When Biodun Okeowo said she sold her gold to pay her son’s school fees in Canada, she said what thousands of Nigerian parents have never said out loud.
“Every kobo that comes into my account is already allocated. International student fees abroad is not moi-moi.”
When you hear Japa, the conversation usually focuses on the person who leaves. Their visa struggles, culture shock, their experience with the weather and their slow climb towards something better. No one really notices the one who stays behind and does the funding of the journey. One who at times dismantles their own financial life so that someone else’s can begin.
This week, Nollywood actress Biodun Okeowo pulled back the curtain on that side of the story. While elebrating her son’s graduation from the University of Edmonton, she revealed that the years leading to that moment had cost her more than most people knew.
She’d skip parties, redirected every source of income and at her lowest points, sold her gold jewellery to cover tuition.
An idea of the bills makes her sacrifice easy to understand. International student tuition at a Canadian university currently runs between CAD 21,000 and CAD 40,000 per year, before accommodation, feeding, health insurance, or any of the other costs a young person needs to survive in a foreign city. At current exchange rates, that is comfortably above ten million naira annually. Sustaining that for 4 to 5 years cannot be easy
What makes Okeowo’s disclosure striking is the quiet around it. She did not post about the hard years while they were happening, she sold her gold jewellery quietly, so many times she video calls where she and her son cried together. The public would only see a successful actress and not a struggling mother.
Okeowo is not alone.
A lot of parents with children in diaspora can relate to her experience. Their aim to provide their children a better future is usually filled sacrifices and risk-taking that might leave them worse off.
Biodun Okeowo’s son graduated and it is a thing of pride and joy. But their story is a reminder that behind every successful Japa story, is years of sacrifice you may never see.
