I have lived in  South Africa for nearly as long as I’ve been breathing. I don’t remember the move myself; I only know I got there in 2009, at age 4, because I was told. Before I was born, my dad had already been living and working there, trying to build something so he could bring my elder brother and me over.

My first real memories start from my preschool. By then, I’d already forgotten Yoruba, because my dad didn’t speak it and we were just fully becoming South African. My dad met my stepmom when I turned 6. She’s South African, and she’s the best woman in the world — she’s the one who raised me into who I am. We lived in the west of Johannesburg, moved between Roodepoort and a few other places, and I basically grew up there for the rest of my life. I only went back to Nigeria once, for a short trip in December 2012.

We weren’t rich. My family believed in discipline, education, and hard work above everything else, and my parents were very strict about it. My dad and stepmom would tell me, growing up: you’re a foreigner,  not South African, and you’ll never be treated the same — don’t forget that. I heard it, but it didn’t really register. I was a kid making real friendships. I felt like I belonged.

My parents’ warning never really hit home until I turned 18.

I watched my friends get their IDs, get their driver’s license, open bank accounts, you know? typical adult stuff. I’d ask my dad when I could do the same, and he’d just say, “It’s coming, it’s coming.” I didn’t know yet that there was anything actually wrong with my papers.

In high school, I was deputy head boy and a top 20 student. In my final year exams, I got four distinctions, including 90s in maths and physics. My marks put me in the top per cent of high school graduates in the country. 

On the strength of that, I got into Wits University to study chemical engineering and completely fell in love with the degree, but when I applied for a study permit, Home Affairs rejected my application. That’s when I found out I didn’t have proper papers, and that’s why other things were much more complicated for me.

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I want to be clear about this part. I didn’t sneak into South Africa. I came in as a child on my father’s documentation through the legal process. The problem wasn’t that I broke a rule, it’s that a category of people like me, who entered legally as minors and aged into adulthood within a broken system, don’t have a clean path to formalise their status. There are people in South Africa who came in illegally, who aren’t supposed to be there. I’m not talking about them, I’m talking about the ones who did it the right way and still got stuck.

When Wits saw that I’d hired an immigration lawyer and was actively pursuing my papers, they gave me a conditional registration for the second year in 2025,  meaning I could continue on the understanding that I’d have my status sorted out by year’s end. We appealed by email, over and over, no response.

In December 2025, my mom and I drove to the Home Affairs head office in Pretoria with every document printed out, because we weren’t even sure our emails were being received. Nobody came down to meet us. Someone upstairs called the reception desk and told us to leave, saying that appeals could only be done by email. When we asked if they’d gotten our previous ones, they didn’t even check.

By early 2026, Wits told me I couldn’t register for third year, and that was it. I’d worked as hard as a student possibly could, and none of it mattered.

I am hurt, but it wasn’t South Africans who did this to me. My friends never once treated me differently once they learned my situation; if anything, we got closer. A lot of them started emailing Home Affairs on my behalf, trying to get someone, anyone, to look at my case.

My daily life barely changed. The only real hostility I ever ran into was from the odd Uber driver going on a rant about immigrants “stealing jobs.”  I just sat in the front seat, trying not to say anything that would give me away.

The people frustrating my life were government workers, not neighbours. To me, it’s systematic xenophobia, because the system treats you as a permanent outsider, no matter how legal your papers are, how long you’ve lived there, or how much you’ve contributed. It’s heavier than the physical xenophobia everyone sees on the news.  It’s slow and invisible, so it doesn’t get as much attention as the second kind. Why would it? There’s no camera to capture it. 

I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I’m convinced the systematic failure in South Africa is behind the protests we see. Its invisible nature is why foreigners are attacked: most people can’t picture the government as the villain, so they blame the foreigner, who they can see. 

It doesn’t help that foreigners often take the odd jobs South Africans won’t — the barbering, the gardening, the roadside plumbing — for a fraction of what a South African would demand for the same work. That gets read as “stealing” when it’s really just people doing work nobody else wanted to do at a price nobody else would accept.

My dad lived this too. He’s an IT specialist who trained South Africans in townships for years, helping people become qualified enough to leave poverty behind. But because he was a foreigner, clients would refuse to pay him for finished work, knowing he had no real recourse. Several of his businesses went under because of it. He has permanent residence.

 My dad is married to a South African, and he still couldn’t get his son’s papers sorted. In January 2026, he moved back to Nigeria to try to start over.

Something broke in me when  I couldn’t register for my course for the third year of university. I had lived as close to a model life as a student could — head boy, top marks, no trouble — and it still came down to one fact: I was a foreigner, and the country I’d grown up in didn’t want me. I’ve put it this way before: the country raised me, then proceeded to abandon me once I was old enough for it to matter.

With school frozen, I spent most of 2026 at home, coding online because there was nothing else to do. When Nigeria opened its repatriation program, I signed up almost immediately. I was terrified, but I knew that if I didn’t do it, things could get worse for me.

The repatriation process itself took four days just for screening — passport vetting, police clearance, biometrics, and a final Home Affairs sign-off, at their Pretoria office. I went in expecting a single day and ended up sleeping at friends’ places for most of a week, because I hadn’t packed for a stay. 

During the wait before my flight, my university friends threw me a surprise goodbye party. We had a big, beautiful braai and spent time together. Towards the end of the party, they brought out a gift– a South African soccer shirt signed by all my university friends. I felt so loved that I found myself crying on the floor, and in a heartbeat, all my friends joined me there, hugging and crying with me. This gesture had to be the best thing that has ever happened to me. I love my friends so much.

On Wednesday, July 1, the embassy called: my flight was the next morning, and I needed to be there by 10 am. As an overthinker, I’d already been packing in my head for months, but I still had less than 24 hours to compress an entire life into three bags. Friends came by to say goodbye, and sadly, I didn’t get the chance to see my best friend before I left — there just wasn’t time.

We got to the embassy at 10 am and didn’t leave until 7 pm. Five buses took us to O.R. Tambo airport. We didn’t board until 4 am and took off at 5. Because my visa had technically lapsed while I was waiting for Home Affairs to process my permit, my exit was recorded as an overstay, which resulted in a five-year ban. I can’t legally return to South Africa until 2031.

By the time the plane actually left the ground, I was feeling a lot of emotions, from fear to disappointment and, at some point, anger. I had been feeling this way since January, when I first accepted my fate, but there was relief mixed in, too: I was finally going somewhere I wouldn’t be treated as less just for being Nigerian.

We landed in the cargo area of the airport in Lagos, and it was so hot, it hit me like a wall. 

What I wasn’t ready for was how well-organised the reception was. MTN was waiting with SIM cards, 100 gigabytes of data, and ₦50,000 in airtime for every returnee, so we could reach our families immediately.

Within two hours of landing, they’d registered us for our National Identification Numbers (NIN). There’s something almost funny about that: I spent years failing to get legal recognition in South Africa, and I got documented as a Nigerian citizen within two hours of touching down.

My dad picked me up, and so far I’ve been living at my uncle’s place in Lagos. The culture shock is real; Nigerians are loud in a way that has nothing to do with anger. I’m naturally soft-spoken, and people keep telling me to “talk properly,” when really I’m just not used to how loud normal conversation is here. I can follow Pidgin but can’t speak it, and I never learned Yoruba — I asked my dad to teach me when I was 15, and he brushed it off, saying I’d pick it up in church.

Strangely, my body feels more at home here than it ever did in Johannesburg. I used to get sick constantly in South Africa. Here, despite the heat, something about it feels right, like my body already knows the place.

I haven’t seen a naira of the stipend I’ve been promised yet — I still need to open a bank account and link my number to my NIN before that can happen. My stepmom and little sister, who are both South African, are still there. I don’t know when I’ll see them again. Maybe December, if the money works out. Maybe not.

I’ve already secured my transcript from Wits, so I have what I need to transfer. The University of Ilorin is one of the few public universities that accept international transfers, and that’s my target. 

I’m going to finish my chemical engineering degree, then do a master’s in power engineering and petroleum, because I want to work on electricity generation and infrastructure on this continent.

What breaks my heart most isn’t the xenophobia on its own — it’s that it’s Africans doing this to other Africans. I don’t think that’s really xenophobia so much as Afrophobia. We’re sitting on the continent with the most untapped potential on earth, and instead of building it together, we’re chasing each other out.

I want to work for the African Union one day, on a policy that stops this exact thing from happening to the next person. South Africa raised me and then closed the door. I’m going to build what’s next right here, in the country that’s actually mine.

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On Friday, June 26, First Lady Oluremi Tinubu that Nigerians struggling with the cost of living should consider frying akara or roasting corn, as the Federal Government would offer grants to help them get started. Within hours, the tone-deaf comment had become the internet’s newest meme.

On July 2, President Tinubu at a press dinner, playfully introducing his wife as “Iya Alakara,” meaning Akara seller. Following the joke, the Presidency’s media team leaned into the new nickname and posted an AI-generated of the First Lady as a roadside akara seller.

And just like that, Akara became the main character. The conversation shifted from “How is selling akara the solution?” to “Who’s posting the funniest skit?” This happens every single time our leaders fumble; we laugh instead of demanding answers.

We’ve been here before

Nigeria has no shortage of serious political moments that somehow end up as memes.  

In 2018, a Joint Admissions Matriculation Board (JAMB) clerk in Makurdi claimed a snake swallowed ₦36 million belonging to the board, money later to staff misappropriation. 

The story quickly became one of Nigeria’s most enduring political jokes, with content creators making skits and using “the snake swallowed it” as a response when asked about something they don’t have an answer to. 

In 2020, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) then-acting managing director, Kemebradikumo Pondei, mid-hearing while being questioned about ₦40 billion in missing commission funds, attributing it to an “unexplained health challenge.”

Content creators made skits and jokes about the situation, prompting multiple people to reenact the incident and causing it to go viral. 

Here If snakes swallowing cash was the height of it, you’re in for a shocker. In 2022, officials at the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) a Senate panel that termites had chewed through the receipts showing how the ₦17 billion was spent.

It’s the same routine. A crazy political moment occurs, the internet gets to work, and everyone’s in on the joke; before long, the memes have outlived the conversation that started it. 

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Standup comedians

We no longer live in a country where the government merely fumbles; we live in one where the government manufactures memes to cover up its fumbling. 

When the Presidency’s media team posted an AI-generated image mocking its own First Lady’s tone-deaf remarks, it wasn’t a harmless attempt to match the public’s humour. It was a calculated political deflection.

That’s where things get tricky. Once government failure becomes content, it’s much easier for the people behind it to join the joke than answer for it. By adopting the “Iya Alakara” nickname, the government effectively hijacked the narrative, shifting a legitimate crisis of empathy into a marketing campaign.

This means the next time a minister says something tone-deaf about your salary or your electricity bill, the expected response isn’t outrage, it’s a skit, and skits don’t get anyone fired.

What’s funny?

While Nigerians are busy making skits and memes out of failure and corruption, the country keeps dying. Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions has rated Nigeria 26 out of 100 for the second year running, while the country slipped from 140th to 142nd globally.

This rating will only worsen if we allow politicians to get away with corruption. Our poverty rate will continue to skyrocket if we laugh away ridiculous solutions rather than demand accountability,  and politicians will generate memes to mock our poverty because we’ve made them think it’s ok.

Because of our tendency to joke about everything, politicians know now they can get away with looting billions when they come to court in stretchers, when they pretend to faint, or make up ridiculous excuses to evade scrutiny.

They do it because they know we’d only be outraged for two days before we turn it into memes.

And so, it’s up to us to decide: do we want a political class so afraid of the populace they’d think twice about their actions and utterances, or one that fears nothing because they know they’ll be laughed at rather than challenged.

We want to hear about your personal experiences that reflect how politics or public systems affect daily life in Nigeria. Share your story with us —we’d love to hear from you!

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When you grow up in Nigeria, you learn very early that you are your own government. If there’s a fire, you fetch water. If there’s a security threat, you lock your gate and pray. I learned that lesson at eight or nine years old, when my school bus was involved in an accident on the expressway. We waited, but no police or road safety personnel came.

Eventually, the teachers with us flagged down a , and we went home. If we’d been bleeding instead of just stranded, that delay could have killed us. In Nigeria, it can feel as if nobody knows who you are or where you came from; help will not get to you, no matter how bad the situation is.

Years later, during the 2020 lockdown, I started actively watching the news with my dad. I would watch news stations like Arise TV, Channels, and sometimes CNN. I kept hearing the same two words, week after week, month after month: “unknown gunmen.

What shocked me the most was that it wasn’t just ordinary people saying it. It was the police and the military. Our very own security forces, telling the country that the people terrorising us were simply unknown. That never sat right with me. That was when the idea for the came to me.

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When I started telling people about the idea, the reaction split right down the middle. Some got it instantly, no convincing was needed, but a lot of people, including people very close to me, asked the same question first: don’t we already have Twitter and Instagram for this? 

I had to explain, over and over, that those platforms weren’t built for real-time reporting. If you’re an average person and you film an ongoing robbery and post it, it has to go viral before enough people see it and actually respond — and by then, whoever did it would be long gone.

Social media rewards what’s trending, not what’s happening ten minutes from your house, and these days it’s obvious that it wasn’t built for the kind of misinformation-proofing a safety tool actually needs.

What hurt even more, honestly, was realising the loudest support wasn’t coming from my own circle. I had a few hundred followers, so when we put out the call for beta testers and asked for general feedback, I assumed at least 20% of my own people would respond, but that wasn’t the case. 

It was strangers, people I’d never met, who actually showed up first.

I started commenting under security stories on Arise TV and Channels TV’s Instagram pages, one person at a time, pitching the app to people already venting about insecurity in the comments. Those strangers became our first real users, long before anyone in my network did.

The idea itself didn’t come from me alone. I met my co-founders, Tunji, in 2015 from secondary school, and Kosi around 2022. What brought us together on this project was a shared frustration with the state of security in Nigeria. 

Kosi had survived a “one-chance” robbery: he had gotten into the wrong bus and jumped out just in time before anything worse could happen.  Tunji remembers a night where he lay awake listening to gunshots coming from outside his own compound, wondering if anyone else could hear them, wondering who, if anyone, was coming to control the situation.

We were young, still in school, and we kept telling ourselves we’d build something “when we had more experience, more time, and more money.” At some point, we just asked each other, “What can we build now?” And that question solidified what the Wahala App is today.

What followed was three years of failure. We didn’t have the skills yet. My undergrad was in robotics and mechatronics, and I’m currently doing a master’s in mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan. None of that involves the software you use to build an app. 

The first attempt at building the app was a Figma file and a friend who tried to flesh it out, but their interests never really aligned, so it died. A second attempt with someone else went the same way: a good idea but no follow-through.

I remember my mentor once telling me that nobody hands you money or belief just because you have a good idea; if you have to build the first version out of toothpicks and paper, build it out of toothpicks and paper. That line followed me as I tried again. 

It wasn’t until October last year that things actually aligned, not just our schedules, but our experience. By then, we’d all levelled up in our own corners: I’d picked up enough software skills outside my formal training, Kosi had sharpened his mobile development skills, and Tunji had real production experience. We pushed, and pushed, and by late April this year, the app was live.

Once it was live, the three of us split along the lines of what we’d each spent years getting good at. I handle the app’s vision and mission, as well as the app’s AI feature.

The AI scrapes and verifies incident reports from credible Nigerian news sources around the clock, which populated the map with real data before we had many users at all.

Kosi, who has a degree in computer engineering and works in the human resources tech space, owns the mobile app, the user interface, and the notification urgency.

Tunji, who studied computer science and mathematics and has worked with Amazon and Twitch, built our entire mapping infrastructure from the ground up. His maps enable people to see that an incident happened ten minutes from them, not just read a headline about it.

Between the three of us, there’s no single founder-and-developer dynamic; we’re all technical, which means the product can move as fast as our shared urgency.

Watching the map fill in for the first time, even before real users joined, was its own kind of shock. In a single day, you’d see terrorism pins spreading across the North, banditry tearing through the Middle Belt, kidnappings locking down the South.

It looked like something out of an investigative documentary. I had to build a deliberate mental block to keep functioning, the way I imagine a doctor does, working around blood and death often enough that it stops being able to stop you. 

If I sat in the full weight of every notification, I’d never have shipped anything. What surprised me is that the data cuts both ways: the same feed that shows the worst of the country also shows when the police actually make an arrest or recover someone. 

We assume the government is failing at everything, all the time. The data doesn’t always agree. If people think the government is doing 20 per cent, the honest number is sometimes closer to 30. That realisation changed something for me about how I view law enforcement in the country. This is not me forgiving them for the times when they simply didnt do their job, but it has given me a clearer picture.

We’re a little over two months in now, with just over 100 users. A few weeks ago, a friend received a real-time alert in the app about an incident, and the story he’d been warned about didn’t become public until the following Tuesday or Wednesday, almost a week after he learned about it. When I shared this with the team, that moment solidified the work for us because that’s the app’s goal.

We’ve been doing a ton of research about the accessibility of the app, and we’ve found that in places like the South and Middle Belt, most people have some kind of Android device, even an old one, and that’s enough to run the app.

A photo of a suspicious car, a flooded road, a car involved in an accident, a building on fire, or a video of a robbery in progress, posted anonymously, can warn an entire street before the next person walks into the same danger. 

The harder case is the North, where the worst attacks happen, and connectivity is almost nonexistent. Nobody fleeing a gun stops to film it, but somebody in that community usually is documenting it. 

There’s an Instagram account, run by someone who goes by “the English Malam,” that somehow manages to get real footage of bandits on motorcycles, almost always after the fact. That information already exists. It’s just stuck on one person’s page instead of reaching the people who need it in time. 

Our plan is to put that same documenting instinct directly into the hands of community leaders, vigilantes, forest guards — people already doing this informally — and pair it with SMS-based alerts, so that knowing about danger doesn’t require owning a smartphone or having data, just a phone that can receive a text.

None of these fixes Nigeria’s security problem, and I’m not naive enough to think that one app can. What it can do is shrink the gap between something happening and the people nearby finding out, the same gap that, decades ago, left a school bus full of kids waiting on an expressway with nobody coming to help them. The number of Nigerians who die or disappear and become mere figures is alarming. I want a market trader’s warning to count as much as a politician’s private security detail does. That’s the thing I couldn’t stop thinking about long enough to leave it alone.

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Adedamola (30) left Nigeria for the UK in 2022, eight months pregnant, because she was determined not to give birth in Nigeria. Three years later, she’s a Canadian permanent resident through the express entry pool, thanks to an Instagram comment from a stranger. Here’s how she did it. 

Where do you live now, and when did you leave Nigeria?

I currently live in Calgary, Canada. I left Nigeria in August 2022 for the United Kingdom (UK). 

What pushed you to leave?

Honestly, I had always wanted to leave. I’ve wanted to go to Canada since I was young. But my dad didn’t believe it was right for his single children to travel; he wanted me to marry first, before I could make such a decision. So when I was younger, I’d applied to the United States (US) and Germany before, during my service year, and I still didnt get the visas

The major push for me came on my wedding day (in 2021), when a close friend told me she was leaving for the UK with her husband within days. I remember thinking, ” What am I doing here? Everybody is leaving me.” It also helped that I had gotten  married now, so my dad couldn’t ask, “Where’s your husband?” There was nothing stopping me anymore.

Add this to my fear of the Nigerian medical system as well. I didn’t want to have children in Nigeria. So had already begun researching schools in the UK on my wedding night, while we counted money.

Interesting story. How did you eventually end up in the UK?

When I was researching, I started with scholarships, but I realised that route would take too long, and I wanted something faster. So I started applying directly to self-funded schools. It’s actually very easy: you email the school, tell them your qualifications, and they go back and forth with you on fees and deposit.

I’d applied to and one other school, but it didn’t work out. Eventually, I found the University of Hull; it was cheap, the deposit was just £2,000, which was about ₦1 million at the time. 

Once the deposit cleared, the school upgraded my offer from conditional to unconditional and issued me a CAS (Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies). That’s what you use to apply for the student visa online. I was the main applicant since I was the student, and my husband came as my dependent.

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How much did the entire process cost?

The fees per person were: a visa fee of around £300–400, an Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) of £888.05, and a biometrics fee of about £69. The visa itself took about two weeks to come, which was fast.

So after paying the fees and getting the visa, what happened next?

I was admitted to the school, and I was expected to resume in September of 2022. By then, I was pregnant and due that same month. I was terrified of giving birth in Nigeria, and also worried that my admission would be revoked if I missed my registration window.

We got our passports back in August, and immediately after, we booked flights to leave in less than three days.

We paid ₦2.5 million for two tickets; meanwhile, people travelling around that time who could wait a few weeks paid as little as ₦500,000 for a family of three. My doctor was nervous about even certifying me to fly at 35 weeks. I couldn’t eat or drink much on the flight, and I was so anxious. We landed in the UK with very little money, about $150 in cash. 

Oh wow. Did you experience any culture shocks while settling in?

Moving to the UK, where the driver’s side is on the left, was really shocking for me. The cold was also a big shocker; it was a lot to take in, especially since we came when winter was about to start.

The biggest surprise of all was how supportive the system was. When I was anxious about the baby not moving, someone told me to just walk into the emergency department and explain how I felt. They attended to me immediately, even though I hadn’t done my registration yet.

We first stayed with a friend in Birmingham before moving to Hull, where my school helped us find accommodation. Because I was pregnant, our landlord gave us two rooms in a shared house and let us pay three months’ rent upfront. 

Balancing it all was genuinely one of the darkest periods of my life. My husband worked day and night to cover us once the prepaid rent ran out. I had to bring my daughter to class most days, and my lecturers would literally carry her while teaching. It was rough, but it got better with time.

That seems like a lot. What did work and the cost of living actually look like in the UK?

I first worked in a care home with elderly residents. The company had promised to sponsor our visas through a Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS), but once people’s student visas began to expire, they backed out. So I moved to a support work role with an organisation supporting people with disabilities, and stayed there until I left the UK.

There was a lot of racism in the UK, especially in healthcare workplaces, the kind of treatment that made me second-guess ever moving to the UK. 

When it comes to the cost of living, rent for a two-bedroom in the city centre was £650 a month. Food was actually cheap in the UK; we’d spend around £400 a month, mostly on African groceries since my husband doesn’t eat British food.

Between rent, bills, council tax, and food, we were spending at least £1,000 a month against a salary that maxed out around £1,600–1,800. It was genuinely hard to save.

Childcare nearly broke me too; it was around £60 an hour, and I was earning about £12 an hour. That’s part of why I only had one child while in the UK.

So why did you leave the UK for Canada?

The path to actually becoming a citizen was almost impossible. After your student visa, the UK gives you two years post-study to find a job that’ll sponsor you with a CoS. You need five years on that sponsorship before you can apply for indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), basically the UK’s version of a permanent residence permit and then more time after that (not sure about the exact number of years) before citizenship.

Employers in the UK know you need that CoS, so some of them treat you badly. I wasn’t willing to lock myself into five years of that.

On top of that, the UK kept floating policies to extend the timeline to ten years because so many immigrants had arrived during that period. I’d always wanted Canada anyway; I’d only gone to the UK first because I needed to leave Nigeria immediately.

How did the move to Canada happen?

I had been in Canada’s Express Entry pool since 2020, even before I married my husband. But I never received an invitation because my banking and customer service experience from Nigeria wasn’t in an occupation Canada was actively prioritising. 

Then one day on Instagram, I saw someone comment that she was leaving the UK for Canada, her exact words were, “thank God for healthcare.” I went straight to her DMs to ask what she meant because I had experience working in healthcare.

She told me Canada had started category-based draws, with healthcare as one of the targeted categories, and that support workers and care home staff were counted as healthcare workers, not just doctors and nurses. I had no idea.

That same night, I updated my Express Entry profile with my UK healthcare work experience. I had a score of 475; the draw cutoff was around 465–468. I got my invitation to apply within a month.

That’s so awesome. Can you break down how the Express Entry scoring works?

Two people can have identical scores and get completely different outcomes because Canada runs category-based draws — they announce which professions or skills they need at a given time: French speakers, healthcare workers, welders, and electricians are currently preferred over other professions. If your score is high but you’re not in the category they’re pulling from, you won’t get picked.

To enter the pool, you need a degree evaluation and a language test like IELTS. Your score is also shaped by your age, points drop by 5 at each birthday after 30, and your education level.

If you have a master’s or postgraduate degree, you’ll have more points than someone with just a bachelor’s. I already had a master’s degree from Nigeria, so that helped me.

For work experience, the maximum is three years of foreign experience, and you can combine different jobs to reach it. For me, that meant one year in UK healthcare plus two years from my banking job in Nigeria. There’s a you can use to estimate your score before you’re even in the pool.

What were your next steps after getting your visa, and how did you secure housing?

Once the visa was sorted, we started preparing for the move. I actually found an apartment online before landing, but my cousin, who lives here in Calgary, was an incredible help. They went to view the property in person for me to make sure everything was legit, and they helped pay the deposit and the first month’s rent. Having family on the ground to verify things took a massive weight off my shoulders before I even boarded the flight.

Did you experience anything that was different from the UK when you first arrived?

One of the biggest differences was childcare. In Canada, my second daughter got a daycare spot at six months old; I didn’t have postpartum depression partly because of that support. Childcare is cheaper and a whole lot easier to afford now.

How did the job hunt go once you got there?

I was honestly terrified. Everything I saw online about the Canadian job market scared me. A friend who’d been in Canada for years told me the trick was applying in volume: like about  10–15 jobs every single day. I treated it like a job itself, sometimes hitting 20 applications a day. Referrals didn’t work for me.

I also stopped using a generic CV. I tailored each CV to match the specific job description, using ChatGPT to help align my experience with each role’s requirements.

The interview process here is intense; I went through four or five stages for a single role. I eventually landed a customer advisor job at an insurance company in Calgary within three months of arriving, with no industry-specific experience required. They trained me for over a month before I started speaking to customers.

How does the cost of living actually compare between the two countries?

It’s high in Canada, too, but the earning power makes a difference. In the UK, I was earning around £1,600–1,800 a month, and my expenses alone were eating over £1,000 of that.

In Canada, I was earning about $1,515 biweekly, roughly $3,000 a month, while paying $1,300 for rent and about $150 for electricity. Even when my husband was between jobs, and I was the only one earning, I was still saving close to $1,000–$1,200 a month.

With both of us working, household income would be closer to $6,000, against maybe $2,000 in fixed costs.

Groceries are expensive here too, but it still feels more manageable overall than the UK, where bills, council tax, and childcare left almost nothing behind.

What’s your favourite thing about Canada so far?

I love how family-oriented it is. The childcare support alone changed everything for me, and so far, I haven’t experienced the kind of racism I dealt with constantly in UK workplaces. I feel respected as a human being here, and genuinely at peace.

Any advice for someone considering this route?

Do better research. I see people who’ve followed me online for years still asking me questions I’ve already answered publicly, instead of looking things up themselves. 

I’ve never used an agent for any visa, be it mine, my husband’s, or even my parents’. Agents aren’t doing anything special; if you’d qualify, you’d qualify either way. People get scammed because they refuse to do their own homework.

Any mistakes you’d want others to avoid?

I wish I’d researched the UK more before picking a school. If I’d gone somewhere bigger, say Birmingham, Manchester, or London, instead of Hull, I might have had more opportunities outside healthcare.

I also didn’t realise until after I’d already spent the money that some people were coming from Nigeria with a CoS already arranged, sponsored directly, with visa and accommodation covered. If I’d known that route existed, I could have skipped a lot of the financial stress.

On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your life in Canada right now?

Ten over ten. I feel relieved, at peace, and respected. I don’t have any complaints so far.

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�ճ���� is returning on August 22, 2026, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders, and partake in unfiltered conversations about building wealth and diversifying your income stream in a country like Nigeria. Real stories, expert advice you can actually use, and a community ready to build wealth together. .

Jumoke* (27) spent years building a career in Lagos until a global design contest she won convinced her that Nigeria was holding her back. She talks about her family’s nine-year wait for Canadian PR, the paperwork setbacks, and why Vancouver has made it all worthwhile.

Where do you currently live, and when did you leave Nigeria?

I currently live in British Columbia, Canada. I left Nigeria in August 2025.

What was life like for you in Nigeria before you left?

I already had a life built around my career. I had an existing community there. I worked as a visual designer, and I enjoyed it.

What pushed you to actually leave?

In 2018,  Adobe was running a contest sponsored by Marvel and Sony, and I won. But I was in the wrong country for it — it was a whole back-and-forth, and it took a year before everything was sorted before I could even get the prize I’d won. Just being in a country that wasn’t on their eligible list cost me that much time and stress. That was one of my “I have to move” moments. I felt there’d be more opportunities for me outside Nigeria.

Why Canada specifically?

The United States (US) was actually my first choice early on. I wanted to study Visual Effects (VFX) at a school in Los Angeles so I could eventually work at Marvel Studios. But as the changes in US politics took it off the list. Canada became the next option, mainly because my mum had already been here for a few years and understood how the system worked. Family was a big part of it. It’s also close enough to the US that if I ever wanted to move there later, I still can.

Walk me through the actual route you took to Canada.

I came here as a Permanent Resident (PR) through my mum. I didn’t have to go through the route a lot of people take, which is more strenuous, but mine still took time; we started the process in 2017, and it only clicked last year.

My mum had been there long enough to qualify for permanent residency. Once that clicked for her, she applied for the rest of the family. The COVID-19 pandemic caused some disruptions that delayed things. All in, it took almost a decade, but I’m here now as a permanent resident.

Yikes, nine years is a lot. What did the process actually involve once it got moving?

A lot of forms, honestly. It felt like one small mistake, even a stray full stop, could stop the whole thing from moving forward. There was a lot of back-and-forth with the paperwork. You had to fill out eight to ten forms per person, and we moved as a family, so imagine all of us filling that many forms each, all at once.

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What documents did you need to have in place?

Birth certificates, school certificates, basically, whatever certificates you had pertaining to school. A police background check. Photos showing family relationships, so pictures of us together, and my parents’ marriage certificate. And bank statements — I think what they also wanted to see there was proof of the jobs I’d held and payments from those jobs. 

Roughly how much did the whole process cost?

The PR application itself costs roughly $10,000. The flights for all of us came to about ₦15 million in total. We also had to do medicals twice, actually, at different stages — one was basic tests, the other was more in-depth, with X-rays and blood tests for certain diseases, which cost about ₦250,000 per person.

Other than COVID, were there any setbacks that slowed things down?

Honestly, I’d say the forms. It felt like our forms kept getting lost, or there’d be mistakes that genuinely shouldn’t have been there. It would take months for them to come back and say a detail was missing, you’d refill it, wait another four or five months hoping for good news, and then hear it’s something else missing. The whole thing was frustrating.

What stood out to you in your first few weeks in Canada?

The people, honestly. Everyone was so much nicer than I expected. 

In my second week here, I walked into Walmart when a Nigerian woman approached me, noticing I was new. She gave me her number and invited me to a Bible study where I met other Nigerians and people from different backgrounds. That’s how I started building community here. 

Also, the system just works. When Google Maps says the bus will arrive in three minutes, it does exactly that.

What do you love most about Canada so far?

Being outside. Where I live, there are mountains everywhere, and the greenery is nothing like what we have in Lagos. Beyond the environment, there’s a feeling of possibility. I no longer feel that government incompetence or random hindrances will stop me from achieving anything I work towards.

And what don’t you love?

The pace, honestly. I don’t feel like I have enough time to actually enjoy things — I’m always on the move, always working. I think that’s partly because I’m still building my life here, so I have to lock in now if I want the future I’m picturing for myself.

Interesting, do you think that’s a Canada thing, or just you being ambitious?

Good question, actually. I think it’s more of a Western thing, you know, always being busy, leaving little room for family and friends unless you intentionally create it. I’m learning this. 

How have you been building community for yourself there?

I’d say I’m an introverted extrovert, so it doesn’t come naturally — I have to push myself, especially after a few days stuck indoors working. But even with how nice people have been, I still find myself too busy for the friends I do have. So it’s been about intentionally carving out time and accepting that things have to be scheduled here, not spontaneous like back home.

What’s the cost of living like over there?

I didn’t have a job for about ten months after arriving, which, honestly, led to another shock for me: how much the government actually helps you. There’s a program through community centres that serves citizens and new PRs, and that program paid me 1,060 Canadian Dollars (CAD) a month to cover rent, groceries, and living costs while I looked for work. That’s what sustained me and allowed me to contribute to the household rather than leave everything to my parents.

Rents are pretty expensive here. A friend of mine has a one-bedroom and told me she got a good deal, and she still pays around CAD 1,600 a month. 

For transport, I use a transit card, about $2.75 a tap, and any trip within roughly an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes of that first tap is free. Minimum wage here is around $18 an hour, and groceries usually cost me about $70 for a two-week stretch. Friends who’ve been here longer say prices have increased, but right now it seems pretty fair to me.

Do you miss Nigeria, and what specifically?

Sometimes, yes, mostly the community of people. Family, friends, church. I have a church here too, but it’s not quite the same. I miss being able to call someone up to hang out or go to friends’ houses spontaneously.

Any plans to move back, or just visit?

Definitely planning to visit, even next year. Moving back, though, I don’t think so. I might move to another country other than Canada someday, but unless Nigeria sorts itself out, I don’t see myself moving back permanently.

Looking back at the visa process, what should people taking a similar route watch out for?

The route I came through isn’t exactly common, so that’s worth keeping in mind. But generally, make sure anything you state on your forms can be backed up with actual documents, your certificates, your birth certificate, everything. 

I didn’t have my master’s certificate on hand at one point and had to send a statement of completion instead, which, luckily, still worked. Triple-check everything before you submit.

And now that you’ve actually lived there for a while, any mistakes you’d avoid next time?

I wish I had connected more while I was still in Nigeria and maybe even gotten an internship before leaving, even something small, because most employers here want “Canadian experience” no matter how strong your background is elsewhere. They want to see that you’ve worked somewhere in Canada first, even if it was volunteer work. I ended up volunteering to build that experience.

I wish I’d taken LinkedIn more seriously earlier; building connections and a presence there before moving would have helped, since referrals matter a lot here.

What do you do for work now?

I still design. I volunteered with an organisation for about a month. They saw my portfolio and the work I was already delivering, and then told me about a countrywide summer programme that runs for about eight weeks. I applied, and I got it. Now, I’m hoping they retain me permanently, but I’m still sending out applications just in case.

On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate life in Canada so far?

I’ll say eight. The two points I’m taking off are for the family and community I built back in Nigeria, which I don’t have here yet. Outside of that, everything’s been enjoyable. I haven’t run into anything particularly frustrating yet, no political unrest, no government incompetence — though I know I’m still fairly new, so there’s a lot I haven’t experienced yet.

�ճ���� is returning on August 22, 2026, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders, and partake in unfiltered conversations about building wealth and diversifying your income stream in a country like Nigeria. Real stories, expert advice you can actually use, and a community ready to build wealth together. .

From public punishments and midnight raids to political fear, executions, and soldiers enforcing order on the streets, life under military rule shaped an entire generation of Nigerians. These Nigerians share the memories they still carry decades later.

“Seeing your mum beg not to be beaten is not something any child should experience” — Tosin*, 49, M

One of my earliest memories of military rule is watching my mum almost get beaten because she hadn’t participated in environmental sanitation.

I can still remember how she begged. As a child, I didn’t fully understand what was happening. I just knew I was terrified. I kept calling my dad, hoping he would come and stop whatever was about to happen.

People often talk about how disciplined Nigerians were during military rule, but they don’t always discuss the fear that underpinned that discipline.

Seeing your mum beg to avoid being beaten is not something any child should experience. More than anything else, that’s what I remember from those years.

“Armed policemen threw our belongings into the street at midnight” — Henry, 47, M

One of my earliest memories is being woken up in the middle of the night by armed policemen. I was about six years old.

They broke into our house and started throwing our things outside. I remember watching them empty our home onto the street while everyone around me panicked.

At that age, I didn’t understand what was happening. I just knew that my parents, the people who always seemed to have everything under control, were afraid.

As I got older, I began to connect the dots. My father was a journalist at the time.

I never got the chance to ask my parents exactly what happened that night because they died in a car crash about four years later. But that memory has stayed with me all my life. Whenever I think about military rule, that’s the first thing that comes to mind.

“I saw people being assassinated in broad daylight” — Segun, 51, M

The military years were terrible. I was in my first year at university, and on my way home, I would sometimes hear about or witness the aftermath of people being assassinated in broad daylight. There was tension everywhere. The country felt unstable, as though anything could happen at any moment. Riots and protests were common, and there was a constant feeling that things could spiral out of control.

Looking back now, I have mixed feelings. Military rule was frightening, but the scale of insecurity Nigeria has experienced in recent years through insurgency and kidnappings is something I don’t think many of us imagined back then.

The fear felt different. During military rule, many people feared the government. Today, Nigerians often fear danger from many directions.

“I watched men hanging from Third Mainland Bridge on TV” — Ife*, 55, F

I was only 13 or 14, but I still remember watching reports about arrests and executions on television.

One day, I saw men hanging from the Third Mainland Bridge after they were accused of plotting against the government.

As a child, I didn’t understand politics. I didn’t know who they were or what they were supposed to have done. I just remember being scared. Looking back, I don’t even know why my parents let me watch it.

The whole country felt tense. Even as a child, you could sense it. It felt as if everyone was waiting for something bad to happen.

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“You could get flogged for jumping a queue” — Edirin, 54, F

People like to say Nigerians were more disciplined during military rule, and there is some truth to that.

If there was a queue, you joined it. If you tried to jump the line or cause trouble, you could get flogged in public. Soldiers were everywhere, and no one wanted to draw their attention. But what many people overlook is that the order came out of fear.

Today, people insult presidents, governors, and politicians online. Back then, you couldn’t do that. You watched what you said and who you said it to.

There may have been more order, but there was far less freedom.

“Parents could be flogged for not sending their children to school” — Frank, 47, M

One of my strongest memories is of the military governors in Abia State.

There was one in particular, Governor Ike Nwosu, who had a reputation for showing up at school gates without warning to make sure children were actually attending classes.

If he found children roaming around during school hours, their parents could be punished or flogged for failing to send them to school. It sounds unbelievable now, but that was the atmosphere at the time.

Everyone was afraid of getting on the wrong side of authority. The fear wasn’t limited to adults. Children felt it too.

“My parents banned us from discussing politics outside the house” — Oke*, 50, F

If you’re under 30, you probably don’t understand why some older Nigerians react so strongly whenever military rule is mentioned.

One of the moments that stayed with me was the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other Ogoni activists.

I remember how shocked everyone was. After it happened, my parents banned us from discussing anything political outside the house.

My father would even lower the television volume whenever the news came on. At the time, I didn’t understand why. I thought he was simply being cautious.

Now I understand that people were afraid. They didn’t know who was listening or what repeating the wrong thing could lead to.

That kind of fear changes how people live.

“We never imagined they would actually kill him” — Lanre*, 48, M

Young Nigerians complain about the government today, but at least they can complain openly.

During military rule, people became careful about what they said and whom they said it to. You didn’t know who might report you. You didn’t know who was listening.

The moment I realised things were different was when Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed.

Most of us thought the government would lock him up forever. We thought they would silence him somehow. We never imagined they would actually kill him.

I remember the shock when the news spread. It felt as though the whole country stopped for a moment.

That was when many people realised that nobody was untouchable.

�ճ���� is returning on August 22, 2026, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders, and partake in unfiltered conversations about building wealth and diversifying your income stream in a country like Nigeria. Real stories, expert advice you can actually use, and a community ready to build wealth together. .

After Victoria graduated from university, she spent two years applying for scholarships but was rejected multiple times. In 2024, it finally clicked, and she moved to the Netherlands on a full scholarship. In this story, she tells us how she did it.

Where do you live currently, and when did you leave Nigeria?

I’m in Wageningen, Netherlands. I moved here in August 2024 to start my master’s degree.

What made you want to leave Nigeria?

After earning my bachelor’s degree, I wanted to pursue a master’s abroad to gain exposure to higher-quality education. But, like many Nigerians, I didn’t have the money to fund studies overseas, so I started looking for scholarships. I actually began the search during my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) year; that’s even when I got my passport, specifically because I was already planning to apply. 

Before you left the country, what were you doing?

I studied agricultural administration at FUNAAB, so my degree had a management component and wasn’t purely science-based. During NYSC, I was posted to teach agriculture at a school. After that, I got a job as an HR officer.

I worked for two years while also being heavily involved in community-focused projects. I volunteered with Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly on zero hunger and quality education, and I co-founded a waste-management business that converted tomato waste into tomato purée.

When did you begin looking for scholarship opportunities?

I’ve always been looking, even during my NYSC. I was just applying everywhere and getting rejected for about two years before I finally got one.
I applied to the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), Italy, and the Netherlands. I was looking for full funding wherever I could find it. I ultimately focused more on the Netherlands because of its strength in agricultural studies; is ranked the best agricultural university in Europe, and I’m very passionate about agriculture.

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Walk me through the application process. How did you actually apply to WUR?

The application for admission is submitted through the platform. You submit your CV, your official university transcript and a motivation letter. I applied to the Development and Rural Innovation program and got my offer of admission within two weeks. For your CV, I recommend using the Erasmus CV format.

The scholarship process began after the admission offer. I was nominated for the (ASP) in March 2024. The nomination comes from the university; you don’t apply for it directly, you’re selected after you’ve been admitted.

Once nominated, you’re given a two-week assignment to write a research proposal and answer specific motivation letter questions they set. Then, if your assignment is accepted, you’ll be invited to an interview.

Interesting. What was the interview like?

They ask you to explain your research proposal to show that you actually wrote it yourself. They also ask you to revisit your motivation: what your goals are, and how you will be relevant in Africa or the world when you’re done. I expressed myself clearly, and by May, I got the success email. That was when I knew I had the scholarship. I packed my bags and moved to the Netherlands.

What did the scholarship actually cover?

Everything. Tuition fees (over £25,000), travel costs (including a return ticket to Nigeria if I want to visit), and a monthly stipend of about £1,200. The total package is close to £100,000.

They also handled all the immigration documentation themselves. I didn’t need to show proof of funds or arrange anything for the visa. I just took my passport and my scholarship letter to the Nigerian embassy, they stamped it, and that was it.

That’s very impressive. Did you have to pay for anything during the entire process?

The only thing I paid for was the IELTS exam, which was about ₦96,000 at the time, and maybe my transport to the embassy. Funny enough, I paid for my IELTS exam with money I won in a Big Brother Africa prediction contest. I won $150. So technically, even that, I didn’t pay from my savings.

Wow, that’s so cool. I’m curious, though, how did you tailor your work experience to fit the programme? 

First off, it’s very important that you don’t put things in your CV that don’t connect to the program you’re applying for. When I was building my CV, I didn’t include my HR experience because it didn’t align with the program I was applying to. I focused on my volunteer work with NGOs advancing the SDG goals, specifically zero hunger and quality education, and on a waste management business I co-founded with a friend. The kind of work that impacts your community and seeks to solve a problem sustainably is exactly what these programs want to see.

Even if the experience feels small, like a student project, if it connects to what you want to study, put it in. They want to see that you’re already making an impact, not just that you have professional experience in any field.

And the motivation letter, how should someone approach it?

This one is very important, and I could go on and on about it. Don’t write a secondary school essay. Don’t write “I am very skilled in data analysis, and I got a first class,” that’s not what they’re looking for. A motivation letter has to tell a story; mine began with me being the first girl in my community to attend university. I narrated how my parents struggled to fund my education, how, despite that difficulty, I pushed through, got strong grades, started volunteering, and co-founded a business. I built a narrative that identifies a problem, a struggle, resilience, and a vision for solving that problem.

One of the girls who got the Africa Scholarship Programme this year wrote her entire letter around the concept of Abiku, the Yoruba belief in children who are fated to die young and keep returning. She framed her life story through that lens. That’s the kind of thing that makes a recruiter stop, because the question they’re really trying to answer is: what will carry this person through two years of a hard master’s program when everything feels like too much? Not necessarily the skills they have.

You mentioned two years of rejections before this. What kept you going?

I started applying in 2022, and I didn’t get a scholarship until 2024. At some point, I almost gave up. But here’s what I always say now: the scholarship application you don’t submit is already a rejection. So keep submitting. Even if you don’t feel ready, submit. You never know the one that’d click. The breakthrough might come from the application you almost didn’t send.

What was it like when you arrived in the Netherlands?

The thing that hit me hardest was how straightforward Dutch people are. There’s a difference between being rude and being direct, but sometimes with Dutch people, that line is very thin. I once watched a student tell a lecturer in the middle of class that her published paper was “trash.” The lecturer felt so bad that she started sobbing, but to him, it was just critical feedback. I’ve noticed the same straightforwardness among Dutch people in other instances. That kind of thing takes real adjustment to get used to.

Another shocking thing was the weather. I arrived at the end of summer, and I was not prepared for how cold it was or how dark it got by 4 pm. In the first six months, I felt depressed, homesick and lonely for most of the time, but after a while I got used to it. It also helps that there are strong Black communities here, especially if you ever go to bigger cities like Amsterdam.

What’s the cost of living there like? How far does the €1,200 actually go?

If you’re frugal, you can survive and even save on the monthly stipend. Rent is the biggest thing that takes your money here. It typically runs between £500 and £600 a month, so almost half the stipend goes there immediately. If you’re disciplined with the rest, you should be able to save at least 30% of the monthly stipend, but if you’re an odogwu spender, it will not be enough.

Yeah, that makes sense. Can students work on the side?

Yes, as a student, you can work up to 16 hours a week, but only if it doesn’t affect your grades. If your performance drops below the scholarship’s threshold, they’ll withdraw the funding and send you back. So be careful. 

If you speak Dutch, the opportunities are wide open. But without Dutch, you’re mostly limited to manual work like cleaning, babysitting, delivery, and warehouse jobs. Formal office roles almost always require Dutch.

What do you love most about the Netherlands?

The peace. Honestly, if you are living here legally and your papers are in order, you will have a genuinely good life. It’s a law-abiding, structured country. There’s no chaos. I sometimes just stay home, watching YouTube and working on my data analytics skills, and I feel completely settled. That kind of stability is something I deeply appreciate.

Is there anything that has made living in the Netherlands difficult?

If I’m going to be honest, there hasn’t really been. The hardest thing I’ve experienced, I’d say, was when I wanted to go to Nigeria to do my thesis fieldwork, and the university said I couldn’t because Nigeria is on its red zone list for security. That was so painful. I’m a Nigerian student trying to return to my home country for research, but my institution didn’t consider it safe enough. I had to conduct all my interviews online instead. It worked out, but it was so painful. It’s really sad that Nigeria has that reputation. I’m always having to defend my country to people here.

Do you miss Nigeria?

Don’t make me cry. I miss it so much. I miss the social warmth, the fact that there’s always someone who cares what’s happening with you. Here, you mind your business, whether you like it or not. The loneliness is always in the background, even when you have friends.

At some point, you realise you can’t fully get used to their way of living, and you still want that intimacy. But for stability? I prefer life here. The trade-off is clear to me.

Do you have any plans to return?

I’m not moving back permanently, even though I miss home. My scholarship includes a return ticket, and they encourage you to come back; it looks good on their records and keeps Nigeria on the list of countries they recruit from. So I’ll probably visit and come back. That’s what most of the previous scholars do. My student visa is valid for two years, so there’s flexibility.

Any mistakes you’d warn people about?

I got so locked into academics that I didn’t attend conferences, even though my scholarship covers conference costs. I was a bit intimidated. As a Black person in a very white academic space, that feeling of not fully belonging is real, even when nobody is being hostile. So, my advice is to throw yourself in anyway. Talk to your supervisors, share your ideas even when they feel half-formed, and make friends outside your immediate circle. Those connections are how internships happen, how PhD opportunities come up, and how you build a life here.

What would you say to anyone who wants to follow this exact path?

Do it yourself. I cannot stress this enough: do not use agents. All the information you need is on Google, on the official university website, and it’s free. Agents will take your money and tell you things you could have found yourself. Research the scholarship and the program; tailor your application.

And be honest with yourself about whether you actually like reading. This is a master’s program; it can be rigorous. If you are not a reader, this is not the route for you. But if you are, get your passport, get your transcripts, build a CV that reflects the work you’ve actually done, write a heartfelt motivation letter, and keep applying until something lands. The application you don’t submit is already a rejection.

On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate life in the Netherlands?

It’s an eight. I want to say ten because life here is genuinely sweet, peaceful, structured and straightforward. But ten is for God. What I will say is that the job market, especially if you’re in the biotech space, is excellent. Organisations like Unilever recruit students here for internships that often lead directly to permanent work visas. If you position yourself well and put yourself out there, you will get what you’re looking for.

�ճ���� is returning on August 22, 2026, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders, and partake in unfiltered conversations about building wealth and diversifying your income stream in a country like Nigeria. Real stories, expert advice you can actually use, and a community ready to build wealth together. .

Folake* (22) left Nigeria in November 2023, one year before completing her Mass Communication degree, to move to the UK on a skilled worker visa. In this story, she tells us how she moved with her family, how she got the care job and the reasons she left in the first place.

Where do you currently live, and when did you leave Nigeria?

I live in the UK. I left Nigeria in  2023.

What were you doing before you left?

I was a 19-year-old university student., I was in 300-level and I was studying Mass Communication.

Wow, you had just one year to go. What made you decide not to finish?

Honestly, I didn’t put much thought into it. Nigeria was getting worse. It wasn’t that things were so bad for me personally at the time, but you could see that it wasn’t going to get better anytime soon.

So I looked at the situation and asked myself: “Okay, finish school, and then what?” I would have had a communications degree, but that wasn’t going to get me very far in that environment. The UK felt like a place where I could try things, switch directions if something didn’t work out, and not feel like I was starting from zero every time.

Was it hard to leave school behind?

A year before I moved, I had already tried to make it happen on my own; this was around my 100-level second-semester, during the long ASUU strike. I got a job lead and tried to apply for a visa, but it wasn’t coming through quickly enough, so I let it go and figured it would happen when it did.

By the time I got to 300 level, things were looking really grim, and there was a change on the family front: my parents were moving to the UK. I had to decide whether to stay back to finish or leave with them. I decided to leave, and having my parents involved made the difference this time around. If I had done it alone, it would have been a real struggle, financially and emotionally. But with my family’s support, I barely had to deal with the logistics. I went to my embassy interview; they called me to say my visa was ready, and I packed my bags.

Walk me through the visa application process. What type is it and how does it work?

I’m on a skilled worker visa. Basically, you need to get a job with an employer who is willing to sponsor you. The UK has a list of jobs that qualify under the skilled worker route, including healthcare, some tech roles, and others. My job was in mental health support, which falls under healthcare.

Once your employer agrees to sponsor you, they issue you something called a Certificate of Sponsorship. You take that, along with your other documents, and submit an application to the Home Office for your visa.

What documents did you need to submit?

The Certificate of Sponsorship number, your passport, and proof of funds. Sometimes they also ask for a job offer letter and a contract of employment. In my case, I had the offer letter but not the contract yet; the contract came when I arrived in the UK. So in my application, I noted that the contract wouldn’t be available until I was on the ground, and that was fine.

Your job was in mental health support. How did you find it?

My aunt knew someone who owned a care company and mentioned there were openings. That was it. It was an entry-level role, so I didn’t need prior experience in the field. As long as you can show good communication skills, demonstrate that you’re willing to be trained, and you’re good at your maths and English abilities, you can get those jobs. It’s a bit harder now because employers want more certifications upfront, but at the time, the interview was enough.

Are skilled worker visa holders allowed to work other jobs aside from the one that sponsored them? 

On a skilled worker visa, you’re allowed to take on additional part-time work, but you can’t exceed 20 hours a week across those extra roles. The other important thing is that the extra work has to be in the same industry as the job that brought you in. Because I came in through mental health support, I can do any other type of care work on the side — domiciliary care, a care home, or children’s support. It just has to stay within the care space.

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What’s the pay like? Is it worth it in your opinion?

It’s around £12.50 an hour, though you get more if you work on the weekends or public holidays. You can earn up to £13 to £15 on those days. For the kind of care work involved, I think some people should be paid more; the rate should reflect the level of need you’re managing, because not every client is the same. But it’s not as if they’re underpaying you. It’s a livable wage. If you’re working four days a week, doing 12-hour shifts, you can earn between £1,800 and £2,000 a month. If you pick up extra work, you can get to around £2,500.

And what does monthly life cost where you live?

My city is cheaper than London, but it’s not cheap either. If you live on your own, your rent, council tax, water, and electricity should come to around £1,200-£1,500 a month. Add food, phone, and any other bills, and £1,500 is a realistic ceiling. So the margin isn’t massive, especially on a single income, but it’s workable. That phase doesn’t last forever if you’ve got a plan.

What was your first week in the UK like?

Very uneventful. I arrived in winter, went straight from the airport to the house, and was indoors almost the entire time. I was doing my mandatory online training before starting the job, surrounded by family. There wasn’t much culture shock right away; it was more gradual. The thing that stood out eventually was how individualistic life here is. 

In Nigeria, you walk around, and people acknowledge you; you know people’s business, and they know yours. Here, everyone is on their own. Nobody is really paying attention to what’s going on with you. That took some adjusting.

Have you been able to find community?

It’s difficult, honestly. I think it’s easier if you come in as a student because you’re in class with people, and you can find your people naturally. As a young worker, it’s harder. At most of the places I’ve worked, I’ve been the youngest person by a significant margin, so connecting with colleagues hasn’t been easy. I did a diploma programme here to qualify for university entry, and that’s where I’ve made a few friends. I’ve heard Hinge has a “friends” mode that some people use to find community. I haven’t tried it personally, but people say it works.

What do you love most about being in the UK?

I love the financial freedom. I wasn’t working in Nigeria, so I was fully dependent on my parents. Now that I earn, I can make my own plans, and they are likely to actually work out. There’s not much that will derail you if you’ve got something going. It’s a stable economy. That stability is everything.

Is there anything you genuinely don’t like?

It’s boring and lonely. Especially when you didn’t grow up here, and you don’t already have a ready-made social circle. That’s the real trade-off nobody talks about enough. I don’t regret moving with my family. I genuinely could not imagine doing this alone.

Have you experienced racism or prejudice?

Nothing overt, at least not to my face. The Brits are a bit more posh about it, unlike Americans. I’ve had a few strange looks and a few interactions that would have gone differently if I were someone else. There are experiences at work, even from clients who are supposed to be experiencing mental health difficulties, where you can tell race is a factor in the way they treat you. If you’re in the middle of an episode and you can still clock that I’m Black and say something racist, that says something about you.

The racism I face has been more systemic. There are things my white colleagues are afforded the space to do that I would face consequences for, and sometimes the person enforcing that isn’t even white themselves. It’s internalised hate. And there’s also the reality of being an immigrant whose visa is tied to the job; that vulnerability means many people absorb behaviour from employers they absolutely shouldn’t have to.

Do you miss Nigeria?

Yes. I miss the lifestyle — being a student, being carefree, not having this much at stake. I miss the way you can just be yourself back home, around people who’ve known you your whole life. The freedom of not having a visa hanging over your decisions. I’m not the type to tolerate rubbish from people, but I find myself having to calculate things here in a way I never would have at home. And the food. I miss the food.

Do you have plans to go back?

Not permanently, no, at least not based on what I can see right now. I might not stay in the UK forever, but I don’t see myself moving back to Nigeria. My plan is to get my midwifery degree here, and once I build something like that here, it wouldn’t make sense to leave a pound-earning life unless things seriously improve back home. Nigeria needs help. It really does. As for visiting, yes, I want to, but the degree is coming out of pocket, so financially it’s just not happening right now.

What advice would you give someone who wants to follow this exact route?

Build yourself up as quickly as you can once you arrive. Get your driver’s licence done. Get your care certifications, your National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) Level 3 or Level 5, whatever level is appropriate for where you’re starting from. 

The reason this matters is that it gives you options. There is a lot of employer abuse that happens in this industry, especially with immigrants, and the visa situation makes people feel trapped. If you’ve got your certifications, you can move to a different job. 

So don’t stay in a situation that doesn’t serve you just because you’re afraid of losing sponsorship. Start job hunting while you’re still in that job, make the transition, but don’t let bad employers hold you hostage.

On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your life in the UK?

I’d say a Seven. I don’t like stress, and this is stressful. I’m happy, though. Every plan I have is moving, slowly, but moving. Nothing is derailing it. That’s what I came here for, and it’s happening. So seven feels right.

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Kelechi (21) left Nigeria at the end of 2023 on a fully funded scholarship to study medicine in Moscow, only for it to be discontinued. In this story, he compares life in Russia to Nigeria and shares how he makes ends meet after being left financially stranded by the Nigerian government.

Where do you currently live, and when did you leave Nigeria?

I live in Moscow, Russia. I left Nigeria in late 2023.

What inspired you to leave Nigeria?

Honestly, I didn’t have a particularly strong reason to leave. I just got an opportunity, and I took it. I had already gained admission into the University of Lagos (UNILAG) to study medicine, but then the scholarship for Russia came through, and I chose that instead.

How did you get the scholarship?

It was a government scholarship—a bilateral education agreement between Russia and Nigeria. Russia covered the tuition in full, and Nigeria was supposed to handle transport and upkeep for the duration of the studies.

However, the programme is officially dead as of 2026. They’ve cancelled it and issued saying they won’t be accepting new applicants. Those of us already here can finish our studies since the Russian government handles tuition. But the stipends for upkeep from Nigeria have basically stopped.

They picked students from each state, and selection was based on their grades in the West African Examination Council (WAEC) exams.

So, what were the first few weeks in Moscow like?

The weather hit me hard. I wasn’t prepared for it. We were warned that the temperature went to negative figures, but knowing and feeling are two completely different things. It was my first time seeing snow, my first time experiencing that kind of cold. It was almost painful, but eventually, I got used to it.

The other thing was how individualistic everyone is. People just mind their business. They respect each other’s space and just get on with their lives. Coming from Nigeria, that’s very different.

What about the language? How did you get around that?

So, the government actually accounted for that. None of us spoke Russian, so we were enrolled in a mandatory one-year Russian language programme. Nine months of actual instruction and three months of summer break. It was after that year of Russian studies that we started our first year of university. It wasn’t optional; you had to do it. I speak above-average Russian now.

When you eventually started university, what surprised you most about the academic environment?

The lecturers, honestly. Some of them actually love their jobs, and you can tell. It’s not hard to reach them; their email addresses and contact information are accessible, and they’re willing to help. The resources are also on another level compared to what I expected coming from Nigeria.

In Nigeria, access to a cadaver is a big deal—like a once-in-a-blue-moon situation. In Russia, we have cadavers, 3D life-size anatomical models, robotic parts, AI-assisted abdominal models, and photo-realistic brain models. When we studied rat anatomy, every single student got their own rat brain to dissect. Every student got their own histology specimen. In physiology, we had Electrocardiogram (ECG) machines and heart rate monitors that everyone could use.

The class sizes are capped at 20 students, so there’s always enough space and resources for everyone.

When are you expected to graduate?

If things go according to plan, 2029.

Does the scholarship have any academic performance requirements?

Yes. Your GPA cannot fall below 3.0. The Russian government is paying your tuition, and it’s not cheap; it is about ₦20 million. So if your grades drop below that point, you get expelled and lose your student visa. You’ll need to leave the country.

Are your classes taught in Russian or English?

I study in Russian, but some students in the programme study in English; it depends on what you choose.

Let’s talk about money. What did the Nigerian government stipend look like?

The programme had been running for over 15 to 20 years. I heard from people who have been here for a while that they originally got a consistent $500 monthly stipend. But as Nigeria’s economic situation worsened, the payments began to decline.

By the time I got there, they’d unofficially cut it by about 60 per cent, and it wasn’t just the amount; the frequency dropped too. Instead of monthly, they were paying every six months, every eight months, sometimes once a year, and even then, it was almost never in full.

In my first year, they paid us in full, the stipends for all twelve months, all at once. After that, it was less and less frequent until they stopped altogether. At this point in 2026, I’m not expecting any more payments; that’s just my honest read of the situation.

Is $500 a month even enough to live on in Moscow?

If they paid it properly and consistently, it would be doable. You’d still have to be very disciplined with money, though. You can’t be careless, eating at restaurants every week, but it’s manageable for a student.

The problem is that as they reduced it and made it irregular, it became nowhere near enough. It began forcing people to take on extra work to make ends meet, which in turn started affecting academics, which is the main reason we’re here.

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That’s so sad. So, what kind of jobs were students taking on?

Restaurant jobs, delivery, call centres, your typical part-time stuff. But the one I’d say is the most useful, and the most viable for Nigerians specifically, is teaching English. Almost every Nigerian can teach English, and if you pick up enough Russian to communicate, you can teach English to Russian kids and actually make money. That’s what has worked for me here.

And how do you balance that with medical school?

The balance is almost non-existent. Medical school doesn’t give you that kind of breathing room. Some people work just enough hours to cover the minimum for the week and keep their grades intact. Others sacrifice academic performance to work more and be more comfortable. It’s a choice nobody should have to make, but that’s where we see ourselves now.

Has the Russia-Ukraine war had any impact on your daily life in Moscow?

Not really. The war is in Ukraine; it’s not something you feel in Moscow the way people outside might imagine. The scholarship programme itself didn’t end because of the war. Other countries that also have issues with Russia are still bringing students in. It’s purely Nigeria’s situation that ended our programme.

The one thing I’ll say is that the cost of living has gone up a bit. Meat, for example, used to be really, really cheap here; now it has tripled in cost. Milk too. But these are not life-threatening changes. We can still afford to eat. It’s just not as cheap as it used to be.

Have you experienced racism in these three years?

I feel like racism is non-existent in Moscow. I think bias exists everywhere and in everyone. But Moscow is a proper metropolis. There are enough Africans who have lived here long enough that the locals are used to having us around. You’re not a new thing; you’re on the same level as everyone else, and that’s how they treat you.

The only time you feel any kind of friction is when there’s a language barrier. If you can’t communicate with someone as well as they’d like, that creates awkwardness. But that’s a language issue, not a race issue.

After your studies, do you see yourself coming back to Nigeria?

Of course. Nigeria is my country. I love home. After I graduate, I want to come back and contribute by using what I’ve learned here to do something useful back home. But that doesn’t mean I’m closing the door on Russia either.

If I can get documents like the , which is like a permanent residence card, that would let me move freely between both countries, I’d want to do that. I’m keeping all my options open. But home is home.

On a scale of one to ten, how happy are you in Moscow?

I’d say a nine. It’s a modern city with working infrastructure and an incredible transport system. If the train app says you’ll be somewhere in two hours, you’ll be there in exactly two hours. It has everything: good education, flexible work, opportunities, and new experiences. The only reason it’s not a ten is the war.

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In 2021, Austin (42) left Nigeria for the United Kingdom (UK) with his wife because he didn’t want to raise their two children in a country with high insecurity and low living standards. Two years later, he moved to Canada for an even better life. This is how he did it.

Where do you live now, and when did you leave Nigeria?

I’m currently living in Ontario, Canada, but it’s been a long journey. I left Nigeria in October 2021, and I went to the UK first. I never even thought I’d end up in Canada. My family and I spent about two years in the UK, then moved to Canada in December 2023. 

What was life like in Nigeria before you left, and what finally made you decide to go?

I worked for an investment company as a stockbroker and also had some business interests on the side. Things were genuinely going well. Still, I’d always wanted to leave, though I wasn’t desperate about it. It was one of those things where I thought, if it happens, fine; if it doesn’t, fine.

Then Buhari became president, and things started to nose-dive. The EndSARS situation happened, and by then, I already had kids and was just starting to look at everything differently.

The moment that really triggered my need to leave was one day when NEPA brought light, and my eldest daughter, who was just about three years old at the time, shouted: “Up NEPA!” I sat there thinking that this little girl was already celebrating electricity as if it were a miracle. My parents did the same thing. My generation did the same thing, and now my own child. It was like, this country was never going to change.

That was the deal-breaker for me, but it wasn’t just that. The safety situation was also a big one. 

How did you start the process of moving to the UK?

I called a friend of mine who was already in the UK and asked how he did it. He told me that with around ₦3 million back then, I would be able to get myself to the UK. After that call, I went and did my own research.

We went through the student visa route. The UK uses a points-based system, so once you meet the required points, your school acceptance letter, proof of funds, and so on, it’s very likely the visa officer will sign off on it. It’s more within your control than something like the US visa, where your fate is basically in the hands of the consular on that day.

My wife was the primary applicant. She got admitted to Teesside University in Middlesbrough to study Public Health for her master’s, and I applied as her dependent, along with the kids. Back then, the UK still allowed dependents under the student visa route.

What did the whole UK application cost?

Tuition was around £11,000. Visa fees were roughly £400 per person. And then flights for the four of us came to around 720,000 naira. It was supposed to be cheaper, but we booked late because the visas came out close to the resumption date, so we ended up paying more.

How did the visa timeline work?

We applied for my wife’s visa first, and it took about six to seven weeks to come out. We heard the main applicant should apply first because if you apply as a whole family, it might raise flags with some visa officers who might think you’re all trying to run away. So we staggered it, her first, then the rest of us.

By the time our visas were needed, there were only three weeks left before resumption. So we paid for express processing, which took seven days.

Wow, that’s interesting. Did you use an agent for any of this?

No. I did the entire application myself. And that’s my strong advice to anyone: don’t rely on agents. The information is out there. As long as you meet the requirements, you don’t need anybody to do this for you. 

That’s solid advice. What was the first week in the UK like?

We landed and stayed with a friend in Middlesbrough. It’s important to hold a lot of funds when you’re moving to a country like the UK because you genuinely don’t know what you’re walking into. This was also just after the COVID lockdown, so things were still uncertain.

Getting accommodation was one of the hardest things. Middlesbrough is a student area, so there was high demand and many immigrants in similar situations. We couldn’t find a place within the town itself and had to look outside Middlesbrough before we found something we could move into.

What cultural shocks hit you the hardest?

Everything. The transportation system. The British accent was very hard for me to get accustomed to. The weather, too, was another thing that really shocked me; even in October, it was cold in a way I didn’t expect. 

When you experience a country where things actually work, you start to realise the dysfunction you’d been living in back in Nigeria. The way they value human life. The way the system is structured, you don’t need to know anyone to get a job; you don’t need an uncle or an aunt or anyone to pull a string for you. We were seeing this and thinking: This is just how things should work. It was as if we were becoming human for the first time.

Right-hand drive was also new, and since I’m not really into British food, we went with a lot of Nigerian food from home.

How did you manage financially in those early months?

I was still working remotely for my Nigerian employer when we first arrived, so that helped. But I also got a job at an Amazon warehouse, the pay was around £14 an hour, which was more than enough to cover our costs.

Our rent at the time was £450 a month, and we were spending less than £200 a month on food. School fees for the kids were free. So we weren’t burning through our savings; we were actually managing well. My wife also started a part-time job after settling in a bit.

So why did you leave the UK for Canada?

By the time I was ready to think about settling properly, I had already transitioned from a healthcare assistant role into tech. I was working as a business analyst. The company I was working with wasn’t going to sponsor my visa. My healthcare job had been willing to sponsor me, but I didn’t want to go back to healthcare when I’d already moved into tech. So we had that dilemma: do I go backwards just to get a sponsorship?

On top of that, the UK was already tightening its policies. So my wife and I sat down and thought about Canada. The pathway to permanent residency there is more straightforward and more accessible, especially for younger people, through things like Express Entry. We decided to apply for a student visa from the UK and move the whole family to Canada.

Was the Canadian application process complicated?

No, it was seamless, just documents, forms, and meeting requirements. I applied first, and once my application was approved, I applied for the family. We didn’t have to come back to Nigeria; we applied directly from the UK. The visa application fee wasn’t expensive at all. The tuition, however, that’s another story. Tuition in Canada is significantly more expensive than in the UK. But it is what it is.

I studied Global Supply Chain Management in Ontario.

What’s the biggest difference between the UK and Canada?

Honestly, both places give you the basics that are completely missing in Nigeria: good roads, stable electricity, and security. Those are what we’re actually looking for. It’s not complicated.

The main differences are the accent and the transportation. The UK has a very extensive train network; you can get anywhere without a car, which is great. Canada is completely different. It’s the second-largest country in the world by land mass, with a population of only about 40 million, so the infrastructure to support that kind of public transport just doesn’t exist the same way. Having a car is basically a must.

What do you love most about life in Canada?

The basic things that shouldn’t even be luxuries. When you’re sick, they treat you first; there’s no “deposit ₦10,000 before we attend to you.” I’m not sleeping with one eye open, listening to generator noise. I’m not scared that my kids might not come home from school. I’m not afraid of entering a bus and something happening to me. Those things sound small, but they’re not. Personally, I feel this is just what life is supposed to look like.

Do you miss Nigeria at all?

Honestly? No. Maybe the food sometimes, but we get a lot of Nigerian and African food here, so even that is covered. I miss my family, though, but we do video calls so often that it feels like we’re in the same house.

And when you’re on social media, and you see what’s still happening there, it doesn’t make you want to go back. I have no immediate plans to visit.

What’s your advice for someone who wants to japa?

Do your own research. Sit down with your laptop, open the internet, and put in the work. People make agents sound like a necessity, but they’re not. If you meet the requirements, you can do this yourself. Agents often use false information, and you end up paying for something you could have done on your own.

Beyond that, be strategic. Know your end goal before you start. If you’re going abroad and you want to stay, you need to know the pathways to permanent residency before you even apply for your first visa. Don’t just follow what everyone else is doing. We’ve seen people arrive here, only to be back in Nigeria two years later because they didn’t have a plan.

Canada has more pathways to residency than the UK right now, like the Express Entry, provincial programmes, and others, especially if you’re young. The UK is tightening things more and more.

Just do your own research. The information is there; you just have to go get it.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your life in Canada?

Ten out of ten. And I say that specifically because of where we’re coming from. Some people in Nigeria will live their entire lives without ever experiencing what good governance feels like, and that’s what makes it painful. Coming here and seeing how life should actually be lived, that’s a privilege I take seriously.

I’m not rich. Abroad, nobody’s really trying to be extremely wealthy in the Nigerian sense. What I want is to be able to afford the basics, and here I can. My wife is working, and my kids are in school. I’m working two jobs — as a procurement officer and a part-time healthcare worker. We’re not struggling. Nothing is missing. That’s why I’m giving it a ten.

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