By Wole Oyebade

The flight was like one of those half-empty cabins on an off-peak weekday journey. I was warming up to having some unoccupied seats to myself. Every unused seat is a loss to the airline. But it gives a lucky passenger more privacy and free access to the aisle, be it for the loo or a stretch. For me, it means less distraction for a nap, a good read, or completing some school tasks as I kill the boredom of a six-hour flight that sometimes feels like 10-plus. It was like my type of perfect flight, but that soon changed.

More like a community united by purpose, they filed into the waiting seats – men, women and scores of children. They were clearly not the usual passengers, as something about their appearance was odd. I couldn’t place it as I was too focused on the laptop, minding my business.

The in-cabin announcement by officials of the Nigerian Mission in South Africa and the goodbye wishes gave them away as evacuees fleeing xenophobia. I would later find that there were about 66 of them on the South African Airlines flight to Lagos.The last of the bunch settled into seat 61H, next to me.

The fellow courtesied a weary ‘hello’ in my direction. ‘You are welcome,’ I replied. Perhaps in his late 30s or early 40s, his countenance was a confluence of anger, relief and uncertainty. He looked haggard in his fading dark-brown winter jacket. I guessed its prolonged exposure to the numbing winter of Johannesburg had bleached it into different shades of brown on the collar, back, and elbows, with threads bursting at the seams.

For a while, he clutched a bulky laptop to his chest. It must have been made in the 80s. But he held it like a prized possession. As the flight was set for take-off, I gestured that he could keep it in the small compartment in front of his seat, just as I had done with mine. He did, but his eyes kept hovering between our two laptops.

As the aircraft climbed to its altitude of comfort some 30 minutes into the journey, it was time for refreshments. My neighbour ordered a soft drink and a cup of dry gin. A blend of both worked instant magic on his mood. Indeed, alcohol is one of the noblest innovations of mankind and the reason it earned the prime place of a psychoactive legacy drug. As he downed the last gulp of the combo, his large palm wiped his face. He heaved an audible sigh. For the first time, he smiled into the space in front of him.

When the drink trolley resurfaced, he signalled for another round. He drank slowly but cheerfully this time. He later motioned to me to keep an eye on his laptop as he headed to the loo. I could see the asset meant the world to him! He returned with a ‘thank you, Sir!’ and I responded in Yoruba. He lit up even brighter. ‘Haa, I didn’t know you are a Yoruba’. We then got talking like old friends.

A lot of narratives are flying around about happenings in South Africa than is known to some of us in the country. I was more interested in my neighbour’s lived experience in this xenophobic nation.

In a subdued tone, he recanted living in the Gauteng region as a hustler for almost 10 years. At my prompting on what he does for a living, he said: ‘I work on the computer… You should have understood,’ he whispered as he flashed a look over his shoulder.‘Yahoo!’ I concealed my surprise but told him he didn’t look like them.He admitted the contrast in fortunes.

He narrated his arrival in South Africa in 2016 based on the (mis)information that the rainbow nation is a greener Garden of Eden waiting for harvesters. Unskilled and driven by the desperation for survival, he fell into the arms of hostile street gangs who recruit and groom young guys for Internet fraud, but not enough drills to make a fortune from it.

He supplements his low income from the illicit trade by repairing computers on the street. However, the income was never enough to make a decent living in South Africa.

For him, the current wave of xenophobia and Afrophobia is a welcome opportunity to go home for good. ‘I didn’t witness any violence,’ he said, ‘but bros, I have lived here for 10 years. I have never saved enough to buy a flight ticket to go home! Is that life?’ He was partly excited to be going home to reunite with his kid sister, who was eight years old when he left. He also had the tinge of regret of going home near empty-handed. His few belongings were stolen from their hideouts, he said. ‘Not having luggage is my pain. No clothes or shoes. Nothing. This laptop is the only thing I’m taking out of South Africa. I hope I can start a new life with it.’

As the dark sky of the West African coast enveloped the aircraft and lulled half the cabin into sleep, I kept reflecting on the misadventure of my evacuee friend and on Nigeria’s army of unskilled workers. How on earth did he leave his country without a skill set and hope to ‘find his way’ (a street lingo for survival or prospering) in a foreign land?

Globalisation at the turn of this century truly opened the world to free movement and migration of workers. The proviso is that the workers must possess high-end skills sought after in the host countries. Put differently, migration is not for charity, but for the value a migrant brings into an economy. To do otherwise is to reduce oneself to a liability, an unwanted migrant, and an easy target of cheap local politics seeking scapegoats for the worsening unemployment rate, drug problem and crimes.

Nigeria is a remarkably young country, and a youthful population is an unfinished nation. It is bad enough that Nigeria does not know how to leverage its youthful population to its advantage. Yet these are raw potential in high global demand, insofar as they have high-quality skill sets ranging from basic to rare. For the basic skills, how does one explain that Nigeria is busy shutting down skills-oriented vocational centres, technical colleges, and polytechnics (for more research-oriented universities) amid our infrastructural deficits, our quest for industrialisation, and global demand for skilled workers?

For starters, Local Governments can employ these trained youths and artisans to systematically build and maintain damaged infrastructure rather than awarding mega contracts that fritter scarce resources into private pockets. Industrialists and foreign investors prize destinations that already have a trained labour force and investment-friendly policies.

Skilled youths who are hungry for adventure can find it abroad and contribute to foreign remittances in Nigeria. Besides, it eradicates the misadventurous tales of uninformed and untrained Nigerians leaving the country just for the sake of it, only to japada (that is, forced repatriation) after wasting years, if not their lives.

Lastly, the likes of the fellow in seat 61H would not have ventured to South Africa had Nigeria worked for them. There is no study yet to reference here, but a guesstimate suggests that at least one in every two Nigerians in South Africa feels stuck yet uncertain about what Nigeria has to offer them.

The evacuee shares that sentiment, too. The assumption is that if our country works to half its potential, more than half of the current travel bugs would stay back in Nigeria because there is really no place like home.

As we parted ways upon landing at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, my neighbour had neatly wrapped the in-flight blanket around his laptop to create an impromptu piece of luggage. It is perhaps better than nothing. He gave his name as Tajudeen. I wished him good luck and a happy reunion with his sister.

As I lay in my bed that night, I remember him. He’s been gone for 10 years and is returning to Nigeria, which has significantly changed, in sharp contrast to the allure of his Gauteng province in South Africa. I silently prayed that he would find a new purpose, hope, and peaceat home.

Oyebade, Ph.D, is Deputy Editor of The Guardian.