By Mideno Bayagbon

For three days, last week, at the sold out, 02 Arena, London, 60,000 fans congregated to worship at the shrine of Nigerian Superstar, the Grammy winning, 31 years old, WIZKID. It was spectacular. It was chart bursting. It was soul lifting: It pumped the adrenalin of every Nigerian, who either was there live in one of the three days; or watched it live-streamed on all the major social media platforms.  It was world class.
First conceived as a one day musical for the 20,000 capacity 02 Arena, the second biggest event venue in the United Kingdom, it was little surprise the entire 20,000 tickets sold out in 12 minutes flat. Pressure and quick thinking brought a second and third tickets sale. And in approximately 35 minutes, 60,000 tickets were snatched up by the huge sea of fans who wanted more.
That was how an event earlier conceived as a one day show metamorphosed into a three day sold-out musical concert ingeniously titled Made In Lagos.

Every Nigerian, no matter the second passport they carry, was proud to be called a Nigerian those three days as the youths from across all of Europe, poured into London to partake of the sweet, melodious music of the Ojuelegba boy. It was three days the best of Nigeria’s rich musical tapestry was displayed and honoured.
It was, nevertheless, a sad soul searching three days for many. The pomp, the allure, the ambience, the sophisticated but well coordinated artistry, showcased the sad possibilities of Nigeria’s greatly arrested development. It was a testament to a nation sabotaged from the inside, by those into whose care it had been entrusted. WIZKID’s three day musical wonder in London strikes at the heart of our continuing gross incompetence in governance. It was so annoying to be a Nigerian watching another nation take all the glory and wealth that naturally should be Nigeria’s.

Can you imagine if WIZKID, who now permanently resides in Surrey in London, had decided to hold the Made IN Lagos musical concert in Nigeria?
Of the 60,000 fans, about 40,000 would have come in from other countries in Europe and a daring few from the Americas. In all, apart from their flight tickets, they stayed in hotels, ate, paid for internal transportation, did some level of shopping and would each have spent an average of £500. That is a cool £30,000,000 or N21 billion that came into the British economy because a talented Nigerian boy, looking for self expression, hosted a three day event at the 02 Arena. Just for a moment, imagine that humongous amount entering the economy of Lagos, or Abuja or Warri in three days!

WIZKID’s musical concert becoming the gain of another country is just a tip of the monumental wealth Nigeria is daily throwing away and other countries are gladly accepting. Take the matter of health care. WE have a president who is the poster boy,  the advertisement, of how poorly we have treated the sector. An headache, a toothache, even an appointment with a dentist must be secured abroad. And those who can afford it, mainly those of easy wealth have since joined the bandwagon. No Nigerian of any worth goes to a Nigerian hospital. Yet we used to have one of the best hospitals and doctors, globally. The Saudi monarch, history reports, used to come to Nigeria for his healthcare. Our teaching hospitals were reputedly among the best, worldwide. Not anymore. We still have the doctors, evidenced by those who have brain drained abroad being still some of the highly rated in their fields. But lack of facilities, bad policies and a seeming deliberate effort to kill the sector have ruined it.
The poor die unnecessary, unpardonable deaths. They are forced to self medicate. Abandoned by the state, they get swindled into buying fake medication and death easily knocks them over. Take the matter of the recent, ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. But for God, it would have been a calamity of unimaginable proportions. The poor are left to their fate. Any one of them who falls victim to the disease gets a dinner date with death; forced into the agony of scavenging for money to pay up to N50,000 for the test. Private testing centres preys on any one who appears to have symptoms of the disease. Confirmed cases go home to die or self medicate. The few hospitals who do attempt to admit such patients, in the face of lack of spaces in government facilities, charge a minimum of N1.5 million. That’s why those with serious underlying diseases, but for God, are goners. This is replicated in all other cases.

How about education? Billions of dollars are yearly thrown out of the country by those who can afford it, especially those on government free economic rides. A telling example, again is President Buhari. All his children, by Aisha, all schooled or are schooling in the United Kingdom. There is no minister, no appointee of this government, no top civil or public servant who does not have one or more of their children or relatives in one foreign university or the other. Even the heavily pauperised middle class families are selling off family assets to send their children abroad to school. Not out of a competitive spirit anymore but seeing their children, graduates of Nigerian universities sitting at home, year after year, after graduation, this has become the only route to plan for a better life for their children. Yet this is not a cheap venture. It takes an average N10m to N15 million, not counting accommodation and upkeep, annually to send each child abroad for a masters degree programme.
Most countries, like the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, USA, are busy promoting plans to encourage Nigerians to come with their wealth to fund their universities. The sweetener being that anyone who schools there, graduates, can get a job and begin plans to enrich their nation with their knowledge. No family send their children, through blood and sweat now, and expect them to return back home after completing their education. Come back to do what,   they ask rhetorically: To remain unemployed all over again?

The best of our youths, who can somehow afford it, are also voting with their feet out of the country. Hundreds of thousands, yearly are relocating out of Nigeria. The favourite destinations are Canada, UK, USA and so on. Billions of Dollars go into this process. Houses are sold, cars and other assets are auctioned off to finance such relocations. In most instances, wives and children are the first to be packaged out while the husbands remain to continue to work to finance their comfort in their new homes abroad. 
Most guilty of these are the elite in the North and in the South. For the northern elites, it is mostly those whose states have been ceded to ISWAP or Boko Haram, or who worry about the lack of security generally, or who want a foreign education advantage for their children given that, even the patronage system, which they continue to use to oppress and exclude the poor has shrunk drastically with Nigeria’s economy on its knees.

 As the current security situation dictates, no northern or southern big man goes home to his state or village anymore. The fear of terrorists and kidnappers is the beginning of wisdom for them. Most first relocate their immediate families to Abuja or Lagos and subsequently pack them off to new lives abroad.  Their favourite destinations, for northern moslems, are UAE, Qatar, Lebanon, UK and so on. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, for example, stays permanently in Dubai with most of his family members. Every northern big man has a home or two in Dubai. The United Kingdom, Canada and the United States of America and some cities in Europe are the favourite choices for the southern big men.
It makes you wonder that a country so desperately poor as Nigeria is doling out billions of dollars to other economies while it is living in penury, on borrowed funds from China and the West.  

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Wow that's thrillions of Naira