While indulging in my annual Facebook binge of z-list memes and personal photos of people I used to know, I noticed a friend request from one of my cousins in Nigeria. 

This cousin is the principal reason I remember my first trip “back home” with fondness. I have beautiful memories of us running around our grandfather’s veranda in Ibadan, spritely and sweaty. Sun washed walls, the volatile smell of petrol, and screaming neighborhood chickens also occupy my sentiments. The sourest memory I have of that time was avoiding roaming sachets of pure water. 

My cousin and I have not contacted each other in well over a decade, and here we were, face to face, at my digital doorstep.

I pressed ‘DECLINE’.

I don’t hate my cousin, we barely know each other, but their friendly request gave rise to moral dilemmas of responsibility and obligation to family, home, and community, which made me uncomfortable. 

Next to memories of playfulness, a significant portion of my relationship to “back home” is made up of endless money transfers and closets filled to the brim with clothes, shoes, and appliances meticulously labeled for aunties, uncles, and family friends.  I have witnessed my parents go to heroic lengths to take care of those back home; working extra shifts, driving longer distances, and multiplying their anxieties. Before I knew my route to school I could describe the nearest Western Union and point out the best prepaid calling cards on the market. One user on Reddit shared; “I’ve watched my parents over invest in Nigeria (via businesses, properties, supporting families, etc.) for over 30 years (up to if not close to $1M and we are not rich, there were a lot of loans”. 

According to International Organization for Migration (IOM), in 2020, the global population of Africans living outside the continent was 19.5 million and rising. The diaspora is regarded as the “6th region of Africa” by the African Union, not only due to its size, but its political, economic, and cultural importance to the continent’s development. The Union even has an entire division dedicated towards activating this superabundant resource, “to serve as a catalyst for rebuilding the global African family in the service of the development and integration agenda of the continent”. 

By far, remittances are the most significant contribution the diaspora makes to African countries. In the 2021 International Monetary Fund (IMF) update on remittances in Sub-Saharan Africa, the region received as much as $47 billion in 2019. Frankly, enough financial traffic for the diaspora to be considered its own economic community alongside organizations like ECOWAS, EAC, and ECCAS. 

In the same IMF update, in 2019 Nigeria received the largest amount of remittances on the continent, about 24 billion USD. 

Besides the clothes I swore I would wear again mysteriously going missing, I have personally never contributed anything tangible to Nigeria, let alone towards the development of Africa. And as my parents near retirement, their own abilities to support those back home will shrink accordingly. So, what happens to all the mouths that need to be fed, school fees that need sponsoring, and outstanding wedding bills? 

In their 2023 report the IOM lauded the Nigerian diaspora as, "a formidable force for national development” citing its “vast sources in the form of investments, technologies, expertise, networking capacities, and many more”. 

I reached out to my fellow Nigerian diasporans in the US, from different generations, to get a sense of how our relationships to home compare and if they feel an obligation to Nigeria’s and the greater Africa’s development. 

The Fairy Godmother

There is a material sense of responsibility I get from my first interviewee. She is part of the 90s cluster of Nigeria’s healthcare worker brain drain and has become somewhat of a fairy godmother, an unseen figure who grants wishes and saves the day at the most crucial hour, to her family and community back home. 

When I ask what she thinks of the future of Nigeria, she says, “the future is bleak, I don’t see improvements in Nigeria. Without us, people back home will be left to survive on their own. We are sustaining the poor.”

From her perspective, the country’s well-being has not changed much since the 80s. In fact, “the weak are getting weaker.” 

The conversation drifts into all the various ways Nigeria is failing its people; it’s the government, it’s religion, it’s the people themselves, and so on and so forth. 

“Maybe a miracle will happen.”

She admits that younger generations, especially those raised abroad, have a different relationship with their home countries. She says, “the youth are more individualistic and focused on things like building generational wealth.” Whereas — “we were brought up to take care of everyone around us.” 

At the same time, she understands the difference in perspective, “I don’t blame your generation, you see how we struggle to take care of everyone and you don’t see any improvements." 

Before ending our conversation she left me with four pieces of guidance; 

Love your origin. 

Don’t close your eyes or mind. 

The people in power won’t be there forever. 

It is the owner of the land that has to sustain and protect that land.

Ultimately, she doesn’t believe that there is an obligation for younger generations to contribute to development. She’ll always encourage helping others, but “everyone is different” as she says.

The Afropolitan

My next interviewee has a devoted love-hate relationship with Nigeria. As far as a perspective on obligation goes, she is very clear about hers; “I do me and I get out.” 

Her relationship with Nigeria is akin to Taiye Selasi’s “Afropolitan” from the 2005 essay, Bye-Bye Babar. She relishes in the diasporic mix that has become of Lagos Island in particular and reveals that much of one's experience in Nigeria is based on who you know. For her, Nigeria has become more of a travel destination than anything else and she allows herself to move about as a pseudo-tourist; “when I go, I try to be lowkey and have a good time.”  

I ask how she feels about contributing to Nigeria's development, her position is firm and sober; “What am I supposed to do? Leave my family here to go back?”

“It’s all discouraging, I’ve contributed through charities but it’s hard to find trust, even sponsoring family members is challenging.” 

Unlike older diasporans, who she says care too much about what other people think, she believes — “you have to be unbothered” or else you’ll find yourself being taken advantage of.

I caught a moment of optimism when I asked what kind of relationship she’d want her young children to have with Nigeria; “I want my kids to have the same relationship as me, to know where they come from, be familiar with Nigeria, and decide on their own what they want to do with that.”   

For now, it’s enough for her to have a back-up country to escape to if things go awry in the US. 

The Detty December Warrior

When my last interviewee touches down in Lagos she tries to experience life as any young person would in her tax bracket, and that includes being intentional about where she is and what she’s doing.

Detty December is of course the annual bridge many young diasporans cross to reach “home”. During this time class differences are magnified, if not glorified. I could conclude that the OG generation of the ‘Afropolitan’ walked so this generation could run by facilitating the diasporic mix of identities we see across West Africa today. 

Growing up, her parents took measures to keep her away from forms of dependency that come about from family members. This included limiting her access to certain family members and developing an instinct to know the difference between crafty requests and people who genuinely have nowhere else to turn.  Nevertheless, "making that judgement call is tough, Nigeria is not a very straightforward place.” 

She shares, “Nigeria is not a place I can let my guard down.” She feels that the onus is on the country to address how people are living before reaching out to its diaspora for help. Empowerment is the form of support she identifies with the most. She wants Nigeria “to be what it needs to be” and in her opinion, sending money and resources enables otherwise. 

Nevertheless, her feelings do not deter her relationship; “Nigeria is a place that I am from, I have people there.” 

She feels something towards Nigeria’s development, but that feeling is not ‘obligation’. 

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The emotional strings that keep our parents so (financially) invested in back home become more and more frayed as generations become further removed from their home countries. At the same time, there are still droves of Africans “japa-ing” for opportunities elsewhere, perpetuating a cycle of nourishment for the continent. I think the African Union is complacent to that fact and, in a way, promoting an idealistic image of the diaspora that is both very true and untrue. If I would ask my younger self what she thought of Nigeria, she’d say, “why can’t everyone get it together and leave my parents alone!” Maybe I was naïve or bratty, but that feeling seems to have persisted long enough to avoid any material connections with Nigeria, which, in hindsight, is what led me to decline my cousin’s friend request. I regret denying that connection and I can own up to the fact that I was resentful.

Despite what the African Union would lead us to believe, the relationship between the diaspora and the continent is not a question of obligation. From my very small pool of Nigaerian-American perspectives, there is a desire to create a new kind of relationship, one that acknowledges and builds on the 30-40 year efforts of our parents; a relationship of give-and-take. Perhaps the better inquiry is how else can we share, collaborate, and endorse each other? I’ll repay a visit to Taiye Selasi’s Bye-Bye Barbar for the answer, “if there was ever a group who could figure it out, it is this one, unafraid of the questions.”