Femi

Femi, 34

Ethnicity: Ghanaian (Ewe) + Nigerian (Yoruba)

City/County grew up in: Lagos, London, Kent

City/County of residence: Kent

*audio below

Describe your heritage

I would describe my heritage as Black British Nigerian. I was born in Nigeria though, lived there [my] first 8 years, before I moved to England with my parents. I’m also half Ghanaian so I suppose a Black African or Black British African is really a better way to describe my heritage.

What to you, makes you Black British Nigerian? How do you define it?

For me being Black British Nigerian is probably defined best as a mentality. I did the last part of primary school here, secondary school, and further education after that, so the way my mind thinks and the way that I reason, is very much in line with British culture. Having children here as well is probably a really good way of solidifying that definition. So as a Black British, Nigerian, African, Ghanaian, for me it’s definitely about how I see the world, how I perceive the world, how I find my place in it, and that is more in line with Britain than it is anywhere else.

What challenges do you/have you faced that relate to your identity as a Black British Nigerian?

The amazing challenges of being Black British Nigerian I suppose come down to first and foremost work. I remember when I was much younger, my parents understanding where we were and the kind of context we had sort of as Black Africans, they gave me an opportunity that “if you want to, you can change your name from Femi”, pick a name out of the Bible was basically what they said. And I went through all the names in the Bible, and I found fault with everybody basically, and obviously you can’t really go into school being called ‘Jesus’. So I was like I’ll stick with my name and let’s see how it pans out. Having to explain your name “Femi, no not Semi (pronounced she-mi), no not Semi...(pronounced sem-i)” – yeah I think that was one of the first challenges that I had. These days when my CV is submitted anywhere, it has my name spelt phonetically as well just so they have no excuse. I think also within that comes the additional pressures – when I came to the country it was very much an Africans vs Caribbeans style culture, and at that point in time unlike now, if you’re new to the country or much younger, you’ll never remember the time. Once upon a time, being African was the undercard, it wasn’t the pleasant thing to be, and Caribbeans were very much in favour. So I’ve seen it from both angles, and that made it very challenging at the time to be an African. You know, people make fun of you – you’d be surprised what other Black people from other parts of the world will say about Africans, you know. Of course the media doesn’t help that with all manner of different portrayals of Africa, but different story for a different day.

So I think for me probably a lot of the challenges came from a name that was very different and I don’t have a name that is very easy for most non-Black or most Caucasian people to pronounce. I came in at the point where the rise in Black Africans was increasing significantly, so border[ing] the first brunt of your different type of Black than the ones they were used to, and then along with that just came all the other things that come with that. Just understanding where you fit in, how you fit in, how best to fit in, what parts do you hide, what parts to do you reveal, what works best for the entire way in which you used to live in…in effect.

What do you love about being Black British Nigerian?

For me I think literally that three-word phrase is actually it. I love being Black. I think it has some very interesting connotations. The more you travel round the world, the more you realise yeah it’s got it’s challenges, but the more unique it is that you’re Black, and I like that a lot. It’s a double-edged sword, but depending on how you choose to see it, British gives you access to pretty much everything, I think it’s one of the world’s most accessible passports, so that burgundy piece of card is amazing, and it does a lot of good; it gives you the ability to graft into a wider heritage. I understand nuanced but painfully, I’m not English, but British I am. And of course being Nigerian or at least half Nigerian, you’ve got this wonderful wealth of West African culture, and no matter how much you want to insult or undermine (David Cameron’s “fantastically corrupt” statement comes to mind here) the West African nation of Nigeria, doesn’t change the fact that it’s the powerhouse of Africa. On a continent that is able to house all of Europe, all of America, all of North America, all of China and Russia on it, you have one nation that in effect if it got its act together, could rule the entire continent. That is something that you can’t manufacture, you can’t wish or convince yourself into being.

When I think about it as a whole, there’s only probably two countries that I know of that refer to their homeland as Fatherland (well it depends how you see it now), and it’s Germany and Nigeria. And in terms of what both countries are capable of…size, people, identity etc, I think it’s a very very good thing in being able to combine that phrase – Black British Nigerian into one. That’s something to be proud of. It’s all the weird minority connotations that if executed properly could do some amazing things. At least that’s what I think anyway.

Do you think this country values your identity?

I don’t think so, I don’t think that Britain as a whole, or the British Isles or the United Kingdom, really understands, let alone values what a Black British Nigerian is supposed to be. I think that the country is still trying to get to grips with the mass influx of immigrants not just from the European countries, but just in general. They’ve had a 100 years to get used to Indians coming in, and they still struggle, let alone the relatively new world of Afro-Caribbeans. My grandfather, my maternal grandfather, my Ghanaian grandfather came and did his engineering degree here after WWII. Studied, contributed and went back home and contributed back to his nation. But those kind of things are blotted out of British memory. It’s not solely a British thing, but the fact that the bronze statue from Benin lives in the British museum and there are no hopes of repatriating it on account of we will not know how to handle our own heritage or they’re being good gatekeepers.

I don’t think the country knows how to define let alone treat, nurture and value what it means to be a Nigerian, what it means to be a Black Nigerian, and what it means to be Black British or Black British Nigerian at all. I think that is somewhere that perhaps [until] the point in which we get a political leader of some kind that is unapologetically that, and has sold themselves in as that on their way to power, I don’t think that’s going to be something the country can really get their head around. Britain is very much a multi-national group of nations, but it is still very much fragmented. Everyone lives in their own little silos; the [Jewish] are where they are, the Poles are where they are, the Nigerians are where they are.

What does the future look like for Black British Nigerians - what are your hopes for us?

I think Black British Nigerians (at least the way in which I’ve chosen to define them), if they’re educated here, understand the systems (because the one thing that Britain has a lot of is good systems), they understand the processes and they understand the infrastructure available here, I think the greatest hope for us is to export this and take it back to all the different ends of Africa, starting with Nigeria. That vision and that realisation of what Nigeria could be with the workforce it has – predictions at the moment are that by 2050, one third of the world’s population will be African; that’s insane, and that’s not far away. That’s within our reasonable expected lifetimes. So if we can take that and bring that to the new generation of 18-25 year olds that will be showing up in that time-frame and say here’s how you do things with excellence, here’s how you do things without bias or favouritism, and we can export those systems in a way that means something to Nigerians, and can help them develop and grow, I think we can do wonders.

The honest hope is that we turn everything we’ve learnt here, take it back home, create new paths, and new opportunities and new businesses that will empower Africans to do new things in new ways. And [that] we put ourselves in the position where we are able to in effect make Black British valuable in Britain, by seeing how its export to Nigeria, has yielded such great returns. Unfortunately right now, there’s some impact here, there’s little impact in Nigeria, and so the desire to export it back to Nigeria isn’t fully realised yet. But I think once we can do that, the sky’s the limit. We’ll have a third of the world’s population available and mobile enough for us to do great things with. And I think when you can motivate that many people, the possibilities are endless.