Abuja Oyinbo: Why Nigeria Is More Welcoming Than UK, Europe

Editor’s note: Naij.com‘s contributor Clementine Wallop compares the warm welcome she has continually received  in Nigeria to the disdain immigrants face in the UK and other European countries. 

I have been thinking a lot in the last week or two about feeling welcome.

I feel welcome in Abuja all day, every day. It’s hard not to when people I have never met before greet me on the street on my way to the shop with a “you are welcome” or occasionally a “you are welcome in Nigeria”.

It doesn’t seem to matter that before saying this that most people greeting me so warmly don’t know the first thing about me – am I nice or horrible, good or bad, working or not working, loving being in Abuja or longing to get out?

Before I moved here, I might have expected to hear it once or twice at the airport on landing and sorting out my first visa stamp, but no, here we are over a year later and every day someone will say it. If it’s not a “you are welcome”, it’s something else kind, generous or thoughtful. “Well done” perhaps, or “I hope you are enjoying Nigeria” (the answer is yes, naturally).

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When I fly home to London for a short trip, someone at the airport always quizzes me about why I am leaving so soon and tells me they hope I’ll be back in short order.

I have become accustomed to what seems to be a culture of welcome.

My experiences here sit so uncomfortably against the rhetoric coming from both the British Prime Minister David Cameron and the British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond when they’ve been addressing the migrant crisis in Europe.

Cameron described a “swarm” of migrants attempting to enter Britain “seeking a better life”.

Hammond said “millions of Africans” were attempting to get to Europe, describing the people living in camps in Calais as “pretty desperate migrants marauding around the area”.

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This is language from Game of Thrones, not real life – Hammond is Ser Alliser Thorne, protecting The Wall against the Wildings. Can we not be just a little more considered in the way we’re talking about each other and a little more Jon Snow in the way we behave towards one another?

Why Hammond chose to talk about millions of Africans, who can say, when Syria and Afghanistan account for a large number of the migrants arriving into Europe? But hey, who cares about accuracy when you’re busy scaremongering?

This is the same Mr Hammond, by the way, who no doubt received a warm welcome when he came to Nigeria for President Buhari’s inauguration. I don’t seem to remember anyone talking then about the number of foreign officials swarming through the arrivals hall of Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport.

Language like this from a country’s leaders projects an impression that the British people endorse this view, in the same way people often hold me somehow responsible for their visa problems getting into Britain when I don’t agree with British visa policy for Nigerians.

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It’s also rhetoric that trickles down to people who are easily scared by inflammatory comments about the threat to their standard of living, breeding more hostility against migrants to Britain.

Serious as the subject is, I am amused when I wonder what they’re imagining is going to happen to their standard of living – that they’re going to have to queue longer in the pub for a pint of bitter because there’s a queue of thirsty Nigerians in the way? Please.

Hearing stories from Nigerian friends about the grilling they get at British airports when they come to see friends and family, I wonder about the difference a little more of the “you are welcome” culture would make to Britain.

As a nationality we’re not much given to spontaneous outbursts, but I imagine the change it would make to someone newly arrived in the country to hear “I hope you are enjoying Britain”.

When the day comes for me to tell the Abuja airport immigration officials that I am leaving for good and can’t say when I’ll be back, I’ll be carrying as much “you are welcome” home with me in my cases as I possibly can.

Clementine Wallop is a British writer and researcher. She has been happily living in Abuja since 2014.

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