Sunday Edition — The City That Said My Name

There is something that happens when someone says your name correctly — not the carefully enunciated version you've learned to accept abroad, but your actual name, landing naturally in conversation without effort or apology. For me, that happened everywhere in Lagos. In boardrooms, at rooftop bars, at social gatherings where nobody paused to ask how to pronounce it. Simply, Tayo. After twenty years in the diaspora, I had forgotten how much that mattered. That small thing, repeated daily, became one of the most quietly profound parts of my three years there.

Given I relocated to Lagos as a U.S Government Worker, living in Ikoyi, operating as an expat in the city I was originally from. It was business that brought me. But what Lagos gave back to me was something I hadn't planned for: a slow, complicated, sometimes uncomfortable reclamation of identity. Twenty years is a long time to be away from anywhere. Long enough to forget the rhythm of a place. Long enough to romanticize it, or fear it, or both at the same time. Lagos met me somewhere in the middle of all of that.

I'll be honest about something upfront: I lived in a Lagos that most Lagosians don't have access to. Ikoyi, Victoria Island, the island corridor. If I wasn't traveling for work, I rarely had reason to cross to the mainland — which itself says something about how life on the island operates. I drove against traffic because I kept odd hours, leaving early, returning late, largely insulated from the gridlock that defines daily commuting for millions. I paid premium for water, electricity, and security. The basics that Lagos's infrastructure doesn't reliably extend to everyone.

Great customer service exists in Lagos, but it costs. That version of the city is a bubble, and I lived inside it.

I say this not to boast, but because diaspora visitors need to understand this before they land at MMIA. The Lagos you experience will depend almost entirely on the Lagos you can afford. And if you are the kind of person who feels deeply about the welfare of the average Nigerian, certain realities will sit heavily on you. The poverty is visible. The contrast between what the island offers and what most people navigate daily is stark and constant. You will have to make peace with that tension, or it will consume your experience entirely. For me, it lingered. It never fully resolved. I'm not sure it should.

Within that bubble, though, something real was happening to me. My quality of life in Lagos genuinely felt richer than my life in Washington D.C. — in texture and warmth and spontaneity. After-work drinks that stretched into long, unhurried nights. Conversations that didn't feel transactional as I was with my expat peers. A social energy that D.C.'s routine-driven, badge-and-commute culture simply doesn't replicate. The days felt longer. The nights felt even longer. And somehow, both felt worthwhile.

I ate at local amala spots. I went to the clubs. I talked to strangers at events without code-switching, without adjusting my accent, without quietly calibrating how I sounded to make sure I was being understood. I just spoke freely, naturally and people understood me. The food, I'll say broadly, was everything. Every meal felt like a reminder of something the body remembers even when the mind has moved on. Those moments of simply moving through Lagos without anyone flagging me as foreign felt like small recoveries, proof that this place was still in me even after two decades away.

The harder truth is that it didn't always feel like home, and I think that's worth naming honestly. The people I ended up socializing with were largely other expats and people who enjoyed Lagos from a comfortable remove. I found myself wishing for old friendships, childhood connections, people who knew me before I became whoever I am now. But twenty years had passed, paths had diverged, and honestly, I couldn't remember many people. Some days were lonely in a way that was hard to explain to anyone around me.

Lagos is also highly observant. The way you move, what you drive, and where you eat often shapes how people perceive and interact with you. Some days I was a foreigner in my own city, and no amount of amala or Afrobeats at 2am fully closed that distance.

Go. But go clear-eyed. The country will complicate your diaspora identity — in the most beautiful, frustrating, necessary ways. It will feed you, exhaust you, and occasionally make you feel more yourself than you have in years. Lagos, where I spent most of my time, is booming, alive, full of possibility and full of contradiction. Homecoming is not easy; you have to negotiate with the city, with your memory of it, and with whoever you've become in the years you were gone.