16/05/2026
I met a Nigerian man online who used to post motivational quotes every morning.
“Work hard.”
“Stay focused.”
“Success is a choice.”
If you checked his page, you would think he had life figured out.
Months later, he finally opened up.
He was living in Europe.
Three jobs.
Sleeping barely four hours daily.
Sharing apartment with strangers.
Sending almost everything home because everybody in Nigeria believed “abroad” automatically means wealth.
The painful part was not even the suffering.
It was the pressure to pretend.
Back home, people were calling him “Chairman.”
Meanwhile, the same man was calculating transport money before going to work.
One day he told me something I will never forget:
“The day I traveled out, people stopped seeing me as human. I became an ATM.”
His younger ones wanted school fees.
His cousins wanted business capital.
Friends wanted connection.
Church wanted support.
Everybody believed he was swimming in money because he posts pictures in winter jackets beside clean roads.
Nobody saw the depression.
Nobody saw him crying in silence after long shifts.
Nobody saw the loneliness.
And sadly, many Nigerians in diaspora are trapped in that lifestyle.
They cannot come back because people will mock them.
They cannot rest because responsibilities won’t let them breathe.
They cannot tell the truth because social media has forced many people to live a fake successful life.
This is why some people abroad suddenly start investing aggressively in Nigerian real estate.
Not because they are extremely rich.
Sometimes, it is fear.
Fear of returning home one day with nothing.
Fear of old age in a foreign land.
Fear of working endlessly without building anything tangible back home.
So they buy one plot.
Then another one.
Then small apartments under construction.
Not for luxury, but for security.
For peace of mind.
For hope.
The sad reality is this: Many Nigerians abroad are surviving, not living.
Some are one missed paycheck away from crisis.
Some are mentally exhausted.
Some smile online and cry offline.
That is why I have learnt never to envy people because of location.
A lot of people are fighting battles behind closed doors.
Sometimes the person in Nigeria sleeping peacefully beside family is happier than the person abroad making money but losing themselves slowly.
