I have a good friend called Kenny, a social entrepreneur who has worked on a number of charitable projects with a man named Lord Hastings. Lord Hastings was, Kenny told me, a life peer, the Head of Global Citizenship at KPMG, and a former head of public affairs at the BBC. A big deal. Fast-forward a few months; I was speaking at an event in London. As I came offstage, a black man, maybe around sixty years old, came over to say hello and to ask me about my speech. We had a chat, and at the end he handed me his business card. It said, ‘Dr Michael Hastings, Baron Hastings of Scarisbrick, CBE’. I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘Lord Hastings!’ Whenever Kenny or others described him, I had always imagined him as white — a middle-aged upper-class white man. I had never thought he might be black. But he is. One of the 100 most influential black people in Britain, according to Wikipedia.
I wrote to him a few days later to thank him and he replied, saying, ‘Jeremiah, I would love to know who you are.’ I was a bit confused, as we had spoken a little bit about what I did, but I tried to explain: ‘Dear Lord Hastings, my name is Jeremiah. We met backstage at the event the other day. I founded EMNL Consultancy, I’m a youth activist and entrepreneur …’ and so on. He came back almost immediately: ‘Jeremiah, I didn’t ask what you do, I asked who you are.’
I remember staring at the email when it arrived. I couldn’t get my head around it. It spun me. What did he mean? What else could I say? I’m Jeremiah! It took me a day or two before I could think about how to reply. Eventually I came up with, ‘My name is Jeremiah. I was raised in a single-parent family. I come from a difficult environment. And I want to change the world for myself, and for everyone like me.’ Or something like that, anyway …
It was a much better answer, and a more accurate one. Lord Hastings thought so too. He said: ‘Thank you. I understand who you are now.’
Before that, I don’t really think I knew who I was. I never really gave it any thought. I’m not sure many people my age do. Who you are and what you do are two very different things. This is a question of identity; it’s an important question. We don’t know who we are. And that can have significant impacts in the short and long term.
*
The first question I would like to ask is: who are you? The second question to ask is: who do people think you are? The third question is: which is true?
These answers will shape every aspect of your life.
As I said to Lord Hastings, I was brought up in a single-parent household. We didn’t have much. I am also a young, curious, ambitious person. I believe in my community. I believe in my friends. I would also describe myself as British. Ignore for now the fact that I only became a British citizen many years after I was born here. I’m a citizen. I am British. But if someone asked me where I’m from, I don’t think I would say Britain, and definitely not England. Not first of all, anyway. Does that make sense? It’s a fact that is also true for a lot of my friends. They may be second or third-generation Jamaicans or Ghanaians or Bahamians, but they’ll name those countries before Britain or England, if they’re ever asked where they’re from.
My family are from Nigeria, so I’d say that I was Nigerian before I’m anything else, and there are a few obvious and less obvious reasons for that. Just to be clear, I have never actually visited Nigeria. The first time I stepped foot on the continent of Africa was in 2017. But growing up in the diaspora and being around Nigerian culture, I nevertheless feel like a part of the country. That I can justifiably and proudly call myself Nigerian. It’s not necessarily a loyalty to Nigeria, it’s more an indisputable fact that it’s a part of who I am. It’s where my parents come from, so in a way I come from there too. Saying that, I’ve got some friends whose parents were born in England, but they still refuse to identify as English.
I think this is also true for many people of my age.1 A recent YouGov survey found that 72 per cent of people aged 65 and over identify as English, and are proud of that identity. For 18–24 year-olds, that number drops to 45 per cent. Close to 10 per cent of all young people interviewed said that they are ‘actively embarrassed’ about their Englishness.
Even if I called myself British or English, would the people around me? Would society at large? Afua Hirsch wrote an extraordinary book, Brit(ish), about this question (I recommend you read it as soon as you can). As she said in an article on its subject:
Britain is my home, my nationality, my frame of reference.2 I’ve spoken its language all my life — correct, middle-class, Thames Estuary English. I have studied at Oxford, been called to the Bar. I’ve both aspired to be part of its institutions, and been institutionalised by its aspirations. And yet this country of mine had never allowed me to feel that it is where I belong. If I were to single out the most persistent reminder of that sense of not belonging, it would be The Question: ‘Where are you from?’ Although I have lived in five different countries as an adult, nowhere have I been asked The Question more than right here, where I am from, in Britain.
‘Where are you from?’ is a question I have been asked many times. This is ‘who other people think you are’. And quite often, it’s an outsider. I have always struggled with imposter syndrome: the feeling that you don’t belong, that you’re not good enough, that somehow you’ve tricked everyone into believing that you are better than you actually are. It’s something that I think is part and parcel of being a person of colour living in Britain. It also connects to the idea of dreaming in a nightmare. I’ve always felt like I’m living two different lives. I’m the Jeremiah who can go to 10 Downing Street to receive an award from the prime minister, and simultaneously the Jeremiah who pulls his jogging bottoms down in the back of a police van. I’m Jeremiah who was born in Britain, but who isn’t recognised as British. I’ve felt out of place for most of my life.
This chapter is about those two questions. Who I am versus who people think I am. But to answer both questions properly, I really need to start with what made me.
*
I have always been interested in music. I’m not sure how I got into it exactly, but I can remember music being played at home from my earliest years. Gospel definitely ruled the household, followed by Afrobeat and even grime. I remember being very young watching Channel U, trying to mimic each rapper as they delivered their verses. I was lucky enough to be encouraged to do more than just listen, however. By the age of ten, I had learned how to play four instruments (two quite badly), and at one point even managed to become the lead singer in two youth choirs.
Eventually, just like a lot of young people, my interest in practising and performing started to decline by the time I hit my teenage years. My voice also dropped an octave or two, so I could no longer hold those high notes in the Christmas carols. I continued to listen to music and, if anything, listened to it more and more as I got older. I’m very pleased and grateful that music is still an important part of my life. I set up and run a multi-purpose entertainment company called Just Entertainment, or JE, along with my good friend Kelvin Okogwu. I’ve always been up to date with my music, always on the lookout for new talent, but I like to think that I’m still a listener, first and foremost.
I love a wide variety of music from a number of different genres, but last year, the genre I loved the most was undoubtedly Afrobeats. Like a lot of people, I became obsessed. Back in 2012, Dan Hancox, writing in the Guardian, accurately predicted the rise of Afrobeats:
Most people are familiar with the Afrobeat styles of Fela Kuti – Afrobeats is something different; with the addition of the letter ‘s’ comes a whole new chapter in global pop music … a 21st century melting pot of western rap influences, and contemporary Ghanaian and Nigerian pop music.3
The genre has grown rapidly from its humble beginnings in London, and is now shaping the sound of pop music on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. Some of the most notable musicians in the genre today include Wiz Kid, Davido, Naira Marley, Fuse ODG, Sarkodie and my personal favourite, Burna Boy, Damini Ogulu. Burna, one of the few musicians I listen to on almost a daily basis, released his fourth studio album, African Giant, on 26 July 2019. (You might think I’m taking a bit of a detour here, but bear with me. We’ll get to the question of identity in a moment.) African Giant is a masterpiece, and a collection of songs that resonate with me for a several reasons. It’s an album that lives up to its title; a swaggering, soulful, wide-ranging collection that points to a future for Afrobeats, but does not forget its past. You’ll hear echoes of Caribbean dancehall, some grime braggadocio, a bit of sweet R&B (‘Pull Up’ and ‘Secret’, in particular) and, of course, the funk and jazz rhythms of classic Afrobeat. More than anything, as soon as I heard it, the album became a powerful reminder to me that I needed to learn about my roots.
I am a young black man, born in Britain. My family come from Nigeria. But as I said before, I have never visited the country. Instead, until very recently, I relied on my relatives, the diaspora and the very visible elements of Nigerian culture present in the UK to help me understand and connect to my heritage: the music, the dress, the food, the language. My family come from the Yoruba tribe, for example. I can still understand Yoruba when I hear it, but I’m unable to speak it. When I think about it now, Nigeria has always been an important part of who I am, but not something I ever really bothered to think about in a deeper way.
The first time I listened to Burna’s album, there was one tune in particular that stood out. ‘Another Story’ begins with a voice: ‘To understand Nigeria, you need to appreciate where it came from …’ The song then cuts to an extract from a documentary. It sounds like something from the 1950s; a clipped, posh, British accent reeling off a list of facts: ‘In 1900, Britain officially assumed responsibility for the administration of the whole of what we now know as Nigeria, from the Niger company …’ What follows is a shocking and illuminating account of Nigeria’s recent past, a history lesson I had never received in school, yet one that had so much to teach me about who I am and where I come from. In order to understand my story, I not only needed to understand my mother’s story. I needed to understand the motherland.
*
When I began exploring Nigerian history, I found that it was broken up into three main periods: pre-colonial, colonial and independent. I began to dig a little deeper, and was shocked at what I uncovered. I am not sure I can complete a chapter on identity without some overview of Nigerian history, but be warned, this is only my very basic summary. The Nigeria we know today was only officially recognised in 1960. Sixty years old! Nigeria as a nation and as an idea has, however, existed for millennia. By the eleventh century, the Yoruba civilisation was established. The Yoruba Empire is known historically as being based in its original capital, Ife, but by the seventeenth century Oyo had become the largest Yoruba state. The Hausa-Fulani of the north and the Edo people of Benin were two other tribes that developed major civilisations. Despite all three having minimal power politically, they remained prominent throughout the period of British colonial rule.
The Benin Empire stretched from present-day Lagos all the way east to the Niger Delta, right up until the eighteenth century. However, the onset of colonialism throughout Africa destabilised the continent, allowing the British to expand their unequal trade agreements. It also provided opportunities for them to launch military invasions and, in 1861, Britain captured Lagos.
As these civilisations were turned into a colony, the British imposed treaties so they could take over the trading of resources and minerals. The oil trade at that time was controlled by the British National African Company and, at the Berlin conference of 1884–5, the British were given the rights of influence and control over areas that would later become Nigeria. They used their military superiority to keep power, expand the Lagos Protectorate and establish another in the north. In 1893, the Yoruba Empire entered a treaty which was signed and approved by the Queen mother of Ibadan.
The treaties that allowed the British to maintain control were signed in the 1800s; however, those who agreed to them were not necessarily sufficiently educated in Western politics to understand the consequences, if they had any real choice at all. By the twentieth century, the fight for independence was in motion. Britain had strategic control of the Nigerian people and their resources, but this began to waver in the post-Second World War era as the UK’s power declined. Britain’s decimated resources, combined with the emergence of an educated Nigerian leadership and a growing clamour for independence, meant that Nigeria finally had a chance to negotiate its future.
The decline of British colonial power coincided with the emergence of a new class of Nigerian political leaders, and a popular nationalist movement. This growing movement, which Nnamdi Azikiwe referred to as an ‘African Renaissance’ called for Nigerians to unite, develop and take control of their nation. In 1953, there was a transition to independence which was agreed and approved by three regional leaders, Ahamdu Bello from the north, Nnamdi Azikiwe from the east, and Obafemi Awolowo from the west. Eventually, after two revisions, a constitution was approved in 1960 and Nigeria officially became an independent nation on 2 October 1960.
The troubles weren’t over yet, though, as regional differences and resource conflicts triggered the Biafran War from 1967–70. Leading up to it in 1966, thousands of Igbo people were killed in ethnic or religious attacks throughout parts of northern Nigeria. Additionally that year, there was a military coup which saw General Yakubu Gowon become the first military leader of Nigeria. In 1967, the east separated from the Republic and the combination of these events sparked civil war. Civilians starved due to ravaged crops and military attacks and, in total, there were an estimated 1 to 3 million casualties.
Learning more about the history of Nigeria made me realise how disconnected I am from the country. I proudly call myself Nigerian and engage with the culture, however I don’t necessarily have the same sort of struggle as some of my peers who grew up over there. By looking at Nigeria’s colonial history I also came to better understand the reasons many Nigerians have chosen to move away from their home country. Nigeria’s colonial past is filled with racism, hate and division. It made me question if I was proud to be British.
*
From Nigeria, I moved on to my best link with the country: my mum. I asked my mum to help me write up a brief history of her life. I realised then that, in all the years I’d been alive, I had never questioned my mum about her past. She told me it’s ‘difficult to write much about herself’, so I suggested we just had a conversation about Nigeria and about what she remembered. What I learned blew my mind.
Mum said that she came from a well-to-do family. Her father, my grandfather, whom I’d never met, was a civil engineer who owned a major property in a ‘posh part’ of Nigeria’s capital Lagos, Ikoyi. Biaduo Street to be exact. The house was beautiful, she said. There was lemongrass growing in the garden and a mango tree reaching up to her bedroom window. She could lift the latch and pick a mango whenever she wanted. The neighbourhood was quiet and peaceful. A wonderful place to grow up. I went on Google Street View to have a look. You can’t see much of the house itself, but you can look down the street: gated front gardens, a beautiful tall, blue building, a modern house that looks like it could be a church.
Not counting Britain’s dubious role in creating the nation state of Nigeria, my family’s link to the mother country goes back quite a way. My grandmother had studied and trained in London as a secretary at what was then named Pitman’s College, on Southampton Row, Bloomsbury — the best place to be if you wanted to become a secretary. Upon her return to Nigeria, she pursued a career as a medical secretary in what became a long-term role alongside a cancer specialist named Professor Kofi Duncan. My grandfather, her husband, was also well educated and spent much of his working life travelling the world as a pharmacist for Wellcome, Glaxo and Pfizer.
Mum’s family was big. She labelled her home as ‘polygamous’, so my grandfather had more than one wife, and seven children in total. My mother was her mother’s only child and received as much attention as her siblings (if not more). She was the ‘binding cord’ connecting everyone and was loved by all. For every child, however, school was of paramount importance, with my mother beginning her studies at the prestigious private nursery Lara Day on the outskirts of Lagos — an institution which prides itself as offering ‘an education comparable to the best available in private schools in Africa’.
I asked for more information about my mum’s day-to-day life, growing up in Lagos, and was filled with excitement to learn that she had lived near to the greatest Nigerian musician of all time, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, or ‘Baba’ as she referred to him. For those who don’t know him, Fela Kuti is the founder of what is known today as Afrobeat (not Afrobeats), a multi-instrumentalist of world renown, and a pioneering human rights activist. I learned about Afrika Shrine, the club he set up at the Empire Hotel: ‘A lot of girls at the time used to just fall in love with Fela. Literally any girl that went missing was said to have eloped to Baba’s shrine.’ I also heard about Baba the man, not the icon — about his kindness and generosity, about his sidekick, a dog nicknamed Jamba.
My mother was lucky enough to be chauffeured to school until she was about eleven or twelve, when her parents decided that she was old enough to start taking the newly introduced public transport to school. It was a challenge, she remembered, but she quickly adapted, joining the many thousands of Lagos residents grateful for the cheap transport across the capital.
I learned that, for my mother, it was not enough to be good at one thing. You had to excel at everything. Her home life was almost militarily regimented. That aside, mum was the quiet type, so she was perfectly happy to stay in and study or read. Her favourites were Mills & Boon romance novels. She would go through entire series at a time. ‘As you might have guessed, there were no boyfriends allowed, so it was my only way to experience romance!’ At school, not only was my mum a good runner, she was one of the best in the district. ‘I was a class captain, and sports prefect. I participated in the high jump, 100 metre relay and the sprint. I was also a member of the literary and debating society, competing against other prestigious schools. I was even on TV!’
She was pushed at home, but it wasn’t only her parents that she had to please: ‘School was very, very tough. You couldn’t get away with slacking. They had serious disciplinary measures against lateness; for instance, get a cutlass and cut grass until blisters show up on your palms. Next time you know better. You were not even allowed to walk on the grass in case you damaged it. Our uniforms had to be neatly pressed and ironed — no wrinkles. Our socks had to be perfectly white, which was no easy task if you’re taking dusty paths to school. The school’s motto, which the faculty repeated to you at every opportunity, was supposed to be motivational, but it was more like a warning: “Work is the antidote for poverty.”’
With her good grades and academic aptitude, my grandfather pushed my mother towards a career in medicine, the family profession (in a way). Unfortunately, you needed excellent grades in maths to be accepted onto the training course and, sadly, maths wasn’t one of Mum’s strongest subjects. ‘I remember nodding throughout my algebra classes to convince my teacher I understood what she was saying. I didn’t have a clue!’
With medicine out the window, Mum decided the next best option would be law. She read up on the profession and found more and more to like. With her passion for reading and outstanding debating skills (not to mention her keen eye for injustice), it seemed like the perfect profession, and the best way to fulfil her old school motto. But it was not an easy path.
*
When I was in my final year, I realised that I couldn’t be a doctor, like my father wanted. I just wasn’t good enough at maths. You could go straight to university aged sixteen if you managed to get the right grades. I was expected to get the top grades in my class and won a place to study law at a new university that had opened in Lagos. The night before we got our results, however, I had a dream that I got an F in English. It was a horrible dream. The next morning I woke up and went to collect the results and discovered that my dream had come true! No one could believe it! One of the best students in the school, a member of the school debating team, had failed English! I lost my place at university and had to stay on at school for another two years until I got the right grades. Glory be to God, I won a place at a good university outside of Lagos, the University of Benin, and finally left home. I was privileged.
I threw everything I had into my degree. I became vice-president of the Law Student Association [LSA], and travelled around the country, meeting fellow law students. It was during my travels with the university that I first met Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, blessed be his memory, a political leader who played a pivotal role in the Biafran War of the late 1960s, and led the breakaway Republic of Biafra. He became the patron of the LSA, and was someone we spent a bit of time with. He was a very intelligent man, and a very kind man. We got along well. I was sort of the mother of the LSA and would look after everyone, as best I could, and I think he recognised that in me, and gave me encouragement and support when he could.
A lot happened in Nigeria during my youth. I was very lucky to have had a relatively peaceful childhood. My parents paid for me to fly back home regularly, whereas most people had to drive. I would be collected from the airport by our driver and taken home, where I was warmly welcomed and well looked after.
Eventually I graduated and moved on to law school, in Victoria Island. It was a very privileged place. My fellow students were the children of the country’s top business people, politicians and artists. Everyone had a lot of money. And everyone liked to party. Our generation was rebellious. I remember my grandmother used to call us ‘butter children’, because we were so soft. She would give us material to make traditional Nigerian clothes, and we’d make tight trousers and tops. When she saw us, she would go crazy! I had a wonderful time and did well. I was a lawyer. My English wasn’t quite good enough for me to have a top job in Lagos maybe, but I was well qualified, and lived a good life.
In my final year of university, I was living in an apartment alone in Victoria Island. I was very good friends with my neighbour from across the hall. We would go to the market together most days. One day we got back from the market and I started cooking up the peppers I had bought, when I heard a scream from across the hall. At first I thought my friend had spilled hot water on herself or something, so I hurried over to see what was going on. Her door was ajar and it was dark inside. I called out her name and walked in. In the living room, my neighbour was kneeling on the floor, surrounded by men with guns. Robbers. One of them grabbed me, threw me on the ground and pressed a gun to my head. They tied us up with rope and started interrogating my friend about what jewellery and money she had in the apartment. My friend was crying uncontrollably. I had no idea what to feel. It was all very surreal, but I thought if I just stayed still and didn’t speak we would be OK. And luckily, that’s what happened. The robbers completely ransacked the house, and left with a little bag full of money and gold. We waited for a while and then managed to wriggle free, and ran downstairs and into the street. Nobody could believe we had escaped without being hurt. These robbers were ruthless. They would rape and kill without a care in the world. It was God that kept us safe.
Eventually I finished my degree with good marks. I had the world at my feet, but I decided to take a little break before I made a decision about my career. I moved back home and spent a lot of time with my family, with my mother especially. Then all of a sudden, everything changed. A man fell in love with me, a man my older sister knew. Back then, there was no courtship. He asked my father if he could marry me and my father agreed, and that seemed to be that. My parents asked me what I thought, but I knew nothing of love, so I just went along with it. Even though my father approved, it was a strange match. My parents wanted the best for me, but I’m not sure he was really it. He didn’t really have a job, but he had big dreams.
So all of a sudden I had a fiancé, but I was still living at home, taking a bit of time off after my degree. I was restless. Soon enough my fiancé was offered a job in England and we decided to go. I was very independent, and always have been, so it wasn’t much of a step for me. It was exciting. I also thought it might be safer than Lagos at that time. My mother told me, ‘Don’t forget who you are. A good name is better than gold and silver.’
*
Growing up, I had always wondered why my parents, and so many of my friends’ parents, had left their home countries to start all over again in Britain. It was another question I never bothered to ask. Looking around at our surroundings, at the relentless grey sky, at the poverty of our neighbourhood, at the lack of opportunities, it was easy to think that they must have come from somewhere far worse. My view was only reinforced by the damaging stereotype that is still propagated: that the entire continent of Africa is full of poor, dirty and hopeless people. As I got older, I began to challenge that view, but it was only when I asked the question that I began to discover why my mother, and why so many people like her, had chosen to move to the UK.
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The reasons why people move from one country to another are often far from straightforward. I’m not going to provide you with a lesson in human migration here, but I think it’s important to look more closely at immigration or, more precisely, at the movement of people to a country where they do not possess citizenship in order to work and take up permanent residence.
In particular, there are a few key myths which are worth dispelling. Firstly, not all immigrants are refugees. In fact, the UN’s 2017 international migration report found that only 10 per cent of migrants worldwide are refugees or asylum seekers.
Secondly, migration isn’t just about poor people moving to richer countries. Here, the difference between what the tabloids might tell you and the reality is especially stark when it comes to asylum seekers and refugees. In 2015, in the middle of the ‘refugee crisis’ when millions of people fled the Syrian civil war, Britain’s press and even its prime minister spoke about ‘swarms’ of refugees trying to enter into Britain. However, as of 2018, only 13,000 Syrian refugees had been resettled in Britain, compared to over three million in Turkey and over two million in Lebanon. This isn’t just the case with Syrian refugees, and data from the UN shows that of the world’s 26 million asylum seekers and refugees, 4 out of 5 are living in the developing world.4
In fact, patterns of all kinds of migration are more complex than they might seem. When it comes to so-called ‘economic migrants’, the UN show that migrants from developing countries are more likely to move to other developing countries than they are to move to the world’s wealthiest states. In fact, in 2017, of all the world’s migrants, 38 per cent were people who were born in developing countries who had moved to other developing countries, 35 per cent were people who had moved from developing countries to developed countries, 20 per cent were people who had moved between rich countries, and 6 per cent had moved from developed to developing countries. Perhaps most surprisingly, the continent with the fastest growing migrant population is not Europe or North America, but Africa.5
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we should dispel the myth that migrants offer little to their country of arrival. Most research on the subject concludes that migration has, on average, a positive economic effect on receiving countries, not to mention the social and cultural benefits migration brings. What’s more, international migration more often than not benefits the countries from which migrants come, as remittances sent back to family can enable development there, and many development economists argue that the best way to reduce poverty globally would be to reduce barriers to labour mobility.
Now we’ve got that general context out of the way, it’s important to get specific. After all, this isn’t a textbook about migration, but rather a chapter about how migration has affected my identity. And, as a young man with Nigerian parents who moved to Britain, we need to take a look at the specific reasons why people have, over the last seventy years at least, been keen to move to these Isles.
The history of migration to Britain is intimately tied up with the history of Britain and of the British Empire. At its height, Britain controlled a quarter of the world’s population and a fifth of its land mass. This was no benevolent role, however; Britain gained its Empire, and maintained it, through coercion, aggression and often appalling acts of violence. Yet in spite of its actions, Britain was eager to present itself as the ‘motherland’, immeasurably improving the lives of its colonial subjects, and as a land which would welcome them unreservedly, if they were ever to make the journey across the ocean.
This would become significant at the end of the Second World War. Then, two factors combined to change Britain forever. First, the declining legitimacy of the British Empire meant the British wanted to present the relationship between Britain and its colonial subjects as equals within a commonwealth. Second, the war had left the British economy close to collapse, and the country’s attempts to rebuild its infrastructure were plagued by labour shortages. The result was the passing of the 1948 British Nationality Act, which would allow Britain’s approximately 800 million subjects around the world to live and work in the UK without need of a visa.
The first big post-war arrival of people to Britain, and still the most famous, was on the Empire Windrush, which in June 1948 brought 802 people to Britain from the Caribbean. What followed was a steady stream of economic migrants arriving in the UK from former colonies, rising from 3,000 a year in 1953 to 136,400 in 1961, in spite of a number of increasingly draconian and overtly racist policies and acts passed by successive British governments to limit the number of new arrivals and, in some cases, deport those who had arrived in search of a new life.
While countless articles have been written about the racism within the immigration system ruining lives, there has been much less media attention given to the historical evidence that sits within the public record regarding migration policies, such as the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962, which saw the sitting Conservative government introduce measures that restricted the automatic right to remain in the UK for Commonwealth citizens. The government not only limited those permitted to settle in the UK but, in many cases, actively discriminated against those applying to come to the UK from the global south, while paying for the relocation of workers from countries such as Australia and New Zealand. This was later amended by the Immigration Act of 1971 and many times subsequently, but these discriminatory practices have led to the unfair restriction and the detention and wrongful deportation of hard working and rightful citizens of the UK.
*
In 2018, we had a new political scandal that would shake communities across the UK. The so-called Windrush scandal exposed the government’s inability to recognise generations of families who journeyed over to the UK from the Caribbean post-Second World War, responding to the call to the Commonwealth to rebuild the ‘motherland’; in other words, Britain relied on nations over which they held sovereignty to help the country get back on its feet.
Those who first arrived in the UK were segregated by overt discrimination. When my grandmother came to the UK to study, there were signs in shops and house windows which stated: ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs.’ It was fine to call someone coloured or a negro. Racism thrived in this unwelcoming environment. But Britain’s hostility didn’t stop the thousands of people who wanted to have a better life from arriving in the UK during the fifties and sixties.
New census data showed that 21,000 people who moved to the UK before 1971 have neither a British passport nor a passport from the country where they were born, giving the strongest picture so far of the possible scale of the Windrush scandal. It has even exposed that a number of legal British citizens were separated from their families and sent back home to a country they had not seen since they were children.
Some fifty years on from their arrival, some have been arrested and put in immigration detention centres, others have been forced out of their homes and jobs or denied NHS treatment or benefits.
Today, not much has changed. We see migrants coming to Europe from all parts of Africa, Asia and beyond. For some, their journeys are smoother than others’. The news cycle has made us very aware of the dangers some have faced in order to cross the Mediterranean, but the majority of the economic migrants entering the UK from Nigeria in the nineties and early 2000s saved up and purchased plane tickets to the ‘mother country’ with hopes of bettering their lives. Although their journeys were not riddled with the same dangers that we have witnessed on the news in recent years, they came with their own hardships. Stories of trained professionals who are unable to gain anything other than menial employment are still all too common in 2020. This is not to say that there is no honour or dignity in these jobs, but in many cases they do not reflect the skill sets or qualifications individuals have worked hard to acquire in their home country. It’s a basic point, but it demonstrates the ways in which the trauma of Empire continues to resonate, Britain stopping its own citizens from full access to a society that was built from their countries’ contributions.
The Windrush scandal came to light in 2018 following a determined effort by the Guardian and a number of activists and writers.6 I can only imagine how things must have been in 1993 when my mum first came over. She had a long battle to be recognised as a British citizen, even though she came over to contribute to the economy and use her professional skills. The plight of those with an insecure right to live and work in Britain has a particular relevance in the context of Brexit. 3.2 million EU citizens living in the UK who previously had an automatic right to live here will now have to apply for ‘settled status’, and anyone living in Europe who wants to move to the UK in future will have to jump through the same hoops that my mum had to.
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My mother was only one of many hundreds of thousands of migrants who made the journey from Nigeria to the UK in search of a different life. She came to make a positive contribution as so many others did, as part of a steady wave of African migrants who came to the UK between 1990 and the early 2000s. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), there has been a significant growth in economic immigrants from Nigeria arriving the UK since the early 1990s.7 If you focus on movement from 2000 to the present in particular, the picture becomes even clearer. Between 2001 and 2002, Nigerians accounted for the fifteenth largest number of migrants settled in the UK. By 2015, Nigerians were the ninth most prolific migrants in Britain, ranking as the second most common sub-Saharan African migrants in the country, just behind South Africa. In 2015 the ONS statistics record 102,000 Nigerian women registered in the UK, compared to 97,000 Nigerian men.
My mother was one of those women.
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I remember feeling a bit disappointed when I arrived. In Nigeria we didn’t always have electricity and the roads were awful, but I wasn’t that impressed with London initially. It was mid-February and freezing cold, and a bit dreary. Our house was a lot smaller than our family home in Lagos.
Needless to say, things didn’t work out as I hoped they would in London. Things weren’t really working out with my partner and I felt very alone. Soon after we arrived, we broke up. I didn’t think I could go back to Lagos, so I decided to stay. I foolishly thought that I could find a job as a lawyer without too much trouble. I was well qualified and, as the Nigerian legal system is largely based on the British one, I believed a simple conversion certificate would do. I was wrong. My qualifications were invalid. If I wanted to practise as a lawyer, I would need to start from scratch, which I certainly didn’t have the money for. I decided to enrol on a technology course instead, learning Microsoft Office at a college not far from where I was staying. I spent a whole year learning Word. Can you imagine! What a waste of time. But I didn’t know what else to do.
I met someone new and moved in with him. The pressure eased off a little. I had two children in quick succession. Then things began to fall apart again. I needed to find a job. I spent a while searching and eventually found a job working the night shift at a currency exchange at Gatwick Airport. I was very proud of myself. But not long after I started I began to feel ill. I was so ill that I couldn’t work. I could barely get out of bed. It turned out that I was pregnant again, so that was that.
I don’t regret it, but I had to make sacrifices. I had to make some very difficult decisions. I focused on the children. My partner, the father of my children, had a stroke and was not taking care of himself. He stopped working. We were also drifting apart, so eventually, he left and moved back to Nigeria. I was on my own with three small children and no income at all. I went to social services to ask for help, but I couldn’t understand what they needed from me. They were not very patient. I had to make do. I found a job with British Telecom and was fortunate enough to have a good network of friends and neighbours nearby to help out at home. But it was hard. We were forced to move a lot and lived in a series of unsuitable houses. I remember being called by Jeremiah’s teacher, who said that he was very tired because he’d been kept awake by the noisy plumbing in the house. It was not a good time. I was very stressed and it was having an impact on my health. I had issues with my kidneys and I was not really sleeping. My GP sent me to hospital and they said that I needed to have an operation. I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t risk a major operation. If something happened to me, God forbid, what would become of my children? So I struggled on.
We hadn’t heard from my former partner in a long time. He would come back to visit the children occasionally and he would call, but then the calls stopped. One day, I got a call from someone in his family. They told me that he had passed away. We hadn’t lived together for a long time, but it hit me hard. I was in shock. It was very hard for the children as well. My oldest son did not cope well.
I was working when I could, but I wasn’t making much money. I was also applying to become a British citizen. It was a long and expensive and complicated process, and until my paperwork came through, it meant that my status in Britain was uncertain. And because my status was uncertain, my children’s status was uncertain.
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My mother’s qualifications before she left Nigeria for the UK were seen as exceptional. As a fully trained and qualified lawyer, the world really was her oyster. Her degree was supposed to set her up for life, however that was far from being the case when she arrived in the UK. Her qualifications were immediately dismissed and not recognised. Of course, laws in the two different countries vary, yet, with Nigeria’s colonial past, many of the laws and legislation in Nigeria were actually steered by the British. I find it upsetting that she was seen as unqualified to go into law even though she had worked hard for years to make her dreams come true.
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Who am I? Putting this chapter together has helped me learn a wealth of things about myself and my family. Most of what you have read I only learned while writing this book. Knowing who you are is so important. For most of my life I feel I hadn’t found myself. I had so many questions about my ancestry, my family history and my mother’s story. These answers I have finally found after embarking on this journey.
After learning about what my mum had had to forego, and about her hard work and struggle, it taught me the importance of a strong family unit. I appreciate her even more because of the sacrifices she made. You may be wondering, how do you find yourself? One important way is to discover your roots. After learning about Nigeria and my family’s history, it allowed me to feel more connected to myself. When you are more aware about such a basic thing, it can change your entire outlook on life.
Rather than accept who people say you are, find out for yourself. It’s an ongoing process for me, and I am still learning more, but I believe my second email to Lord Hastings was not far off. Knowing yourself leads to knowing your purpose. I believe everyone on this earth has a purpose, it’s our responsibility to find out why we’re here.