Nigerian singer and activist Seun Kuti has slammed Africans living abroad over what he calls ‘an unwritten rule’ whereby they don’t discuss the realities of living abroad.
Speaking during a recent Instagram live session, Seun claimed that many Africans who have relocated to pursue “greener pastures” often conceal the true challenges of their day-to-day lives from those back home.
“There is no single African who has Japa that can come and tell you that what I’m about to say is a lie. There is a silent, non-spoken, non-written agreement between every African who has travelled not to relay his true experience to his people.”
He explained that if Africans abroad were transparent about their realities abroad, many aspiring migrants might reconsider leaving their home countries.
Every single African here who has left Africa for greener pastures, they have an unwritten code among themselves not to tell you the reality of their day to day experience. If the Africans abroad create a blog to tell you their real experiences, nobody from Africa would go again. We would end up saying, ‘i would rather die.’
Even I that is successful and have everything I want, wherever I travel, I always miss Lagos. Meanwhile there are people who have been abroad for 25 years and won’t tell you the truth. They won’t tell you because they have agreed to abandon their cores.
Even some people here have abandoned Africa in their minds; they just don’t have the opportunity to relocate.
Seun’s comments sparked an online conversations about the realities of migration and the romanticised view of life abroad. While some agree with his observations, others argue that individual experiences vary and shouldn’t be generalised.
