Dear Nigeria, I Stand British

📅 March 26, 2026

I fell in love when I was nineteen. Her name was Helen – Helen Oyeyemi, to be precise. I fell in love with her eyes first (they had the gentle, see-through shade of brown), then I fell in love with her smile (and how vulnerable it seemed).

At nineteen I already wanted to be a writer. I learnt she was already one. When I discovered that she had published her first book at twenty, this admiration tipped into obsession. Love, for me, had always worked that way. When I loved, I loved completely (except one, whom I curse).

I began to learn everything about her; her latest books, where she lived, where she’d grown up, who she was dating. I scoured the net devouring every clip and reel, every piece and patch of information on Helen. Up to that point I hadn’t dated any Yorubas. I had dated three Ndi Igbos, one Kalabari (I curse her), sixteen Fulanis, and one and a half Mexicans. Never a Yoruba. She was going to be my first Yoruba. 

In a nutshell, here’s what I would find out about her; that she was a British novelist, that she was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, that she was this, that she was that.

Born in Ibadan, raised in Lewisham. Now, a British novelist? Not a British Nigerian noveli– a whole British one, eh? Interesting.

In the following years I would begin to notice this pattern.

                                ____________

The Nigerian government does not start to sabotage your life at birth. That would be inefficient. They begin this process much earlier, when you are still a romantic possibility in your father’s mind. This is why even when he lays with your mother, there is no light. You are not even a minute old, as in, you’ve not even made the cut from swimmer to zygote yet heat and darkness have been pre-programmed into your life. These will likely chase you all the days of your life, but wait, this is only the beginning.

They call that thing Ọmụgwọ, yes? That one where your mother-in-law comes to pound your head and wine your feet, yes? This is what they do not tell you – that that thing is the survival manual for the hard life you must live. They pound your head and mould your ogo into stubborn resistance, they prep your legs to japa – and you might. Most times though, people don’t. You know why? Because your passport is a curse

Normally, curses are supposed to be easy to get. But this is Nigeria where even curses require effort. You must fight for your curse. You must plead for your curse, you must queue under the hot Abuja/Ikoyi sun for your curse, you must be turned back and still return for your curse. This same curse that cannot take you anywhere except a handful of countries ravaged by war, disease and civil collapse. The same one that foreign embassies are tired of seeing because half their filing cabinets are stuffed with it.

Still, you must grovel like a humble bastard. You must know somebody who knows somebody who ends up knowing nothing but his one desire to mercilessly scam you penniless. You must fill paper forms in an age where computers/ Wi-Fi exists, but apparently, common sense does not.

Then you wait. You wait forty days and forty nights, praying, hoping that the ‘someone’ assigned to your case isn’t eating corn/ gossiping over the computer and leaving two letters off your surname while at it. You gotta pray, broski, cause if they do, you just might spend the rest of your natural life trying to correct it while the officer calmly dismisses you with a “Come back next week” whilst eating corn and, of course, gossiping.

                                _________

Now, you have fled Nigeria, haven’t you? You are happy. (You will never fully escape Nigeria because you still carry your curse, plus you still have the blood, and of course your face, your mannerisms, the unnecessary loudness of your voice can still be pinpointed to Nigeria. But at least you’ve left so let’s be happy for you.)

Now you have escaped with your life and vowed never to return. It is with dis your eyes that you’ve seen that the hell you fled was hardly necessary to make you “disciplined” or “hard” as you’d always heard. It made you a dysfunctional psychopath. You have seen with your own two eyes that the price they said you need to pay to be great doesn’t have to be the hell that oughtn’t even exist in a barely civil society. You have lived there long enough to now be called Bri^ish or Sco^ish or Oi-rish. You have made something of yourself, and through slow, hard grinding, have become so big that you can’t even make one move without the world taking notice.

Now, Nigeria claims you. Now, they want you back. They call you their own, they cajole you, blowjob your ego, call you things like “amiable son of the soil”, and urge you to “return to the motherland” to “better it”.

Return to mama wey wan assassinate me, abi? Nah, mehn, fuck you thou ‘motherland’ my British nyash!

I might’ve been born in Nigeria, you say. But home is where my feet are, and I stand British (no pun intended).

                                ___________

 

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