Part I

Introduction — The Nigerians are Coming

Nigerians are the most gifted people in the world. But we’re also the most self-destructive. As statistics show, if you give a Nigerian immigrant basic food, shelter and education, the likelihood that they will eventually dominate whatever group or industry they are in is overwhelming.

Governments everywhere are enticing Nigerian doctors, engineers and others of immense gifts to help build their own economies, as has been the case for decades. By most markers, those societies thrive–while Nigeria suffers an unthinkable fate. This is the primary cost of Nigerian exceptionalism, undergirded by three tragic realities: the immense emotional gap between Nigerian Diaspora youth and our parents, endemic low self-worth amongst Nigerians of all generations, and the cultural and structural disintegration of the Nigerian state.

As many may know, I studied Nigerian immigrant identity during my Masters program at Yale, and entered Cambridge with a similar topic, before ultimately changing it significantly. It was really my observations about Nigerian exceptionalism that inspired this research. These costs–as this topic–are exhaustive. The issues are sufficient for multiple thesis projects, making it difficult to know where to start.

In the process of developing a thorough series on this topic, I realized that I myself am an epitomization of the costs of Nigerian exceptionalism. Therefore, I’m starting with myself. In this series, I will use my story, my journey and the story of my family in order to elucidate the realities of the costs of Nigerian exceptionalism.

Caveat: My family is super loving, super supportive in the ways that they are able to be, and I love them very much, as I love MOST of my Nigerian friends and extended family, but there are critical matters that require our attention as a people. So if this article makes you feel uncomfortable, lean into the discomfort because there is likely an opportunity for deep healing for you in that. Whether this resonates, or is too difficult to hear, my DMs are always open and I’d love to hear from you.

What is Nigerian Exceptionalism?

I first need to define what Nigerian exceptionalism is. For those who have been living under a rock, or have for whatever reason never been made aware of what Nigerians are known for, this is what we are known for. We are known for being the best and brightest, most impactful, most successful, most visible, just the most.

A Haitian friend said to me recently that he doesn’t really like Nigerians. That we’re too stubborn and arrogant, and that I’m one of the two Nigerians he actually likes. I got why he said that. Nigerians are indeed–and I say this with absolute awareness of my bias–the most gifted, and arrogant, people in the world.

What we see around us makes it quite obvious that Nigerians are capable of insanely powerful things–things most ethnic groups don’t come close to achieving. I also base this on the Andela IQ testing story, which provided some hard evidence of this theory. So we’re incredibly talented, we’re incredibly gifted, but we’re also the most self-destructive.

My Story

I am the oldest of seven, in a non-traditional family structure featuring two nuclear families. I’m an artist, but it took me 37 years to identify as an artist, and almost 38 years to begin practicing as an artist. I’m incredibly gifted. Like many Nigerians, I have an exhaustive list of talents, abilities and accomplishments, and yet somehow I‘ve struggled to become the best version of my Self. This might sound like the opposite of Nigerian exceptionalism, because exceptional Nigerians don’t struggle to produce their results. Or do they? Do we hear about their success after the struggle? Or are they always successful on the first try?

Part II

Successful or Happy, Pick One

As an artist who struggled with accepting myself because my parents and community did not accept this as a career option, I excelled in my computer science degree program, graduating in 3.5 years from a program that takes many people 5 years. I then went on to float around the country, for about a year, until I was desperate enough to get a well-paying job. I had quite lightly sought jobs, avoiding tech opportunities since, upon graduation, I’d sworn I did not want to see another line of code.

Computer Science was not something I was interested in truly. It was a major I settled on because it seemed more acceptable to my parents than political science. My backup desire to what I really needed, a communications degree, was to study political science and go to law school. I wanted to change from my CS major every semester, but I didn’t. Considering all the things I would have to deal with with my parents if I did…I just didn’t have the balls (or ovaries).

So I left school and preferred waiting tables to writing code. In this one year period, there was some effortless creativity happening. I wrote some of my best, most prolific poetry in those days. I also got insulted a lot during that year, for not doing anything “meaningful” with my life.

So I eventually accepted my fate to work in tech, got a job as a Network Engineer after much finagling, and then convinced myself that I loved it. I was making good money. But within less than twelve months I was miserable on the job. I kept going, though, because my family was so satisfied with me. I was accepted in a way that I had not felt accepted before. And embraced. Thus, because I felt embraced and accepted, I held onto the job for as long as I could. Then I quit suddenly, lied to my family for about two months before my mom figured out that my “working from home” was actually creative unemployment. This was 2006. I was working from home before anybody was “working from home”.

Thus began my long stretches of creative unemployment. Speckled with entrepreneurship. Speckled with corporate-like gigs. There was a constant battle between my need for corporate gigs to survive, and my creative exploration and entrepreneurship. It’s important to recognize here that entrepreneurship is a form of creativity just as is creative fabrication–making things like clothing and art.

So then begun my long stretch of back and forth between creativity and full-time employment. Towards the tail end of this stretch, I had the most enriching creative opportunity I had ever had working with Applause Africa magazine as Editor in Chief. It was in that process that I was inspired to finally put in the grad school application that I had been working on for nearly ten years.

By the Divine grace of God, I got in to Yale. Thus begins my journey to freedom, I thought. I’m going to go to Yale, I’m going to now be free to do whatever I want with my life. Because I’m going to get so much support, at this institution, and from everybody else — because this institution is supporting me — that I’m not going to have any more issues in life. Right? That was my intention, expectation, expectation, vision. And so much of it was right. I did get to Yale. I did get a ton of support from the University. I even became famous for sleeping on a couch. And yet somehow, my bank account and overall well being didn’t reflect this. Why?

Part III

Why Do You Love Poverty So Much?

I had people calling me to check in about my wellbeing after the Sleeping While Black incident, but my website was down. I couldn’t even keep my website up. Because I had been back and forth in and out of jobs, and I had a daughter that I was raising by myself, because her father had passed away. So no, I didn’t go to grad school with a ton of savings, I went to grad school by the skin of my teeth. So it’s 2018, and the whole world is talking about my Sleeping While Black incident, and I probably have $2 in my account. Although I did get some funding for travel and research that summer, it hadn’t hit my account yet.

Now mind you, during all these periods, I kick ass at everything I do. Every time I do work a job, my clients love me. I master the skills very quickly, and my colleagues love me. When I faced gender discrimination at Usablenet, my colleagues rallied around me. When I was fired by a racist boss at Verizon, my colleagues literally cried. That made me appreciate how much I would be missed, and that it was recognized that I was needed, I was gifted and I was talented. I wasn’t being fired because of a lack of skills, but absolute, overt racism.

When I was at Yale, I didn’t just get into Yale, I had the great fortune of building institutions within the institution. I built institutional connections and collaborations that really produced fruit. That built relationships and connections across campus that otherwise would not have happened. I made shit happen. I got several fellowships while I was there, a premium TA opportunity my first semester, awards, the Gates scholarship. I kicked ass.

Part IV

Get Your Shit Together or You’re not a real Nigerian.

By the end of my two years at Yale, I had been laboring for about 28 years. At age seven I started taking care of my siblings after school, at thirteen I started summer jobs and other hustles. I was always working, and like the quintessential Nigerian, working hard. So I was tired, and I stopped laboring when I got to Cambridge, because someone had said to me, “Do less. Go within. When we do less, God does more.”

When I set out to do this, to rest, primarily out of a need to stop the excruciating chronic pain I’d been experiencing, a lot of interesting things happened. Usually when people tell these stories of doing less and going within, it’s about this magic that happens for them. While I did experience the magic, I also experienced the underside of the magic. Which has been isolation, disappointment, judgement, scrutiny, doubt, all the things. Any time I stopped being a so-called exceptional Nigerian, any time I took a break from hard labor, I became a “shame” to my family, community and countrymen.

Any time my financial or material state was less than ideal, I heard things like What’s wrong with you? Get your shit together. It was the non-Nigerian-exceptionalists who asked questions like What do you need? What can we do to support you?

The Cost of Nigerian Exceptionalism is really right there. It’s almost as if you’re only valuable as long as you’re willing to be exceptional. As long as you’re willing to kick ass, to be the best, work the hardest, make the most money. In my stopping and slowing down, I earned the grief that I received. I was clearly, according to many/money people, not doing enough.

But the interesting thing is that even when you’re striving exceptionally hard for outcomes, exceptionalists are still pushing you to strive harder. They’re never satisfied. There’s tons of evidence of this. Look at Yvonne Orji’s mom in her first HBO special, who still expressed disappointment that her globally beloved successful comedian daughter had chosen not to study medicine. Look at Wale, the recording artist, whose parents told him to get a job after he got a record deal. Look at Tobi Nwigwe. Look at every Nigerian college student who chooses a major they don’t want to please their parents. It’s all bullshit.

Bullshit rooted in our colonial psychosis.

Part V

Obey or be Shot

The colonial masters came and said, “You work for us now. If you disobey, we will kill you.” On our own land. Some of us were killed and some of us obeyed. Those who obeyed were somewhat rewarded–with “exceptional” jobs–according to the standards. They were rewarded with access to the exceptional track, to the opportunity to be lawyers, doctors, engineers, in the colonial framework; to be clerks, bankers, secretaries, civil servants. The colonizers only provided education to this segment of the Nigerian population in order to have cheaper labor to uphold the colonial framework.

But what then happened is that these people, feeling rewarded by the access to power and money and whiteness, fully embraced this opportunity. They fully embraced the opportunity to serve their white masters; and they fully embraced the opportunity to oppress other “Nigerians” on behalf of their white masters, even if they had to oppress their own children in order to force them into careers and outcomes that were acceptable to the colonial framework.

Thus oppression became part and parcel of the Nigerian family structure. These people had to oppress their children in order to continue the tradition and keep the wealth in the family; in order to not bring shame on the family because now they had accessed wealth and needed to maintain the wealth that they had accessed. If you fall out of line with this, then you are a problem, you are a shame…to your family, to the society, to your country at large. You are an embarrassment. So yeah, Nigerian exceptionalism.

Part VI

So where does this leave us?

My story is actually a bit of an extreme case. People who are actually quite aligned with the exceptional/colonial model, still face oppression from their families for not getting married in time, for not having kids in time, for not marrying the right type of person. There is no interest in our joy. As a people, we don’t even understand what joy is, because we think joy is (monetary) wealth, we think joy is money. Power. Fame. Status.

We don’t have a clue what joy is or wealth is. If it looks like we’re the happiest people in the world, it’s because of our ignorance giving us bliss. Or our failure to accept reality–making us “blissful”. With the exception of those living well off the land, we’re not happy. We’re miserable at the end of the day, because we’re lying to ourselves, embracing this false identity, given to us by our oppressor. We’re harming ourselves and our families by perpetuating the oppression that upholds this false identity. We’re dying at alarming rates of heart disease and other diseases of stress and over work, and heartbreak. Because we’re heartbroken over the state of our identities, our cultures, our country. And we don’t even deal with that.

The heartbreak of our country is a reflection of the oppression in our families. The government oppresses the people just the same way the patriarchy oppresses the family at home. Until we are able to truly look within–to do less, to go within–we will continue to perpetuate this cycle of self-oppression which we inflict upon our individual selves, upon our families, our children, our countrymen, and others around us.

If we can somehow wake up, face reality and commit to shifting it, embracing a more human-focused potentiality, then we can begin to shift our behavior towards ourselves and towards each other, embracing a framework that allows us to be kind. To consider the joy, wellness and wellbeing of our children, families and countrymen. Thus allowing ourselves to activate our genius. Because true genius is tied to joy. And if you think you’ve seen Nigerian genius at play, just wait until we’re actually well and happy, what will become of the world…

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If any of this resonated with you, I’d recommend you do your part to help your family heal, strengthen and unite. You can use this. Also share this piece in all your family group chats 😉

Much love