IS AMERICA GOOD FOR YOUR NIGERIAN SON OR DAUGHTER?

If you were a son or daughter in a Nigerian family and you had the choice to live in Nigeria and America, where would you like to be? There is a war raging like a tsunami, and the war is tearing Nigerians’ marriages apart and destroying the future of many youths.

The question is: Is America good for your Nigerian son or daughter? What suggestions does one have? One can demand that children spend their lives partly in America and partly in Nigeria.

 Men are divorcing their “Americanized” Nigerian wives and marrying more “Nigerianized  others at home, and repeating the vicious circle.

 

The essay seeks to illustrate how this war goes on in homes of many Nigerian parents who reside in  America or seeking to transport their children to America.

It is suggested that, unless something is done urgently to ameliorate the situation, generations of the diaspora Nigerian children may be lost and their future jeopardized.. Consider the case of Alphonse Odus  (fictitious).

Nineteen-year-old Alphonse has just enrolled as a freshman in one of America’s premier colleges. His parents Mr. and Mrs. Charles and Ada Odus have been fighting a bitter ongoing battle over where Alphonse and his five siblings should complete their primary and secondary education.

Ada Odus, a fictionalized Nigerian holder of the US Green Card, feels the children are hers and should live with her in America. Is Ada right?

In the Nigerian community, children are considered as the most prized commodity, the most valuable byproduct of a marriage. One without children is considered as nonentity, unknown, mediocrity.

Ada’s reason for demanding the children live with her in America rather than be in Nigeria with her estranged husband is that American schools have better schools, better in quality and quantity than what obtains in Nigeria.

Besides, Ada Odus reasons, Nigeria is beset with almost insurmountable problems, including frequent teacher strikes coupled with official corruption and neglect of infrastructure. It’s sad, very unfortunate.

Charles, Ada’s husband and father of Alfonse, disagrees strongly with wife. He says children behave better in Nigerian, worse in America. Besides, they tend to have better attitudes in Nigeria, are more respectful of parents and adults,

The husband agrees that, although America has better schools with math and science materials, yet he has questions to ask. Why does America have greater social and school-related problems that could and often impede a child’s school performance and success in life than are found in Nigeria?

“Poverty is the only trouble Nigeria has and I’m establishing a business to overcome that,” Charles concludes. Ada disagrees. The disagreement crystallized and cemented into hatred and revenge.

As the war rages on, parents seek support from children, and the children take sides. Ada, in order to end the war and win the custody battle, thought of what to do.

Should she institute divorce proceedings? Perhaps, she ought to call the police in to ask the husband to vacate. To vacate is to leave the house, and go back to live alone  in Nigeria.

Charles is determined that his children must live in Nigeria with him and help manage his business. And, in order to keep the children in Nigeria and score effective counter point in the brewing fight, Charles tricked his family into taking a little trip to Nigeria.

The trick was clandestine. It was secret, underground, covert. It was concealed. The strategy was for a father to kidnap his children while the family vacations in Nigeria.

Additional plan was to keep the children hidden in secret places and keep them from a mother for 6-7 years. The trick did work but it backfired.

What mother can forget a child she carried in her womb for 9 long months? It is said that the lioness’s fury becomes deadliest and she puts out the most fatal attack when a hunter threatens her young cubs.

Although Charles did eventually kidnap Ada’s children and hide them in various Nigerian villages, Ada was not to be outfoxed. To be outfoxed is to be outwitted, outmaneuvered.

The story is told of Mr. Fox and a bird who had meat in his mouth and wouldn’t release the meat to Mr. Fox until Mr. Fox outfoxed the foolish bird. Fox praised the bird. “You sing beautiful songs. Sing for me.”  As the bird sang,  the meat fell out of the open mouth, and the fox made away.

Ada’s legal team wasn’t singing. The team meant serious business and didn’t play. Ada pressured the American courts to extend its long-arm jurisdiction into the bribery-infested Nigerian judiciary to wrest Ada’s “American kids” and return them safely to their mother.

One thing is clear from the fight: Children belong to the mother in America, while in Nigeria, children belong to the man’s folks unless the stronger foreign power/court changes the equation.

Because Alphonso’s parents disagreed big-time on domiciliary issues, children can take advantage of the situation to support the parent (usually the mother) who would go easy on them, and who would cater more readily to their every whim.

Ada, believing that a mother’s love is more powerful than the father’s,  caters, provides, supplies, furnishes the children’s juvenile needs; she buys unnecessary toys and places less restrictions on irresponsible behavior.

Left up to Alphonso, he would prefer living, flouncing, and roaming around in America, enjoying so-called  “freedom” and carefree life along with the internet and social media. Who would not want such a lifelong vacation?

The substance of this essay is to say that some palaver is brewing under the current in the families of many Nigerian households. The term under the current means the situation is not too obvious, yet there is something a casual observer would not fail to notice.

American life is tantalizing, meaning the Nigerian kids fall into it. Wham!  The life is enticing, teasing, provocative, tempting. It is addictive, much like cocaine or cigarettes,

That the American life is addictive is an understatement, and the Nigerian kids coming to America love it. They get addicted when they are in America, and they get addicted as soon they get off Delta or Turkish aircraft that brings them to America.

One cannot fail to notice that, with all the wild talks of Nigerian Americans being at the tops of groups of immigrants with the largest number of graduate degrees, Alphonse and friends at school know there is more fun in wild America than in the “Naija jungle.”

The number of graduate degrees that Nigeria families boast about getting in American universities does not negate or obfuscate the point that American society is a jungle the Nigerian families do not fully understand, and which may do some serious damage to the social development of Nigerian kids born here or brought from home.

Arguments abound on both sides of the aisle that America may or may not be the place best suited for the well-being of Nigerian children born in America or brought from afar. How does one deal with the cultural inferiority Nigerian parents and their kids feel?

How does one not notice that, although a sizeable number of sons and daughters of Nigerian families do achieve admirably to distinguish themselves in such fields the Americans and the Nigerian parents consider to be conducive to success, there is room for consternation, anxiety, and concern. There are strong emotions gnawing at many hearts.

Yes, there is never a semester that Nigerian children have failed to excel and graduate from prestigious American institutions in such fields such as medicine, law, nursing, mathematics, sciences, and technology, yet there is a concern that  family dysfunction may be rearing ugly heads like the Lock ness monster that seeks to swallow things up.

While most Nigerian parents, such as Mr. and Mrs. Odus come to America because they want better opportunities for themselves and their children, particularly in education and career development, things do not always turn out the way we expect.

The American society makes things fall apart, and because the American culture emphasizes individualism and I-know-it-all attitudes, the Nigerian families have children caught in the crossfire. It is said: one can take oneself out of the jungle, but can one task the jungle out of self?

It is easy to point out the culprits: Naija kids born here or brought from home have not learned to exit the “old Nigerian jungle” and properly access the “new American jungle consisting of easy sex, alcoholism, drug use and internet.

Americanism plays a stupendous havoc. A havoc is disorder, chaos, mayhem, destruction, or mess. A havoc is stupendous if it proves to be astonishing, outstanding, stunning.

Nothing is more stunning than parents gaining America and losing children to American jungle. Who enjoys raising rambunctious children in a strange and unfamiliar environment?

One notices some mighty differences in behavior of children brought up in Nigeria and those born and living in America.

Unlike the Nigerian kids one sees in the villages misbehaving, and whose misbehavior is under lock and key with parents and society watching, American-born Nigerian kids seem to lack self-imposed control.

Experimenting with sex and other bad behaviors can easily be kept in check in Nigeria by parents, schoolteachers, and society at large, Nigerian American kids raised in America are lost in the wilderness where control is absent.

Talking about the rambunctiousness of kids takes strength. Our children are unfamiliar with the American society and the legal system, and often mess up and miss the mark.

A child messes up and lands in prison to have lives and careers ruined. You can be deported to the jungle you are attempting to escape.  Either way, you miss the mark. You miss the mark both in Nigeria and in America. Where do you belong?

To miss the mark means we mess up because we are unacculturated, and our children are not truly acculturated in Nigeria, and they are not fully acculturated in America.  We do not understand either culture, and both we and our kids lack the social support available in Nigeria.

The paradox, inconsistency, oxymoron, irony is hard to believe. We are neither Nigerians nor Americans. We are lost!  

Our children are not just unfamiliar with US culture. Besides, they are often high-spirited, lively, rowdy, disorderly, riotous. Our children are not just unfamiliar with Nigerian culture; they are intimidated by conflicting mores, values, customs, patterns and by our demanding relatives, and marital do’s and don’ts.

Our chiildren mess up when trying to fit into the American culture that is fluid, ever changing, unsolidified, watery, liquid, runny.

Unlike the Nigerian society, which is considered solid with adequate checks and balances, the American society is fluid in that things happen so fast, things change rapidly; life is more fluid, meaning unsolidified, moist, soggy, or water-logged.

The question is: Is America good for your Nigerian son or daughter? What suggestions does one have? One can demand that children spend their lives partly in America and partly in Nigeria. Men are divorcing their “Americanized” Nigerian wives and marrying more “Nigerianized  others at home, and repeating the vicious circle.  

Written Friday, May 17, 2019

Dr. James C. Agazie, jamesagazie@gmail.com