emorse:

Most Nigerians don't need to spend $1000 per month to live a fairly comfortable life. As you dey compare income, try ompare expenses too.

You sure about that ?

Backpedal:

You sure about that ?

A nice flat in a fairly decent area may cost less than 40k monthly. A family of 4 will spend less than 100k on food monthly. They'd need to find a way to spend the remaining N600k to exhaust $1k monthly. I'm very sure a good number of Nigerians don't spend that much. As a matter of fact, not many Nigerians earn that much.

emorse:

A nice flat in a fairly decent area may cost less than 40k monthly. A family of 4 will spend less than 100k on food monthly. They'd need to find a way to spend the remaining N600k to exhaust $1k monthly. I'm very sure a good number of Nigerians don't spend that much. As a matter of fact, not many Nigerians earn that much.

480k annual rent

Decent place in this Lagos?
For a family man ?

I beg to disagree sir

tshtsh:

Life in Nigeria and USA/Canada/EU is very different on many fronts. In Nigeria being a homosexual is a big deal and will be for a long time. Thus you will hardly find any Nigerian-born parent tell you their child being gay or lesbian is no big deal. I am yet to see that even among Nigerians that i've met in USA as well as Canada.

There are certain values/principles that increases a person's chance of success anywhere. Be it Nigeria or USA. It is because of lack of those values that make some people struggle at home and abroad. There are places I've been to in Toronto that makes me question if the people I went to visit made the right choice by leaving Nigeria.

As a parent I will rather focus on instilling the right attitude to life on my kids than rely on location. When I lived in Nigeria I wasnt happy with a number of things but overall I was still in the middle class. As a 25 year old I got a job in my field, bought a car, jointly rented an apartment in lekki 1, furnished it moderately, got another organization try to poach me, spent my annual vacations in any country of choice and all that.

Today I earn a much high salary in Toronto but I don't believe my location played a role. If I was in Nigeria I'd have still been in middle class there. In the one year I worked in Johannesburg I still lived well by both Nigerian and South African standard.

I have family cousins today complaining about Nigeria and wanting to japa but complaining that they don't have the means. In my opinion even if they have the means with their attitude they may still struggle.

If you don't mind I'll give you an example. As young boys then we had an uncle who was senior in NNPC. He opened his doors in Lagos to many members of the family (particularly the young students). He use to get angry when he returned from work to see the ladies watching African magic. Some of these ladies did not know how to use a computer but he made available a desktop computer and the SAM - Premiere Microsoft Office Training textbook. These ladies didn't take advantage of that. For the guys most were more interested in driving his cars and showing off to women. I was always glued to my macbook (was always practicing java programming then). It was assumed that I didnt know how to drive a car because I never drove a car in that house. After sometime uncle got internship opportunities for 90% of the people that stayed with him or visited him frequently. These opportunities were at companies that were into a joint venture with NNPC and as a senior staff he didnt have a problem getting his people internship opportunities in these places. For some reason I believed so much in a future as a software engineer and never asked him for these opportunities during my long vacations. Those who were youth corpers were also placed in organizations but they were so fixated with outdoing each other in my uncle's house, fighting each other for his attention and driving cars in his house (uncle's family lived in USA hence the house was like a free for all).

A few years after his wife and younger children moved back to nigeria and his house was no longer as open to members of the family. All these people were back in our state struggling with unemployment and lack of money to do anything. He got one or two of them (the ones that studied engineering) a third party contract job with one of the NNPC vendors (a one man company) in 2013. 9 years later they are still there on the same salary. As far as I am concerned these people did not and do not have the values/character of someone who wants to be successful. Take them to America with this same character they will still struggle.

I never had any of the opportunities they had but one thing I learnt from my parents was the eventual reward that came with not giving up on myself and persevering. Even when things look fine I keep trying and trying to move to the next thing every now and then. There are opportunities and challenges everywhere. Leeching on people or on social systems is one of the ways to keep thyself at the bottom of the pyramid. America rewards the rich and upper class more than the poor. Same with Nigeria

The first recipient of your comment is my daughter. Thank you

One of the most important secret of success in life is moulding yourself at an early age that you want to be above average in life