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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Here is why they are wrong. 

New law, who dis?

First, what does the 2026 NIMC Act actually do? At its core, the law wants to completely revamp how identity works in Nigeria. Think of it as the government trying to build one master digital foundation for the entire country. Here is what the new law brings to the table:

One ID to rule them all

The biggest goal of the Act is to . No more confusing fragmentation between your National Identification Number (NIN), Bank Verification Number (BVN), driver’s licence, and international passport. Everything will .

Laying down roots

The Act makes the NIMC the “” for Nigeria’s National Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI).

Basically, NIMC is now the ultimate boss of identity verification. Every bank, telecom company, and government agency .

You will do jail o!

The law heavy fines (up to ₦20 million) and a minimum of five years’ imprisonment for crimes such as identity theft, data breaches, or unauthorised access to the database.

Promises, promises, promises

Here is the thing: Nigeria’s identity framework was . That was 19 years ago, meaning we were definitely due for an upgrade.

As the Director-General of NIMC, Abisoye Coker-Odusote, , “Nigeria’s identity management system remained unchanged, while the digital landscape evolved rapidly.” The new NIMC Act looks to close that gap.

But the government is definitely overselling the new framework when it comes to national security.

The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, the new integrated identity database is already so powerful that it was used just days earlier to arrest seven Boko Haram and ISWAP commanders as they returned to the country from the Holy Pilgrimage.

Senate President Godswill Akpabio added that the arrests were proof that even before the official assent of the law, the system was already working.

The government wants us to believe that the only thing stopping them from ending terrorism before now was a disconnected computer database. But the reality on the ground tells a completely different story.

To get a better sense of why previous identification frameworks failed to address national security—and why this new one won’t either—we spoke to Kehinde Giwa, a security analyst at .

Call me maybe

Nigerians have been scratching their heads for years now as terrorists continue to negotiate ransom payments over the phone and post videos on social media using mobile devices. Meanwhile, the government has had security-minded identification frameworks in place, like the NIN-SIM linkage system.

If every SIM card is linked to an individual, why hasn’t the government already tracked and arrested these criminals before now?

Kehinde Giwa identified three reasons.

Fake data & proxies

Many kidnappers use SIMs registered with stolen NINs, dead people’s NINs, or pay agents to register for them. Once the SIM is active, tracking stops there.

Poor data sharing between agencies

NIMC, telecommunications companies, and security agencies don’t talk to each other in real time. By the time a number is traced, the line is switched off or swapped.

Weak enforcement

Even when numbers are traced, arrest, prosecution, and conviction rates are low. So criminals keep using phones because the risk is small.

Does the government know me?

Giwa says the government has it all wrong if they think better identification is the problem.

He explained that the insecurity crisis is mainly a failure of intelligence and enforcement, and that countries with even weaker identification systems still arrest kidnappers when the police, intelligence services, and telecom companies work together quickly.

He said that in Nigeria, we often have the number, location data, and suspects’ names, but cases stall due to poor investigations, information leaks within security agencies, slow bureaucratic processes for getting warrants, corruption, and a massive lack of trust between different security branches. He described the new identification framework as “treating a gun problem with more paperwork.”

This is not a new complaint. Back in 2024, Isa Pantami, who served as Communications Minister in the Muhammadu Buhari administration, that despite all his efforts setting up the NIN-SIM linkage system, law enforcement agencies were not using it.

also revealed that the tracking software used by the police had lapsed its subscription due to funding failures. As a result, the police were entirely dependent on getting tracking information from the DSS, and the resulting bureaucratic delays were more than enough to allow terrorists to keep escaping.

The horrors persist

Giwa explained that identification systems are best for post-incident tracing but won’t actively stop insecurity if the government does not fund intelligence units, secure our forests and highways, and prosecute cases quickly.

According to him, all better identification will do on its own is “give us better records of crimes we still can’t stop.”

The oversellers

Other security experts have also on the federal government’s narrative of arresting Boko Haram commanders returning from Hajj.

The group is heavily documented to consider the Saudi government illegitimate and pilgrimage there as sinful according to their own doctrine. Because of this, it seems highly unlikely that seven top commanders would make such a trip.

Whether or not the arrested individuals the database identified as terrorists are actually guilty remains to be seen, but there certainly appear to be massive gaps in the logic of the system.

The main thing is that Nigeria’s identity framework was long due for an update. It is great that citizens can finally have a single identification number for convenience, if nothing else. But the government’s claim that this framework will solve insecurity is overselling a tool and misleading the public.

A little more honesty would be appreciated. Most importantly, the government needs to do the actual physical work required to fix insecurity, like funding security forces.

After all, what use is it to know the names of all the terrorists in Nigeria if you never actually catch them? 

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On Wednesday, June 24, 2026, the First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, spoke at the Renewed Hope Initiative’s second-quarter meeting with the wives of state governors. There, she talked about giving out grants to help people start petty trading businesses, like roadside corn-roasting.

Call us traumatised, but we’re not shocked by the First Lady’s advice. These kinds of out-of-touch suggestions for deep systemic problems are completely on brand for her.

Let’s look at her rap sheet…

Remi the farmer

In July 2024, she suggested that Nigerian women start home gardens to address the country’s food insecurity crisis. Showing off her own home garden where she planted spinach, waterleaf, bitter leaf, ewedu, lemongrass, scent leaf, and okra, she said: “This little garden will be able to provide healthy vegetables enough for my household, and I would definitely be able to let some of my staff have as well. The solution to any problem lies in everyone contributing their own quota to getting that solution.”

We are not saying the First Lady is lying, but the 2026 budget for foodstuff and catering at Aso Rock is over ₦375 million. Her “household” is definitely not surviving on okra from her backyard. Yet, millions of poor Nigerian families are somehow expected to garden their way out of hunger caused by multidimensional poverty.

Remi the fashion killa

Nigeria has always struggled with tribalism. This was worsened by divisive politics like the “Yoruba Ronu” movement during the 2023 elections, a campaign in which the APC played a central role.

Remi Tinubu’s solution? Asoebi!

In 2024, the First Lady launched the “One Nigeria Unity Fabric” to “support local textile industries, create jobs, and celebrate Nigeria’s strength as one united nation.” Because matching outfits automatically solves deep-rooted ethnic tension, obviously.

Go, Remi, It’s Your Birthday!

Then, in September 2025, Remi Tinubu asked Nigerians to send her money for her birthday to help complete the National Library project in Abuja.

The project has been under construction since the government of Shehu Shagari in 1983, but remains uncompleted due to poor budgeting and a lack of political will. From her bag of tricks, Remi Tinubu pulled out another classic solution: birthday crowdfunding for a massive federal government infrastructure project.

Nigerians already crowdfund ransom payments to rescue people from terrorists, so why not for a national library, right?

Perhaps, for the ladies, a car?

Just three weeks before her Akara advice, Remi Tinubu gave cars to APC women leaders in states with opposition governors.

So, cars for politicians and their lackeys. But akara and kuli kuli business for the rest of us? 

Banger after banger

Many Nigerians are incredibly vexed by Remi Tinubu’s akara-selling idea. The anger is completely understandable, but honestly, nobody should be surprised at this point.

Grants for roasted corn and kuli-kuli are just the latest production from the brilliant mind that brought you:

• Gardening to solve food insecurity.
• Asoebi to solve tribalism.
• Crowdfunding government projects.

Nigerians are God’s strongest soldiers, and Remi Tinubu is proof.

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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.

°Őłó±đĚý 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. .

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 ÂŁ2,000, 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 ÂŁ650 a month. Food was actually cheap in the UK; we’d spend around ÂŁ400 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 ÂŁ60 an hour, and I was earning about ÂŁ12 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 ÂŁ1,600–1,800 a month, and my expenses alone were eating over ÂŁ1,000 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.

Want to share your japa story? Please reach out to me .

°Őłó±đĚý 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. .

The following is a collection of stories from queer Abroad Life subjects about leaving Nigeria for countries where they can live their truth unapologetically.

“I spent 20 playing the good boy just to escape Nigeria” — James*, 25, M

Growing up feminine in Nigeria meant constant bullying. I played the “good boy” role for two decades just so my dad would fund my education abroad. But right before I left for the UK in 2022, my world shattered. I was “kitoed” by homophobes who beat and blackmailed me, and the very next night, an acquaintance sexually assaulted me while I was frozen in trauma. My spirit was broken, but I forced myself onto that flight because staying meant death.

I am in Canada now, physically safe and thriving professionally. I’m currently looking for a therapist to help me unpack it all and learn how to actually live.

*James’ story was originally published on March 20, 2026. Read the full story here. 

“I can finally come out to my homophobic parents” — Tope*, 33, F

I had a comfortable life in Nigeria, earning ₦35 million working in oil and gas. But I also knew I couldn’t navigate Nigeria’s toxic, secretive dating scene forever—having to be with women who were also with men as “cover.” I moved to the US in 2022 and completely started over.

Today, I am married to an incredible woman whose family has welcomed me with open arms. My super-religious parents are very homophobic and ask me about a husband whenever I call. It is heartbreaking, but the absolute safety of my marriage has given me the strength to finally come out to them next year. I am done hiding.

*Tope’s story was originally published on November 21, 2025. Read the full story here.

“I was bullied for being effeminate in Nigeria, but my partner’s family adopted me as their own” — Peter*, 28, M

In Nigeria, I was constantly bullied and called female names because of my appearance and sexuality. I finally escaped to the UK in 2023, but my first year here was pure survival mode, working brutal hours at multiple jobs.

Everything shifted when I met my partner on a dating app. Moving abroad with zero family is a quick route to depression, but his family completely adopted me as their own. For the first time, I have a safe space to cry, vent, and completely heal.

*Peter’s story was originally published on March 20, 2026. Read the full story here.

“Hollywood completely lied to me about how free queer people are in America” — Gabriel*, 31, M

I bolted to the US in 2021 for graduate school, desperate to live openly away from my homophobic family. But the glorious, rainbow-coloured freedom we always saw in Hollywood movies turned out to be a massive lie. Landing in a conservative “Red State”, I was hit with a harsh mix of homophobia and racism.

Even worse, the American queer community turned out to be incredibly toxic and vain. Because I am an effeminate immigrant, I am either treated with open disdain or heavily fetishised on dating apps by people who treat my nationality like an item on their checklist. Life here has been painfully lonely, but I’m still looking for a loving, monogamous relationship.

*Gabriel’s story was originally published on March 20, 2026. Read the full story here.

°Őłó±đĚý 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. .

“I fled Nigeria to save my life, and my queer activism became my ticket to asylum” — Saratu*, 25, F

Living in Kaduna as a masculine-presenting queer woman meant being trapped in constant fear. I had to hide from my family and society, and I saw friends get killed or go missing. In 2024, I managed to get to the UK on a student visa and then applied for asylum.

Thanks to the evidence of my underground activism in Nigeria, my refugee status was granted. Life feels so much lighter now. The absolute best thing about the UK is the complete freedom. I can walk down the street looking as masculine as I want, and nobody stares or judges me because everyone is too busy chasing their own goals.

*Saratu’s story was originally published on March 20, 2026. Read the full story here.

“I married a gay man just to escape my deeply religious family” — Fathia*, 31, F

Where I’m from in northern Nigeria, you aren’t allowed to move out of your parents’ house until you get married. For over 20 years, my life was an exhausting acting gig because I was agnostic and queer, living with an extremely religious Muslim family. When the pressure to marry became unbearable, I entered a lavender marriage with a gay Nigerian man living in Canada.

We agreed to get married to satisfy our families while living completely separate lives. Our parents happily swallowed the bait, and I landed in Canada in 2023. Settling in brought deep isolation and a rough job market, but I’ve made great friends, and I’m dating someone now. I finally get to experience the independent adulthood that most northern Nigerian girls are completely denied.

*Fathia’s story was originally published on March 20, 2026. Read the full story here.

Do you want to share your Abroad Life story? Please reach out to me . For new episodes of Abroad Life, check in every Friday at 12 PM (WAT).

When it comes to money, Nigerians have basically spent the first three years of the Tinubu presidency being God’s strongest soldiers. It genuinely feels like this administration’s monetary policies were engineered in a lab specifically to test our breaking points.

What’s really wild is that President Bola Tinubu knows all of this. So, over the years, he has given some pretty bleak pep talks. Remember when he admitted he knew his policies were causing incredible hardship, only to drop a casual ? Or when he told us to brace ourselves for ?

To say Nigerians are going through a lot is a massive understatement. Here are the top monetary policies of this administration and how they’ve affected Nigerians’ pockets. Stick around until the end for a tip on how to survive the roughest waters of Tinubunomics.

1. Fuel Subsidy Removal (May 2023)

This may have been necessary to stop an unsustainable multi-billion-naira fiscal leak, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t instantly cause. The resulting inflation completely wrecked the basic financial formulas that everyday citizens used to save or invest. Oh, and we are the government promised those saved funds would provide.

2. Floating the Naira (June 2023)

The Central Bank to stop people and . But it also triggered a historic devaluation cycle where anyone earning and saving in naira watched their global purchasing power , turning wealth preservation into a losing battle for millions of Nigerians.

3. The Crypto Criminalisation Campaign (2021–2024)

The federal government launched a against global exchanges and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, . This trapped millions in capital and triggered , transforming a basic economic liferaft into a high-stakes gamble where your life savings could get seized overnight. And remember how ? Crazy times.

4. The Electricity Tariff Hike (April 2024)

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) for premium consumers to attract private investment and guarantee a minimum of 20 hours of daily power. This multiplied the energy costs of individuals and businesses, turning a basic utility into a luxury expense that drains monthly cash flows. To rub salt in the wound, .

5. The ₦70,000 National Minimum Wage Floor (July 2024)

This was after with the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to shield the lowest-earning workers from cost-of-living shocks. An over 200% baseline wage hike sounds massive, but in 2026, ₦70,000 cannot even fill the tank of a mid-sized sedan.

However, businesses still had to absorb a sudden spike in their wage bills by hiking prices, which only worsened inflation. It looks like Nigerians are earning more, but we are also due to the cost-of-living crisis.

6. The Crypto Ban Reversal (2025–2026)

One thing about this administration: there is always a plot twist. The government completely switched up its attitude towards crypto, moving from outright criminalisation to regulation and, most importantly, taxation. The officially recognised digital assets and brought them under state oversight. Also, a new tax framework tracks digital trading gains so the government can get a cut. You can build your crypto wealth, but the government wants its share.

7. The Tax Reform Acts (January 2026)

The administration unified Nigeria’s dozens of scattered tax laws into four acts to simplify revenue collection and expand the tax base. It introduced progressive taxation, meaning high earners give bigger cuts of their income, and it widened the tax net to include the informal sector, the freelance gig economy, and digital assets. However you make money in Nigeria, the government wants a piece of it.

8.

This administration has a spending problem. The national budget has exploded year-on-year, constantly getting more outrageous. , hence the constant borrowing and heavier taxation. The catch is that it relies heavily on massive domestic and external borrowing, which while fuelling a vicious cycle of structural inflation.

Basically, banks see the government as a safe bet when giving out loans. When they’ve loaned out all their money to the government, . The state is overspending, and all Nigerians are paying for it one way or another.

9.

Under this administration, the Central Bank as a desperate tactic to . But with lending rates so high, taking out a business loan feels more like entering a trap. If you are not a gambler or incredibly confident in your business idea, you are probably going to have to fund your growth entirely out of pocket.

10. The CREDICORP Consumer Credit Pivot (2024–2026)

The Nigerian Consumer Credit Corporation is meant to dismantle the ‘cash-and-carry’ economy by . The opportunity to buy critical infrastructure without draining your capital upfront might be attractive, but it also introduces a debt-management culture that can permanently trap your future income if you lack discipline.

The silver lining playbook

When macroeconomic policies shift this fast, the traditional personal finance rules our parents taught us become completely useless. You cannot simply ‘save 10% of your income’ and hope for the best.

Survival in today’s Nigeria requires moving past basic survival mode and learning the actual mechanics of a volatile economy. If you are trying to figure out how to navigate these exact policy landmines—how to protect your income from inflation, pivot your career, scale a business without deadly bank debt, and actually build assets that last—you need to be in the right room.

That is exactly what we are breaking down at the Â鶹ĘÓƵ Naira Life Conference on August 22, 2026, in Lagos. This year’s theme is entirely focused on the modern Nigerian wealth lifecycle: Building it, growing it, keeping it, and passing it on. No corporate jargon, just real, unfiltered strategies from people who are successfully doing it despite the headlines.

Get your ticket at

°Őłó±đĚý 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.

°Őłó±đĚý 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. .

When Peter (24) left for South Africa to study music production, everyone warned him to “be safe” due to xenophobic attacks. In this story, he talks about his time and experiences in Johannesburg and how South Africans have turned out to be far more welcoming than he ever expected.

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

I live in Johannesburg, South Africa, and I left Nigeria in early 2025.

What made you move?

I left for creative school. By my second year of studying electrical engineering at university, I had mentally checked out and only saw it through because my parents were paying for it. What I really wanted to do was music production and sound engineering, so I told my parents I wouldn’t be doing a 9-5 job once I graduated.

After school, I interned with a major music producer in Nigeria for a while. When I left that, I ventured into working with media, learning about sound for media at EbonyLife Creative Academy. It was around that time that my mum suggested I pursue a formal education and actually become certified.

The initial plan was to go to the United States, but the school fees were too expensive. So I looked at other options and found an opportunity in South Africa. I applied and got admitted to study Sound Production at the here.

Why didn’t you study in Nigeria?

I didn’t see any options for exactly what I wanted in Nigeria. Most of the options I saw there were theoretical music training. But training for music and training for sound production are two different things.

Unlike the music schools in Nigeria, we don’t have traditional exams where you sit down with pen and paper. Our assignments make up our grade. For example, they can give you a set of multi-tracks and tell you to mix them for your test. It is more hands-on than just learning theory. It’s rare to see that in Nigeria.

Let’s talk about South Africa. What was it like when you first arrived?

It was so cold. You see snow on TV and think it looks nice. Trust me, it doesn’t feel nice. I arrived in the autumn, just before winter, but I was already shaking. The actual winter came around May, and that was when I really knew what cold was.

I was also anxious about experiencing Xenophobia because of the things I had heard, so when I got here, I decided not to move around too much. But when I did, I didn’t see any visible hatred.

Because people here can easily tell you’re Nigerian from your accent, so once they hear that, they ask where I’m from, and I tell them Nigeria. What follows is them asking me things like, “Oh, do you know Davido?”

There was no visible hatred. What I’ve learned is that xenophobia exists here, but only in certain parts of the country, mostly in the townships, which are more rural. You don’t see it in the cities. And even in the places where it’s more common, if you have South African friends around you, you’ll be fine.

Are you saying the xenophobic sentiment is not as bad as people might think?

I feel like the media has made it look bigger than it is.  immigration is an actual issue in South Africa, but it has been hijacked by xenophobic people to attack everyone. And the xenophobic ones are a small minority.

But the media picks it up and presents only one perspective, and that’s dangerous. When the news of xenophobia breaks, it makes people react blindly. I remember when I was in Nigeria, and news of xenophobic attacks literally made people raid a Shoprite near where I lived.

So you’ve never been worried about being attacked in South Africa?

I haven’t had any reason to be afraid of attacks. My school is far away from the townships where it usually happens. And the South Africans I have met have been friendly when they learned I was from Nigeria. There are traits that a Nigerian has that we take for granted but are fascinating to them. For example, how entrepreneurial we are.

But others don’t find it as fascinating. Nigerians come here and maybe open a business, and in just a couple of years, they grow more than the South Africans who have been here for years. Some of them look at that and say, “Wow, these Nigerian men are so enterprising.” However, some take it negatively and say, “They should just go back to their country, what are they doing in my place?” So it is two-sided. But from my personal experience, I haven’t had to be afraid because of the xenophobic attacks.

That’s great. How about your ability to make friends and build connections; has that been affected in any way?

No, definitely not. No South African I’ve met has given me reason to think they are prejudiced. I simply haven’t experienced that.

What is your support system like in South Africa?

My community is made up mainly of people I met at school or church. At school, our assignments are usually group-based practical projects. So after class, we work together on these projects, and in doing that, we learn about each other and form bonds.

The majority of my friends here are South African, and a few are Nigerian. At church, my pastor is Nigerian, but the majority of the congregation is mostly South African.

Were there any culture shocks you experienced?

The calmness. Coming from Lagos, it’s very shocking how calm and chill it is here in Johannesburg.

Another shock is that hip-hop is still a big deal here. Back home, it is mostly Afrobeats. But here, hip-hop is a massive thing among young people. Amapiano is big too, but hip-hop seems to be bigger.

Also, marriage is not seen as a big deal here, the way it is in Nigeria. Back home, parents are constantly asking when you are going to get married because they want grandchildren. The parents here don’t do that; after all, they, too, are probably not married, they just cohabit. Marriage is not seen as a sacred cultural necessity.

Another thing that shocked me here was the language barrier. They speak English, but their traditional languages are quite important to them. In Nigeria, nobody might bat an eye if you can’t speak your mother tongue, but here, that is almost like a taboo.

 Those are the three major things that shocked me when I got here. The fact that they were more welcoming than I expected was the biggest shock of all.

Have you visited Nigeria since you got to South Africa?

Yes, I usually come back in December. There is a July break for about a month, but because of flight prices, it makes more sense to come home in December. My school session doesn’t start until March, so if I am back home by late November or December, I get to stay through December, January, and February. That is three months as opposed to just one month in July.

Do you intend to return to Nigeria or build a career in South Africa?

The plan has always been to go back; it still is. Not because I don’t want to be here, but because I have many things I need to do at home. But I am trying to build relationships and contacts here.

What matters in my industry is the clients, not your physical location. Meeting artists here and building that relationship means that when they need work done, they will call me, no matter where I am.

°Őłó±đĚý 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. .

What would you say has been your worst experience in South Africa?

Easily, my first week here. As part of the visa process, you have to book your accommodation before coming here. I wanted a place close to school, but the area has very high rents. So I picked the cheapest accommodation I found. You don’t pay the actual rent until you arrive, but I paid the documentation and booking fee to hold the space. That was about 200 Rand.

When I arrived, a cab driver took me from the airport to the place. When we got there, he told me, “This does not seem like a good place.” He insisted it wasn’t safe and suggested we confirm first. He told me to leave my things in the car while we went in to check.

We went inside and found a lot of drug dealers smoking heavily, homeless people, and prostitutes. It was a terrible place. We got my key from the receptionist, and when we opened the room, we saw weed on my bed. That was the final straw. I video-called my parents and showed them. They asked me to leave immediately.

The driver took me to a hotel. He came back the next day, and we drove around the city, house hunting.

It took a couple of days, but we finally found a good place just a couple of minutes from school. I was only able to get it because the original renter had just cancelled their booking. It was more expensive than I had planned, but after that initial experience, I was just happy to have a good place.

That week was my worst experience here, but the driver was really helpful.

Was the driver South African?

Yes, he was South African.

What has been your best experience?

I can think of a couple. First, was a spicy food eating competition with some friends from school. One of us had this extremely hot sauce and started vomiting.

I know that sounds crazy as a best experience, but it was a really nice bonding moment for all of us. I am not a very expressive person when it comes to friendships, but that situation brought out an expressive side of me. It went from having fun to me becoming genuinely concerned and going into protective mode. It reminded me that these people are actually my friends whom I care about.

Some other really awesome experiences have been at school, having the opportunity to meet industry professionals. Our lecturers like to bring industry professionals to speak to us. Meeting Ndabo Zulu and being able to ask him questions about music really stuck out to me.

What is your favourite thing about South Africa?

It is really the people. They are much more welcoming than I thought. I had an expectation based on how things are portrayed.

A lot of them have actually researched Nigerian culture. I met a new acquaintance recently, and when she found out I was Nigerian, she started trying to speak Pidgin. She didn’t have our accent, but she was trying. They try to relate to you on your own terms. I’ve had South Africans ask me about the security situation back home, even the kidnapped children in Oyo. I wondered how they knew about that from all the way over here. It touched me in ways I didn’t expect.

What about your least favourite thing?

The weather. The winter season is tough. If I start shuttling between Nigeria and South Africa, I will always avoid the winter period from May to July. During that time, I’ll be in Nigeria. Then, from August till about March, is when I’ll prefer to be in South Africa.

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

I’ll say nine.

Do you want to share your Abroad Life story? Please reach out to me . For new episodes of Abroad Life, check in every Friday at 12 PM (WAT).