullied me in charge. It is strange that a couple of years ago, one of them attended an event I was at, I would not have recognised him and if I did, I most definitely would not have approached him.

Not another chance to do that again

The most consequential part of this boarding school experience and I was speaking to Brian about it is Nigeria. When I left Nigeria, I left for good. I have family and relations in Nigeria, my father, an octogenarian and my mother a septuagenarian, I have felt a bit shamefaced about not seeing them in a very long time, but the truth is we broke those strong affinity bonds much earlier in life when they were being strong parents.

I can forgive them the boarding school experience, but the result is the result, I am not inclined to get on the plane to see anyone, much as I love them and would probably miss them when they are gone. I do the necessary in supporting them as much as I can and that is where we are at. Boarding school shapes you, marks you, scars you, if you have a child in boarding school, be prepared for the unintended consequences. Yes, I am well into my fifties, and it is a wound that never healed, I just learnt to tend it and live with it.

Blog - Childhood: Ghosts and ghouls of my past

Blog - Thought Picnic: A child has memories that last a lifetime  

Essential Snobbery 101: The privilege of setting expectations

Preparedness as a notion

When I embarked on a business trip to the UK from Nigeria in the second half of November 1990, I knew it would be chilly, but I had no inkling as to how cold it would be. I bought myself a jacket that would have been too warm for Lagos, yet it was inadequate for the weather in London. I was soon shopping for warmer clothes.

Being prepared for the weather, environment, and situation of where you are visiting is paramount to hopefully enjoying your sojourn; failing that, certain standards should be met to make your stay comfortable. 

For instance, my mother was on a pilgrimage to the Jordan part of the holy lands in August. To an extent, the type of clothes and shoes they should have was part of the travel information that ensured a lady in her late 70s did not suffer the ravages of the change of the weather.

Standards must be exceeded

When I visited India in December 2011, there were things to expect of India, and there were things I expected of my hosts. It was hot and humid on one side, but they somehow had forgotten that they had brought over people from Europe, expecting us all to just muck in like backpackers to India.

That was not going to wash with me. A few conversations with the people who matter appeared to raise the standards of accommodation, consideration, food, and facilities. Everyone benefited from my interventions.

On a contract in France in September 2012, we were lodged in a hotel unsuitable for the calibre of people we were; it was in a noisy and somewhat dangerous neighbourhood. My case was simple, putting aside the standard of the hotel that was below par, we already had a stressful job to do, the last thing anyone needed was people unable to do their work proficiently because of bad nights at their hotel. We were rehoused to a more agreeable location the next night.

One will not be ignored

In May 2015, I was in South Africa for business, where my hosts did not consider it necessary to receive me and introduce me to the people and activities I had come to fulfil. On the first and second day of my arrival, the main contact went about her own business as if I were of no consequence, and that was her prerogative. Anyway, I wrote up the chain that I had not travelled 6,000 miles to be treated like that, and I would be on the next flight back to the UK.

That was an epiphany to them, for immediately, everyone assumed the roles they were supposed to and the rest of my trip turned out right. All this is predicated not necessarily on complaining, but if you have an opinion or a question, it would not be conveyed by silence; it needs to be expressed with the aim of achieving something. At least, that is the way I view things.

The privilege of knowing you

I guess there are expectations, and mine could be a bit high by reason of what I am accustomed to, and I make no apology for that. If a service or facility has been acquired and its delivery raises questions, then the questions should be asked, politely, directly and properly, making some allowances whilst seeking satisfactory answers in word and deed. It is not too much to ask for, in my humble opinion.

Maybe it is a case of an unacknowledged sense of privilege that by default sets the standards I expect, sets the tone of the conversation I am having, sets the level of the requirements I expect to be met and sets the quality of response that my interlocutors should rise to.

I cannot tell, but when I make a statement about service, conduct, provision, situation or circumstance, I expect the standard to be raised, and sometimes it would rise beyond the competence of the people it is required of, if they are not so accustomed to meeting demands.

Nigeria: The exodus of 'I have only one life' Nigerians

Our early privilege

Around the time we left secondary school, we were children of middle-class and upwardly mobile parents who were at or approaching the pinnacle of their careers. Many of them, our parents were educated abroad where they had us, children, typically in their mid-20s.

At that time, there was no particular desire amongst us to leave Nigeria, tertiary education was of the standard that was quite competitive and engaging. That we had NYSC (National Youth Service Corps) teachers who had studied abroad did not necessarily make us yearn for an exit, Nigerian seemed to present opportunity and prospect, some of our colleagues spent the summer holidays abroad and still returned to finish their school.

The dream that died

Somehow, has the democracy of the second republic transitioned into military rule, that apparent Nigerian dream was becoming a nightmare. Obviously, the connections we had through the networks of our parents gave us access, be it nepotism or favoritism, a helping hand, and good word here or there, hurdles were smoothed away, but the incumbency of the middle-classes was beginning to shift for even more egregious corruption.

At a point, not even merit coupled with any level of preferential treatment to get you anywhere in Nigeria, the system was gummed up by bureaucracy, corruption, and rent-seekers. In the space of a decade, our accents and apparent privilege got us nowhere. Nigeria was no more working for us and there began the exodus, the exit to where at least we believed more than when our parents were abroad that we could not only thrive, but a semblance of meritocracy gave us a fighting chance.

The first mass exodus

Some of us armed with first degrees or just citizenship by birth knew that the promised land that our parents returned to was not the promised land where we could with grit, talent, and daring begin to live our best lives. Besides, the strictures of tradition, culture and control that stifled our freedom of expression in Nigeria was to be broken out of when we escaped.

From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, we left Nigeria disillusioned young people to begin new lives abroad just as the government was running a losing battle about losing us to a world that appeared to need us, or so we believed. I would suppose many of us who were born abroad in the 1960s and the 1970s left Nigeria and probably never returned.

The new brain drain

There is a new exodus in play, just as the one we can remember that those in government today were the same faces that could not convince us of the Nigerian dream then. They might not be like those of us of the other exodus, but I would suggest they are the “I have only one life” cohort. They have decided that in the scheme of things the possibility of a different Nigeria is probably remote or impossible and they need to act to provide opportunity and dreams for themselves and their children.

Many of them are highly qualified Nigerians in a Nigeria that is not working for them as they realise there is a global talent market yearning for them and the diversity in expertise they can bring to environments that allows for competition and is rarely gamed by overreach or the abuse of power, where the rule of law, at least in the letter of it appears to be respected and the powerful or influential cannot mess you up on the whim of megalomania.

It still works for some

You still have to give it to those who still believe in the Nigerian dream and seem to thrive in Nigeria despite the lack of ease of doing business, a rotten and intemperate regulatory system that thwarts rather than encourages initiative and innovation, corruption, crumbling infrastructure and the security challenges.

Many Nigerians are thinking, I have only one life and I doubt I want to waste the best part of my productive years daydreaming about a different Nigeria when there could be any other place where my achievements and abilities can find the scope to thrive. For some, even from Nigeria, the world has been their oyster, but for others, they have jumped at the opportunity to emigrate with the feeling that when pit against obstacles abroad they have a more probable chance of coming out on top than struggling in Nigeria.

Use the opportunities that come

This is not to celebrate the exodus from Nigeria of talent and brains, but I left Nigeria over 30 years ago and I know what that had given me in life and experience. It might well be that on balance Nigeria does not deserve many of its youth because the system gives little credence to what they have to contribute.

The world however needs amazing brains and Nigerians constitute a pool of talent the world cannot do without. Maybe after making it abroad, some might return to be honoured at home.

You have one life, take it to the world and make history, that is my treatise to every young Nigerian.

Thought Picnic: Black Lives Should Matter Always

Are we that quick to be noticed?

Sitting at home and catching up with the news has caused me no end in distress as a black man in the UK and observing the world at large.

In these Coronavirus pandemic times, first, I read of the indication that Black, Asian and ethnic minority [BAME] people are 54% more likely to be fined for the contravention of Coronavirus laws than whites, considering we hardly make up to 15% of England and Wales population. [Guardian: BAME People Fined] [GOV.UK: Ethnic Population Distribution]

Law enforcement would contend that the distribution of fines is proportional, I would beg to differ. One can only wonder what proportionality means to them in the face of the numbers, yet, one must endeavour to keep an open mind. Whether it is over-enthusiasm or an unfortunate predilection to attract to and intimidate the BAME by the police, something does have to shift, because it does not augur well for community relations.

This is not to forget that BAME are also disproportionately affected by the Coronavirus with poorer outcomes that the government has instituted an enquiry to determine why. It is as if there is no respite in going about our business or being afflicted. The little triumphs in the overturning of some of the convictions and fines are almost worthy of celebration when they should never have happened, in the first place.

Flushing out no guns

I have once had an encounter, where on visiting a public toilet there was a SWAT raid, apparently, the coincidental presence of 4 black men in a large facility that could have 10 standing at the urinals and 4 water closet cubicles. Someone had called the police to report that one of us was in possession of a gun.

The ordeal in the early 1990s was as unsettling as it could be, we were bundled out, searched, questioned and had our details taken down. They found nothing and offered no apology. Despite their elaborate and extraordinary intervention is what amounted to a ruse, I could not obtain a record from the police at that place or after two visits to the police station as to how I was roughed up.

They basically got away ultra vires exercising untrammelled authority without accountability or consequence, we, being left hard done by. I have probably only had one encounter with the police out of maybe 5 in the UK and the Netherlands, where it has been courteous and satisfactory. Thankfully, the only thing harmed has been my pride and a knock on my self-esteem.

Being Black in America

Crossing the pond, when I first saw a video of a woman choking her dog by the collar, it was without the sound on. It was bad enough. My Twitter timeline was lit up with outrage and indignation about being ‘Black in America’. When I then returned to watch the video with the sound on, it was a woman who had been called out to put her dog on a leash as she was required to do taking umbrage to being spoken to by a black man. [BBC News: White woman called police on black man in dog row]

She then called the police on the African American feigning being violently attacked, the good fortune of it all was it being caught on video along with the police not attending the event at the time might just have let the man live another day, safe in America. What kind of providence allowed for both their surnames to be Cooper? Quite uncanny.

Black Lives Must Matter Always

As if this was not bad enough, a black man was apprehended under the influence and found sitting on the bonnet of his car. To a man inebriated, one would expect some consideration as to their incapacity and irrationality. When he was asked to step away from his car, he resisted. He was overpowered and handcuffed only for one of the policemen to kneel on his neck whilst he was in medical distress and he died. [BBC News: FBI to investigate death of black man in Minnesota after arrest]

It is like being Black in America puts you high in the list of threatened and endangered species, from those who cannot countenance the presence of black in any space to the point to a sighting of a black person is tantamount to violation of every law of humanity, a threat to existence and the need to exterminate their person. Touching on the topic of police brutality and use of excessive force leading to the violent deaths of black people, that is a plaque on America for which a remedy is yet to be found.

Things ought not to be this way, it is why movements as Black Lives Matter exist because there is a discussion we all must have about our common and diverse humanity regardless of race, the need for consideration, courtesy, respect, humility, fairness, and justice is paramount.

Thought Picnic: On growing into being at ease with everything

Understanding me

With time I have grown to understand that I am a child of privilege, the privilege of my place of birth, the privilege of my early education, the privilege of having parents who exuded professional confidence in the choice of career and the progression it took in their professional lives, the privilege of not needing to belong when there was the pressure to belong, the privilege of knowing, understanding and accepting who I am, the privilege of having horizons only limited by my ability to dream or imagine.

In having this privilege, it does not mean I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, we were not a moneyed or rich class, but we had sufficiency and contentment, I saw in my parents a steady ambition without greed, a healthy bearing of self-respect, a commanding confidence in leadership, the ability to adapt to many situations and relate to people in different walks of life.

Fixing on the positive

It did not make my parents perfect, they had their numerous flaws, part of the privilege of my upbringing included appreciating value and discarding the dispensible; as a preacher once said, to have the sense of an old cow by eating the hay and leaving the baling wire.

Altogether, these examples have helped me adopt an outlook and mindset that allows me to thrive in many settings in which I have found myself. To accept the many privileges, I have without repudiation and guilt, recognising there are many not as fortunate as I have been and seeking ways to help others rise above the limitations imposed by the absence of privilege or opportunity to realise any of their potential.

Glad to help

Where I can, I provide means, hopefully, I can show some example, in some cases, I offer guidance and to some, I have been honoured with the opportunity to mentor. If I seek any reward, it is to see whoever I have engaged thrive and succeed, whether they better my achievements is usually up to their innate abilities and good fortune, I will celebrate and herald them, for it redounds to my joy.

In view of this, I am thinking of ways in which I have help people be first at ease with themselves and who they are without shame or self-deprecation, then be at ease with any place or situation they might find themselves to be able to express themselves clearly, with confidence, polish and assuredness.

Working on the foundations

Know that they can fit in, by merit, by ability and by achievement with every means to find opportunity, gain favour, have others see potential in them that can take them to new ground. Maybe there is a way to teach presence whilst understated, bearing, class and sophistication without putting on airs or having delusions of grandeur.

To find ways of being the best representative of yourself with simple adjustments and accoutrements, by so presenting the version of yourself without having to struggle to maintain the standards you have created for yourself in having principles, integrity and poise.

An identity crisis

In watching 'How to Break Into the Elite' on BBC Two last week, I realised how many having much academic achievement still found it difficult to access elite professional opportunities because whilst their qualifications might have taken to interviews, they rarely clinched the jobs due to other subjective elements of their person, personality, expression or conduct.

Their backgrounds, identity, schooling or absence of example of how to access these places then thrive in those environments appeared to dog their efforts and probably there is no finishing school that can properly inculcate the necessary mien and mores to give them a fighting chance. [BBC iPlayer]

Starting somewhere

The little touches matter, like the effortless knowledge of the basic social codes of appearance, language and comportment, these things appear to carry much significance in getting access, getting ahead and getting noticed. For some, it comes naturally, for others, they need to have a place where they observe, appreciate, learn and exercise how it opens doors of interest, engagement, recognition and help.

This is an area where I hope I can begin to give back in gratitude for the good fortune and privileges I have had.

Thankful for the privilege my parents created for me

As Pharaoh.

A thankfulness reappraised

Sometimes, I just want to appreciate and be thankful for some of the things that have become the stories of my life.

In a life filled with privilege, opportunity, good fortune and blessings, or is it sheer luck, you can only be grateful. I was watching a programme on television yesterday title Rich House, Poor House on Channel 5 which is a documentary-style reality television programme that follows two families from opposites ends of class and wealth divides swapping their homes and lives for a week to experience what the other side lives.

On an abstract level, it was just entertainment, but it was also a social anthropological study to which one can begin to relate and understand the broad spectrum of society, the depth of empathy, the ability to reflect and the willingness to adapt.

Money helps but there is more

In yesterday’s show, you saw the amazing dynamic of community and neighbourliness in what one might call the deprived, yet the absence of means did not define them as lacking in humanity, love or the sense of belonging. The lack of money is not necessarily being bereft of happiness.

On the other side, where there was hardly any neighbours and a weekly spending kitty ten times what their counterparts in the exchange had to live on, the father of the house had cut down on life as an executive for health reasons and his wife reflected on how he could have worked himself to the death and whether life would have been worth it to be a rich widow. It is not all about money.

Yet, I could see privilege and opportunity in different guises in both families, the aspirational in terms of exposure and the inspiration in terms of experience ministered to me as lessons in life.

The lessons outside classes

What amazing luxuries that accompanied my early education in an international setting of races from all ends of the world in Nigeria, I born in a foreign land and those, not of Nigerian parentage born in Nigeria, we all equal and the same without one being favoured over the other.

The daughter of the headmistress once pinched me and when I returned home to tell my parents, my dad said I should never let anyone take advantage of me, I should retaliate. So, the bully who was older and bigger came again and I did to her what she did to me, she went crying to her parents. Her father was the head of the company where my dad was a middle manager.

A conversation ensued between her mother and my father, they settled on the fact that she was the bully and I refused to be bullied. She never tormented me after that and we became friends. The lasting effect of that encounter cannot be discounted.

Of privilege and access

My extra-curricular activities after school like being driven to art classes and my sister to ballet classes or when I was Pharaoh in our school’s production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, exemplified the richness of education unquantifiable in examination scores but trenchant in character building, self-affirmation and confidence bordering on exuberance. You find the ability to express yourself in places where normally others would be tongue-tied.

The parental quest to toughen me up and give me a sense of my cultural roots was sending me off to boarding school hundreds of miles away from home. In some ways, it was a hellish experience for the first few years, but I adapted.

I had other classmates who travelled by train from the north of Nigeria alone, catered for by strangers until they made it to school and they endured the same on their return home. I was put on a plane, there was someone to pick me up and ensure I was delivered safe and sound to the care of the housemaster. I also had relatives close by for the short holidays as well of visitors who when they came to visit their wards made it a duty to see me too.

Knowing who you are

I was raised in a bubble of sorts, an idyllic existence in Rayfield, Jos and in Tudun Wada, Kaduna, desperately shielded from many influences, though some were unavoidable due to proximity or circumstance, they became defining moments of exposure to sexual abuse, morbid fear, extreme religiosity, encounters with fetish priests and much else. All this is part of the narrative that has become my story.

In many ways, I have retained the accoutrements of privilege which have given me the various instances where I have been able to seize upon opportunities. It does not mean that I have not been visited by failure, infirmity, incapacity or misfortune, but they are not definitive of who I am, rather they are parts of the journey of life for which I have been grateful to traverse, survive and thrive.

I owe the grit and the suppleness to the exceptional upbringing I had and one more thing I would never repudiate is that I have been a child of privilege, not necessarily born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but given the tools and the means to navigate wealth and class in having both or neither without losing the quality of the person that I am. I have my wonderful parents to thank for that and I am always grateful to them.

Other members of the cast including me at different times in the musical play.

Note: All the pictures were taken of our performance of the musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Sacred Heart Primary School, Kaduna in December 1975. I was Pharaoh of All Egypt.

Opinion: Nigerians paying to suffer great indignities

It is global no matter how local

The Nigerian Twitterverse was overrun with trending topics earlier today to do with a major concert that featured international artistes at a somewhat exclusive venue in Lagos.

I will not delve into the particular for there is much more to address with regards to the general which pertains to a Nigeria we will do well to divorce ourselves from if we are to make any progress as a people and as a country.

One is concerned that many do not realise that events in Nigeria now have a global audience and are subject to global scrutiny for the better or for the worse that it is important that those who identify as Nigerians both at home and abroad need to be aware of the responsibilities they bear along with the burden of duty that comes with being worthy and commendable ambassadors of our great land.

The concert was streamed live from the venue but that did not seem to compare in any way to the experiences the patrons had.

Oversold and under-prepared

The event would have had extensive publicity and garnered much interest with the sterling list of celebrities invited to compere and perform, it would appear the exclusive tickets labelled for VIPs and VVIPs were oversubscribed and sold but no adequate provision was made to accommodate the egos that thought they had bought exclusivity, comfort and class – nothing could have been further from the truth.

The reality was that the logistics were poor for accessing the venue that the patrons had to walk kilometres to the venue only to be bustled and jostled by bouncers at entry and then having inadequate seating or basic liquid refreshment.

Not what they paid for

To add insult to injury, the host appeared to be nonchalant about the ensuing chaos and like a typical Nigerian he would have attempted to bluff his way through the inadequacies to the extent that the patrons would have grumbled but accepted the indignities meted out to them.

Besides, the internationally renowned actor who was supposed to host the event that ran for hours was apparently only on stage for a grand total of less than 30 minutes.

Things ought not be so, people who have in their quest to sate their hedonistic tendencies by shelling out fortunes for access to glitterati should expect to be treated with dignity, respect, decorum and definitely not shabbily.

The insults we tolerate

But then, it goes without saying that if you are invited to an event you are probably a Very Important Person but if you have to pay to be seen with celebrities, you are anything but a VIP – access does not confer class; you are at best an interloper seeking to belong – I am not particularly sympathetic to people who assume airs of self-importance thinking their money can buy influence and thereby entitlement.

However, that said, Nigerians are in the majority mug-fodder (for mug, Nigerians will understand mugu better) to be exploited by the unscrupulous who trade on the low self-esteem or inferiority complex of the 'successful' but serious wanting in strength of character and demeanour.

It is not so important

There probably is a salutary lesson to be learnt, you do not have to be there if you have not been asked to be there by those who can smooth all the access required for you and remove the inconvenience I dare say rich plebs and wannabes suffer.

But in a country where we all troop like a stampeding herd usually uninvited to pay homage and burnish the egos of the powerful whilst wearing the most expensive watches but are so unschooled in keeping time, only a few of those who complained and fulminated vociferously will decline the opportunity to be treated with disdain if another event is staged at twice the ticket price and even less organisational preparation – we never learn.

His banker is laughing

If however any redress can be sought for the host to first apologise publicly and then offer compensation with the promise to do better, much progress will have been made. Reputations, perception and integrity should become front and centre of public life in Nigeria – crooks and confidence tricksters have held sway for too long.

Sadly, the age-old saying still finds true as it did at the very first time it fell from the lips of the original wise head – a fool and his money are soon parted.